Michael Paynter

Great to see the highly talented Michael Paynter back in the spotlight again, this time auditioning on Channel 9′s The Voice last week.

Although I was surprised to hear he had auditioned, I can understand his reasons for doing so given how his long-anticipated debut album never quite got released by Sony.

I first saw Michael performing as a support act for Kate Miller-Heidke at the Northcote Hotel back in 2006 and was impressed with his confident stage presence and powerful voice. So too were his vocally exuberant group of fans at the front of the stage, indicating that this was someone we’d likely see more of in the future.

Michael Paynter

Michael Paynter performing at the Northcote Social Club on April 19th, 2006. Photo by Ben Loveridge

Michael Paynter

Michael Paynter performing at the Northcote Social Club on April 19th, 2006. Photo by Ben Loveridge

If his upcoming performances on The Voice are anything like his cover of John Farnham’s Burn For You below, he will be a tough one to beat.

These are a couple of songs he released over the last few years.

Immortality

Was happy to hear that the documentary film ‘Decoding Immortality’ that I worked on a few years ago for @DecemberMedia, recently won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Science and Technology Programming. 

The film charts the work of Australian scientist Professor Elizabeth Blackburn who in 2009, discovered an ‘immortalising’ enzyme deep in the DNA of a single-celled pond creature.

The footage was shot on a variety of formats and conditions, making it quite a challenge as the colour grader to make it look seamless. It was a fascinating project to work on and provided a real insight into what is an amazing field of study. Who wouldn’t want to live forever?

 

 

Emma Heeney Video

I was asked to film a live video for a new tune by Emma Heeney, the brief being to keep it a relatively simple performance piece. Having brought a couple of DSLR’s with the intention of a multi-camera shoot, I ended up opting for a single Canon 5Diii coupled with the 24-70mm f2.8 II for the entire video. I felt the tone of the song lended itself more to a dreamy floating hand-held style rather than a static one. Also the thought of capturing twice the amount of footage didn’t appeal, given I had set myself the challenge of completing the entire video in the one session.

Three full performance takes were completed and a fourth specifically for cut-aways to be edited in later Lighting was all natural through a window facing the performers and the audio was captured via a Zoom H4n placed on a tripod in front of Emma. After deciding on the main master shot to be used, the cutaways were inserted during the editing process using Adobe Premiere CS6.

Thankfully each take was consistant enough so I could use small visual sections from different parts to overly without too many sync issues. All-in-all the whole clip was set-up, shot, edited and uploaded to YouTube in 5hrs.

Portable lightcase photography

Health food brand Mayvers recently rebranded their range of all-natural table spreads, which meant that new photos were required to show off the new labels and website. I have previously written about taking products shots with a DIY lightcase here and here, however since then I have thrown out the custom made cardboard box which was falling apart anyway. For this shoot, I was planning to just buy an inexpensive lightcase but unfortunately couldn’t find any in stock at short notice.

Fortunately Michael’s Camera had a LightPro portable lighting case for hire at a reasonable price which did just the job. I found it quick to set-up and with previous experience under the belt, in under two hours I was able to light, shoot, edit, re-touch and upload the new product shots to a happy client. All product shots were taken on the Canon 5D Mark III and Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II lens.

Two layers of baking paper were taped over the fluorescent tubes to soften the reflections in the glass jars. Glass from a photo frame was removed to provide natural reflections underneath and everything was given a good clean to ensure no dust was visible.

The photos were imported into Adobe Lightroom where the auto-mask feature allowed me to blowout the background highlights without affecting the jars. Positioning each jar in exactly the same spot meant I could just copy and paste the adjustment settings, saving lots of time in post-production.