Pizza Test shoot for Pizza Hut

Got asked to submit a test shoot for Pizza Hut, as they are in the market for a new shooter. Was a good opportunity to work with Ben Masters, whom I'll be working with a lot in the future as we are teaming up for a Hungry Jacks project. We will have to refine our pizza pull technique though...

Allianz Inflatable

Enjoyed shooting for this campaign which required a lot of 3D by +AnimalLogic and retouching by Innes at +ElectricArt. Had to be shot alongside the TVC so it was not my own set to control, which is a bit of a challenge when needing to shoot plates.

Abbotts Village Bakery and Burgen

One of the images I shot for my portfolio last Easter caught the eye of some fine creatives at DDB Sydney and they sold the look to their client George Weston Foods for their Abbott's Village Bakery bread range. Its great to see your own image as reference to your advertising brief.

Worked with stylist Sally Parker and shot both ads in a bright kitchen in Mosman. Would have liked to shoot the moody execution in a studio, and with a little more time, but we work with the tools we have.

Ben Quilty shoot

After reading some time ago that Archibald Winner +Ben Quilty owns a car that coincidentally appeared in one of my images as it lay undiscovered in a yard in Hill End, I was stoked to meet the man and shoot his portrait in his studio in Robertson. Subsequently his agent requested an image for Ben's promotional purposes in Asia.

He was amazed to see the V8 Ford in the image and I sent a print to him. Maybe he sends me something in return...

Shaving the Monkey

It is always a challenge shooting alongside the filming of a TVC. Where normally the photographer controls the shoot, on TV filmset the photog has to conform to the schedule and hierarchy of the TV shoot, grabbing the smallest opportunity (as in seconds to minutes) to get the shots the brief calls for. Add to this the historical animosity of the filmcrew as they get their jobs done, and the overburdened talent who would rather take a break than get a lens in their face for the three hundredth time that day, and the chance of getting a bonus shot from a TVC day is slim.

However when I was shooting a print brief alongside the filming of the current ING TVC,  AD Ben Pearce and I saw this cool barbershop near the the location and thought "that might be a nice shot". When a ten minute window between filming presented itself, a quick negotiation with said barber and some very fast lighting and ten frames of shooting resulted in an image that the agency could present as a bonus to the client.

Client loved the image and decided to run it.

Doesn't happen often...

Annie Leibovitz

So the good thing about Annie Leibovitz having a financial wobble is that it led to a travelling retrospective exhibition that swung by the MCA for a while, and it was of course, my professional responsibility to swing by and have a gander.

So while I was studying photography in the early 90's, she was hot shit and one of the masters of the time. Hell, being the go-to shooter for Rolling Stone can be a career maker in itself, but she did do some pioneering work that will forever speak about that time in photography

And that is just the thing. The digital age has produced a high standard of imagery that we take for granted now, but it also has yielded a glut of mediocre over-treated slap-dash work that has drowned the market and cheapened the medium. So I had to  recalibrate my mind to the fact that the are prints mostly unretouched, technically perfect, and breathtakingly beautiful in some cases, and confronting for the time.

The very personal snapshots in B/W were a nice touch, and a testament that a true photographer is constantly shooting personal shots, sometimes despite great pain

I guess thats what makes real Masters of Photography.

White Rabbit

I must admit I had never really thought about contemporary Chinese art, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that. I think most people could not even contrive a mental picture, but instead a default image of some ancient Chinese artifact might spring to mind.

When I was commissioned to do a portrait of Judith Neilson, the powerhouse founder of White Rabbit Gallery, I did a bit of Google snooping on what exactly encompasses Chinese modern art. Well, quite a lot it seems.

In my limited understanding, since the fall of Communism/ rise of Consumerism and exposure to Western influences- good and bad- free thinking artists from the Worlds biggest economic powerhouse,  unconstrained by purism or tradition and with space and materials, are free to create some seriously whack stuff that defies belief

I particularly enjoyed the latest hanging, with pieces like a full scale Beijing jeep made from tiny triangles of twisted wire, or a full scale alley scene made of embroidery- yes- embroidery. Lets not mention two traditional Chinese garments knitted from a Chinese/English dictionary, so that the alphabetic characters are still visible in the "wool"

Many of the works are so excruciatingly complex in their craft and construction that the appreciation of art itself is diluted by the appreciation of its execution.

Housed in a gorgeous renovated building in Chippendale, with free entry, its a must see and a MF of note.