I recently visited the National Portrait Gallery to check out the 'Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913-2008' exhibition.

It was stunning. For only $10, or $30 for a season pass, I saw a brilliant exhibition of fantastic portraiture of influential people, photography in every style and from every era, colour, black and white, digital, film and so forth.

The work of Annie Leibovitz was every prominents, and I must say her work is stunning. Yes I know in her modern work there is a lot of compositing and photoshop fairy dust, but you can't fake the lighting, the expressions, the make-up, the styling in her photographs. The ones from the annual 'Hollywood' issue of Vanity Fair are especially stunning. This is one of the photos that was displayed:


Pretty damn cool if you ask me. I recommend everyone check this exhibition out, its in Canberra until the 30th August, and its only in Canberra - if you're from out of town I highlysuggest you make the trip down.

Check out http://www.portrait.gov.au for more info

Saad

Strobist Bootcamp II

This is my entry for the competition over at Strobist.com, Strobist Bootcamp II. Playing with some lighting at a headshot session. Will post some more photos from that day soon. All in all, I'm quite pleased with the results. Got in some excellent makeup artists from the Canberra Makeup Academy, Lois and Sonya, to help, and they were just perfect. Obviously I didn't have any makeup on!

Click the image for a larger version, and to see the lighting information. Any questions just ask. Basically used a shoot thru umbrella, a ring flash, and a flash on the background, with a high camera angle.

The assignment is now closed, but what the hell, if you want to give it a shot go for it. You can find the appropriate information here.

Saad

Water

I was experimenting taking photographs of a drop of water. They turned out really well, and now have these ones printed and hanging up at home. Really simple to shoot, just a simple off camera flash and background of your choice! Click to look at bigger versions.

Group Shot

Took some photos of some friends yesterday, I quite liked this one. Was trying out using the ring flash as a bit of fill, I think it worked well! Not happy with the background, but it was just a quick setup in a very small room!