A few months ago I had a shoot with the Harbour City Bears for their annual Mardi Gras festival, Bear Essentials. Every year bears, cubs, daddies, beefy blokes, and furry dudes of all shapes and sizes come from all over Australia and the world to enjoy this event filled festival.
The theme for Bear Essentials 16 is ‘A Whole New Ball Game’, so obviously the photos reflect the sporting theme. Taking inspiration from football, rugby union, rugby league, pool, AFL (Aussie Rules) and more, three affable models got their kit on and off for the shoot at The Oxford Hotel and Kingsteam.
A number of images are being used both on the website and posters, flyers and media for the festival as a whole and the individual events. You can see all the images from the campaign plus a selection that didn’t make the cut but are stand-outs on Flickr.
Thanks to Harbour City Bears and their President Jonny Bastin for asking me to do the job, plus the models Gavin P, David and Gavin S for their time.
Every year in around November the outdoor Sculpture by the Sea festival takes over the Bondi to Tamarama Coastal Walk with amazing, quirky, abstract and beautiful sculptures. I’ve missed it for the last couple of years but this time made the effort to get up at 5am and head down for a dawn shoot. Despite the early start there was already plenty of visitors and many photographers, probably because it was the last weekend.
I was hoping for a gorgeous sunrise as a backdrop but unfortunately some offshore fog prevented the sun from appearing. However the conditions did provide a moodier feel and as the sun rose higher in the sky, shades of pink and orange started to appear in the clouds. One of the most popular sculptures was a giant tap (faucet for my American readers) facing the ocean, it required much patience to try and get images without anyone creeping into them.
I also took the opportunity to dabble with some handheld HDR. The image below was created using 5 handheld exposures and HDR Efex Pro.
The power station was originally built between 1912 and 1917 the power station was decommissioned in 1983 and has been standing disused since. Fortunately the site has been heritage listed so won’t end up being a shopping mall or apartment complex. Currently there is no public access so the open weekend was the first opportunity to walk around this fascinating industrial site.
The highlight is the turbine hall, the biggest remaining space in the complex, so much so that it was a 15 min wait to get in and you only had about the same amount of time before you were ushered out. But there are plenty of other great features to photograph around the complex; meters and dials left in their last position before the station was shutdown, switches covered in dust, intricate piping and valves, and tons of other stuff.
I think there are plans to turn it into an event venue similar to Cockatoo Island which would be pretty cool, definitely a great place for photo shoots. Check the full set on Flickr.
I’ve just found out that the above image will be part of a slideshow continually displaying at the Head On Portrait Prize exhibition running at the Australian Centre for Photography from May 5 to June 11. The slideshow is made up of a shortlist of 200 images from the thousands of entries into the competition. I didn’t make it into the 40 finalists but I’m very happy to have my work acknowledged in this way…..next year one of the finalists??
After a very busy and successful opening on Monday 21st Februrary I’ve already sold two images which is pretty exciting. The exhibition features 15 emerging artists working in various media. Pictured above is one of the images I have on display, all items are for sale and the exhibition runs until 6pm on Wednesday 2nd March.
