And a few location shoots. This week has been pretty jam-packed with a diverse range of shoots. First-up was a shoot for the beautiful 16-year old Aesha who is the grand-daughter of the incredible actor Nicholas Hope. Hope contacted me to shoot Aesha for a modelling portfolio, so we shot as many images as we could to give her a range for a 'comp card'. I'd like to have shot a greater diversity of backgrounds and maybe some location work, but we did what we could. Aesha is not Adelaide-based but I hope to be able to shoot some location images for her next time she's in town. I kept the lighting very simple for a clean and elegant look.

Next shoot was for Zephyr Quartet, who are doing a show with visual artist Jo Kerlogue. 'Micro Macro' needed some publicity shots and the idea was for one of the musicians to lie on the floor whilst Jo created an image around her. I liked the idea of using the opportunity to create a little timelapse piece which would capture the way Jo improvises her work, and the production of the image for the photograph. However, the angle was a bit awkward with my camera attached to a counter-weighted lighting boom and I didn't have enough time to rig it as I would have liked (tethered capture via a laptop, and rigged using a superclamp on a boom directly overhead). We shot the scene anyway with the rigged camera set to shoot a frame every 3 seconds (using the built-in intervalometer) while I shot a range of lower angles and set up a few ideas during Jo's creation. After that we shot a few portraits with some new ideas and at the end set up another quick stop-motion shoot to explore the moving image idea in a different way. Here are some of the results.

This is the second moving image piece - it was an interesting idea to shoot 'portrait' for a traditional landscape frame. I resolved it by creating a black canvas for the work so that Jo Kerlogue could edit it with sound and text for the final promo. The final piece with sound can be seen on Nonchalant Sally's facebook page. I will post the aerial timelapse as soon as I finish working on it..

Shoot # 3 for the week was for long-time collaborator and friend Billie Cook - a dance artist who is working on a new piece with Gabrielle Nankivell as a mentor. The work is titled 'Mound of Dirt' and these shots were documentation of one of her studio sessions with Gabrielle in Leigh Warren's studio in Adelaide. I lugged some lighting up the stairs but in the end I went with straight available light, even though the light varied considerably at the ends of the room versus the centre. That kept me on my toes, as I was shooting in manual because of the large windows I was often shooting into, creating a lot of backlight. I chose to shoot with a long lens for the entire shoot rather than having to get close to the dancers as they worked (fly on the wall style). Great fun! Here are some results...

Shoot #4 for the week was shot on a really HOT day in a small forest on the property of a winery in the Adelaide Hills. Another dance shoot, this one was for dancer Lisa Lonero who is a fellow South African living in Australia. She has an upcoming Fringe show that she needed some promotional imagery for. She looked amazing as a Zebra (!) for her work based on a Zebra Crossing, and we worked with some choroegraphy but mostly just documenting her improvised movement in the location. Besides the massive forest mosquiotoes who were devouring us both, we had a great shoot. There are deer roaming the forest and it is a magical spot - this is the 'theatre' for Lisa's site specific show so it will be great for audiences to experience. I worked with a long lens at first, thinking the compression of the space would work well, but after a while I thought it might be fun to shoot ultra-wide and that' resulted in the more magical shots. Here are some results...

And so to the final shoot of the week - this one for producer Mark Patterson doing stills for his ABC TV documentary 'Olympic Dreams'. I photographed Paralympic Equestrian athlete Grace Bowman with her horse Rolly. It was almost 40 degrees so we decided to shoot the portraits in a huge hayshed at Kirby Park Stud, where it was quite pleasant. Grace was amazing to shoot - very natural and lively, and Rolly was just a beautiful horse - their bond was evident and there are some great shots of the 2 of them. I don't know if I can publish these shots until the ABC broadcasts the program as I am usually bound by contract to restrict when images can be used in my portfolio. Here is a funny snap of Rolly getting to know the microphone, and a cute snap of a kitten who was hanging around the hayshed..

Overall, a fun, interesting and busy week of diverse shoots. Bring on more weeks like this please for 2012..