Kim Denman - Zombie Killer shoot

Kim Denman : Zombie Killer!

Recently I went on a photo shoot with my good friend Pete Leong and an amazing model Kim Denman.

The shoot was Pete's vision, we wanted to take an amazingly beautiful girl and add a dark side... Kim was really into the idea and it turned out to be a really great model shoot.

We were shooting in an abandoned resort, the place is full of spiders, debris, graffiti and over grown with weeds... absolutely perfect for what we had in mind.

working with stobes, umbrellas, soft boxes and plenty of gory goop we managed to get some fantastic photos.

check out some of the shots I grabbed and leave a comment... cheers!

Tamron 10-24mm LD aspherical lens review

Just picked up this bit of glass yesterday, I was looking for a decent wide angle lens that wouldn't break the bank, so far I am very happy with the purchase.

I know that as far as third party lenses go, Tamron doesn't have the best standing, but after a few test shots I didn't see any reason to hate on this bit of glass. Sure the sharpness isn't profound and yes it loses detail around the edges but depending on what you are trying to do, your creativity and the right setting you can achieve some pretty solid results with this lens.

At 10mm the optimum aperture is f8, the field of view is about 103degrees and the focal point sharpness is more then fine.

At 24mm you want to take your aperture to around f11 and distortion is very minimal.

The auto focus is a tad noisy, and the focal distances are simply written on the barrel rather then behind a window like most other lenses offer, but IMO these are only points to nitpick over.

One of the main things I like about the Tamron 10-24mm is exactly that; the zoom range. It is quite a versatile lens, and for the price tag it is a freakin' steal in my book.

If you are on a budget and want to get wide, take a look at the Tamron 10-24mm LD aspherical.

Below are a couple of shots I took last night with this lens fitted with a 2 stop ND filter and mounted on a Nikon D5000 body.

Blazzeo wireless slave & trigger review

Blazzeo slave receivers: pure junk!

I am writing this review of Blazzeo's radio triggers not only because I am bitter over the purchase, but more importantly to warn others about these shotty little pieces of junk!

I picked up a set of 4 receivers and a trigger as they were on sale from linkdelight.com, and I needed to kit up for an upcoming shoot...let me just say they helped me make that shoot happen, then realizing they had fulfilled their purpose, went ahead and fell apart.

The problem as far as I can see is in the cheap production quality, the hot shoes are bent and warped and so poorly attached to the body of the receiver unit that the weight of even an SB-700 flash is too much to bare. Also the vertical design of the unit adds much more stress on the hot shoe then a horizontal design would.

The weight of one of Nikon's smaller flashes ripped 2 screws out of their plastic threads

The old adage, "You get what you pay for" is very true here, these slaves are incredibly cheap, but still I would expect to have more then one glitchy use out of a device before it flat out failed on me.

I recommend you spend a little cash for piece of mind alone, last thing you want is to be on a shoot, everything in place and be ruined by a $15 piece of garbage.

Strobing out the sun

There is a popular belief that flash photography is for shooting at night or when the ambient light is insufficient to allow you to capture a moment clearly. While this is not a misconception, it is also not a rule. in fact, using flash in the harshest of light can yield some pretty cool results.

My initial plan on this photo shoot was to go take some shots of a horse that is kept stabled in a very beautiful location near my house. I took my dog, Reef along for her morning walk in order to kill two bird with one stone, only to find that the horse was not on location. Not wanting to waste all the drive I had built up, I set reef up under a tree and took some pictures.

My first challenge was to find a way to capture Reef's black fur in a shadowed area without silhouetting her against the bright morning sky. I had three options with the kit I had brought with me:

1. Expose the shot for Reef and in doing so over expose or "blow out" the sky.
2. Expose for the sky and use flash to fill in Reef.
3. Use my ND filter (Neutral Density) to darken the background and my strobe (flash) to fill in the foreground with light.

I went with option three and was pleasantly surprised with some of the results.

For this shot I used an adjustable ND filter that allows me to control how many stops of light I want to remove from the shot. I also used a Nikon Speedlight SB-700 Strobe off camera to fill the scene at about 1/4 power.

Cool tip #1

When working outdoors on a photo shoot with light stands and umbrellas; your worst enemy is wind. Now, you can buy weights designed to keep your gear from crashing to the ground, or with just a little bit of pre planning, a couple plastic bags and some sand from a nearby beach you can keep your gear in place and save some coin in the process.

*note: if you don't have any sand, a bored friend will also do the job nicely. ;-P

Jumping through light

I recently went for a surf with my friend and his family, after we finished surfing I set up my basic travel photography kit and started snapping some fun shots of the kids. The idea was to freeze them with strobes (flashes) and turn getting a picture taken from a dull pose fest to a game that ended with some cool results.

Here is what I used:

• light stand x2
• SB-900 Nikon Speedlight strobe x1
• SB-700 Nikon Speedlight strobe x1
• Blazzeo radio trigger and reciever
• 60x60cm softbox
• 1m white reflective umbrella
• Nikon 18-55mm stock lens
• Nikon d5000

I set the softbox with the SB-900 at about 2m high and angled down at 45degrees about 1m from the subject, for front/side fill light. power at 1/8th to 1/4

I then placed the white umbrella with SB-700 strobe on the opposite side and slightly to the rear of the subject. This was kept as low as possible with a slightly upward angle of attack. power at 1/2.

Now since 2 of the three Blazzeo receivers I brought were not firing (strongly don't recommend buying this pieces of junk) I made my SB-900 speedlight the master and the SB-700 the slave.

A few test shots to expose the background correctly and my shutter speed at 200, iso 250 and shooting in full manual at f9 here is what I got.

Mauie, my friends 11year old daughter.

Kai just in from a wave.

So as you can see you don't need thousands of dollars worth of camera gear or professional studios and models to take some interesting and fun photos. and next time you are looking to snap a pic of your kids and they give you a bored expression just turn it into a game.