the hens day

So two of my very good friends got married earlier this year. I've never really had great friends get married, so I've never really been exposed to the kind of insane preparation that goes into planning the event and surrounding occasions. Imogen and Ben put immense time, effort and (no doubt) funds into planning their gorgeous union. But they also needed help.

For my part, help was twofold: first, allow Imogen's hens day to be held at our house; second, take some photos at the wedding. More on the second part later.

The first part was easy. Imogen's wonderful bridesmaids literally did everything; all we had to do was have our house in reasonable shape and ensure that it was available to them. And they did a glorious job. Granted, our courtyard provides a nice setting, but the little touches that the girls put into the decoration and planning made our house look better than we've ever seen it; their thoughtfulness shone through in every detail.

Imogen looked just beautiful. While in these two photos the afternoon sun is giving her a radiant glow, it must be said that her humble pleasure at being the centre of attention among those closest to her emanated from her regardless of the sun. Imogen's sister and mother look gorgeous here too - as everyone did on the day. This was quite a feat: it was forty degrees.

Looking at the photos of these four, it's hard to believe that it was sweltering, because they all look so fresh and lovely. It reflects the mood of the day, which is in turn a credit to Imogen's marvellous bridal party for organising such an enjoyable event.

As the day descended into a balmy evening, the decked-out patio continued to set a gorgeous scene for the bride-to-be and her girls. These longish exposures happily capture the warmth, both literal and decorative, that permeated the atmosphere.

The yellow flash came out for the after-dark shots of people. I love using the yellow flash lately for several reasons, but in this instance it is especially suitable because it carries on the mood present in the daytime photos, namely warmth and summer.

It was the first hens day I had ever attended, and I wasn't sure I would enjoy it; I tend to associate the term with male strippers, drunk women wearing tacky veils, and cock paraphernalia. But it was none of these things. It was just like Imogen: modest, classy, creative and warm - and just a little bit silly and charmingly drunk.

for the love of feet

By most standards, feet are kind of unappealing. They get sweaty and smelly; they are often covered in delightful things like corns, bunions, cracks and calluses; the nails are prone to yellowing and collecting a whole lot of undefined gunk; and as a general rule, Tarantinoesque fetishes notwithstanding, people find feet ugly. Some people vehemently despise them. There is even such a thing as podophobia - yep, fear of feet.

But I reckon feet are alright. In fact, lately I've had a tendency to point my lens towards the floor and capture just the bottom half of people. I only really noticed it when I took all those photos of the beautiful children in my life, but actually it extends beyond cute mini feet. The top photo is probably my favourite of these ones. We see great legs with a gorgeous grey tone against the bright white heels. The floorboards add a great texture and don't look like a typical dance floor. (It was a house party.)

The thing I wonder about all of these photos is, how much would I like them if they included the whole bodies and faces of the subjects? Take the first one: if I had Maydia's face in the photo then it would almost certainly be a more animated image, but seeing as it was late at a party there's always the chance it wouldn't be flattering. Whereas here the focus is entirely on her legs and feet - which look fantastic, and would regardless of the time of night. And the mere exclusion of heads and faces means that the photo is automatically less conventional, which I find interesting.

In all of these photos we are forced to look more closely at the details in order to find out about these people. In the second, we can see several people and lots of cords, a bit of a guitar, plus a mic stand. So it seems that it's a band, but the fact that it's on carpet and there are quite a few people standing closely together throws it off a bit - it's not a stage per se, so where is this? What is going on? If the people were shown in full we would be able to tell who is in the band and who isn't, and we'd be able to see the background and perhaps get a better idea of where it is. As it is, though, I like the element of the unknown.

The position of the feet in the third photo lets us know that whoever it is is relaxing, and if we look closely we can see a bottle of wine on the concrete: not a lot of information, but enough to convey a pretty strong sense of leisure. And again, the white shoes against the dark background stand out beautifully on the black and white film.

The final photo is a lot less cryptic, in that it's a relatively classic image of a rock and roll band. But if we ask the above question - what would the photo be like with faces included - I realise why I like it so much more with just legs and feet. See, faces automatically draw your attention. That's great - I mean, I adore portraiture - but what that also means is that your attention is being taken away from other details in the photo. When you don't have that distraction, you have to build personality and narrative from other elements. So we see boots/shoes, dark jeans, cords, mic stands, beers, a coffee cup, floorboards and natural light. So it's during the day, but they're drinking beers. There is also a coffee cup, which implies they may have been there for a while - or perhaps someone's hungover. They're standing in a line, so it would appear they're performing. But the floorboards and the ramp and rug in the background don't really look like they belong to a conventional stage. So what's going on?

Maybe with the absence of the complete picture, so to speak, there is no way to know exactly what is going on (not that full bodies and faces tell you everything, of course - but they certainly tend to tell you a lot more than feet). So instead of being presented with a photo that is relatively easy to interpret - a narrative - we are faced with something closer to a feeling. And while photos that tell an unambiguous story can be wonderful, it's also nice to appreciate a less straightforward image, where you're forced to think, and where the imagination might be able to come up with a story much more fascinating than the reality of the scene.

shakin' with the bluebottles

I had never heard The Bluebottles when Mic asked me to take photos for his new band. But that didn't matter: Mic had reference shots for me. Seeing as it was, apparently, an instrumental surf guitar band, the images we were working from were straight outta the sixties. Cheesy and over-the-top; just a bunch of good clean white boys having fun with guitars. (A side note on this particular image: in Googling around for info while writing this post, I came across what may be the only ever example of a drawing based on one of my photos. Awesome.)

We used colour and black and white because the old bands tended to use a lot of both, but because the reference shots were largely studio shots and we weren't in a studio, we had to accept that there would be some photoshopping necessary to get that flawless, smooth sixties look. (The photos here are the originals, though - I don't put any photoshopped work on this blog! Hence the unsightly white sheet in a lot of them.)

Getting the cheese to flow, so to speak, was pretty easy with these four - primarily because Rich and Jim have it in abundance, with or without a camera present. It made for a highly entertaining couple of hours, as well as some amazingly hilarious images.

Yeah, they were pretty great subjects. Even from these portraits it's clear which two like to pull faces. But evidently, the need for tomfoolery was merely encouragement for these two - encouragement to take it much further than anyone needed it to go. And so I leave you with a few of the unconventional gems of the day - photos that definitely couldn't (or shouldn't) be used for promotional purposes.

the many faces of holly

Caught off-guard.
Concentrating.
Show-off.
Ravenous.
Camera smile. 
Pretending not to pose.
Cracked it.

Or:

Beautiful.
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
Beautiful.

yellow fever

Taking flash photos of people late into the night appeals to me immensely. There are two main reasons for this: it's quite simple once you have the settings right, as you don't have to worry too much about lighting; and depending on where you are, late into the night people are often (usually) a little intoxicated, making for some interesting, if not technically perfect, images. Take this one, for example. One person isn't even in focus! But that's ok (or so I think, anyway), because there is enough character here to redeem it.

In the past, I have used the multi-colour flashes for colour photos on my plastic cameras, or a bright white flash for my high-contrast 35mm black and white images. I have always been reluctant to take colour 35mm photos using a flash, because the speedlight tends to wash people out, unless you are an expert with diffusers and bouncing techniques (which I am not). But then it came to me: put a coloured filter on the speedlight! And so we have these canary-tinted photos from early 2012.

It all started with Saskwatch. Liam worked really closely with me to achieve a pretty specific vision for the latest shoot we did (more on that another time), and one of the things we decided to pursue pretty heavily was coloured flashes. So I bought some filters and experimented to see what they would do. This shot probably won't be used for promotional purposes (I always get a lot of these, as you would know if you happen to read my blog even semi-regularly), but it is a wonderful picture of nine particularly unique personalities who somehow manage to work beautifully together.

The yellow flash does for colour what black and white does for everything: smooths bad complexions and gives ordinary scenes an element of the extraordinary. But it's not only people that benefit from the kiss of the golden light: inanimate objects take on a pretty fascinating look, too. These flowers would look stunning no matter how you shot them, but this hue turns the photo into a real curiosity, because we're seeing something very familiar in a way that we most probably haven't seen before.

All the other photos here are taken on a very straightforward colour film; there isn't a need for special film, because the flash does all the work. But I did try it out on slide film, which I thought was a bit of a waste at the time, but I needed to finish the roll and so I shot with the yellow flash. I'm so glad I did! Look at the gorgeous greens that come out as a contrast to the warm yellow. And look at that dress! Have you ever seen such a vibrant red?! Well, you probably have, but still - this is pretty phenomenal. An expensive endeavour, as slide film always is, but totally worth it in this case. (Probably much like Rhiannon's dress.)

So, ok, the yellow flash gives something special to the ordinary, or takes something lovely and makes it unusually lovely. But then there are those images that, aside from any camera adjustments or fancy film, are always going to be special. And by special, in this case, I mean marvellously absurd. There really isn't much to say about this that you can't tell by looking at Tom's eyes, and at Meagan's overall expression. Yellow flash or otherwise, this is one damn good photo. Which is always, always the aim.

portrait of the week: d'arcy

When I take portraits of people, I usually get in pretty close. Faces are fascinating, and surely the reason portraits are perenially appealing. Maybe that's why I struggle to determine an opinion on this image - I'm just not used to this type of composition. I definitely do like it, but I'm not sure how much and for what reason(s). One thing I am confident of is that it looks much better when enlarged - being able to really see D'Arcy's face enhances the image immensely - so click on it before making your judgement.

I took a lot of photos of D'Arc that day, and some of them are lovely. But I'm not sure he thinks so - he had been up almost all night working madly on an application for an elite filmmaking course (which succeeded! hooray!) so he wasn't feeling super photogenic - and here one of the benefits of the long shot reveals itself. Instead of looking overworked and underslept, he looks merely pensive and intellectual! And perhaps, instead of seeing someone wishing for a warm bed free of the deadline blues, we can look at him here from afar and imagine that he is hatching a brilliant idea for his next celluloid masterpiece.

another trip to the amphitheatre

Golden Plains was pretty special this year. I mean, most Aunty Meredith devotees would say that every event is out-of-this-world amazing, regardless of weather, line-up or company. But this Golden Plains Sixxx hit it out of the park on all fronts: wonderful company made up of a group of close friends; weather that demanded bare limbs during the day and jumpers after sundown; and a diverse line-up that included everyone from world-class soul icons (Charles Bradley) to bright young things (First Aid Kit) and even my dear friends and photographic subjects Saskwatch (who, in a moment of great albeit unwarranted pride for me, had the entire amphitheatre ecstatically involved).

Somewhat surprisingly, I didn't take many photos. I think it was a case of wanting to enjoy the festival, make the most of the ambiance and avoid missing anything because of a camera over my face. This is probably not great photographic practice, but it made for a wonderful festival.

But I did take some photos. And while they're not brilliant, and they're certainly not plentiful, they are unmistakably of the moment, and enough to ensure some memories of the long weekend will stick around for a while yet.

portrait of the week: megan

There's not much of a story to this one; it's just one of those shots that was taken along with many others, late on a Saturday night, at a party. There are some good images and there are some ordinary images from the night, but this one stands out from the rest on account of two things: it's a gorgeous portrait, and it is a bit of a photographic non sequitur. Why is she on an old-fashioned phone? Why is there an old-fashioned phone on top of the fridge? Why does she look so wonderfully serious about the phone call? It doesn't look like a party shot - there is no one else around - and Megan looks so convincingly business-like, even the way she is holding the receiver!

The truth is, it is at a party. It is after midnight. Megan had been drinking most of the day (who would know! She looks so great and bright-eyed!). The receiver was some kind of digital novelty that plugs into a mobile phone. There was no one on the other end of the line.

An unexpectedly fabulous party portrait.

plastic summer

Whenever I see sun-drenched, washed-out images like this, I can't help but think of this song. Like the tune, such photos automatically bring to mind memories of wilting in front of fans, feeling the heat rise from the footpaths, aching for the ocean, tasting sweat on your upper lip. Sure, a lot of these things are unpleasant, but their very existence implies greater things that only summer can deliver: quenching that desire for the sea in one glorious dive, walking barefoot through the balmy air of a hot night without the need for a cardigan, embracing the sweat and giving in completely to the all-encompassing feeling of heat. It's a pretty marvellous thing.

The weather is brilliant in its capacity to pardon behaviour that would otherwise be deemed somewhat inappropriate. Like lying on the couch with your housemates all day, taking turns to spray each other with water from a $2.99 Kmart spray bottle, because your beautiful old house is badly insulated and you don't have air con and there's not a damn thing else you can do.

Driving in the summer. Everyone remembers what it was like to take family trips in a car where the air con consisted of four windows wound as far down as they could go and the wind matted your hair and threatened to blow all your eyelashes off while it was at it. Hell, if you're anything like me it's not even a distant memory; who doesn't have a friend who drives a bomb? I reckon Craig here is in a car that would definitely have air con, but perhaps with an eight-hour, hungover drive to Adelaide ahead of him, cool air isn't that great a consolation.

Well it wouldn't be summer in Australia without alcoholic refreshments, and it wouldn't be summer in Melbourne without a bloody beer garden or two. The smoking laws mean that beer gardens are utilised year-round as those craving nicotine are happy to brave the crisp air, even in the depths of winter, in order to indulge the addiction. The upside of this is now we have even more choice when it comes to outdoor drinking in the warmer months. Providing blessed shade while the sun is fiercely high in the sky, the umbrellas soon become redundant as that gloriously gentle setting sun creeps under their domain and bathes the drinkers with an early evening embrace. Warm, golden sun, ice cold cider, the promise of a joyously warm night ahead: is there anything better?

Summer in Melbourne can be pretty ruthless at times, but I say roll with it, take the lows with the highs and give thanks for the kind of conditions that we can only dream of during those brutally icy mid-year months.