Mostly Xmas Dance

Happy Holidays!

8 Comments » | Tagged in Videos

Mostly Chrissie in Brizzy

Paz and I take a stroll to the giant Christmas tree in Brisbane's "decked out" City Centre. Silliness, Santa hats, fluro sunnies, and singing ensued. 

NB. I have never before released an entire, unedited Mostly Lisa video before, I usually try to keep my zany antics locked in tight edits and under 2 mins. But this clip really spoke to me, so I thought I'd let you in on this rare 4 min glimpse into my everyday life. Well, that and my Macbook Air has no sound. Not a lick. "No output devices found". I've tried Onyx, PRAM, disk utility, still nothing! Quicktime won't even play back. Arg! Help? Suggestions? Hugs?

So in the meantime, I had to get Paz to edit and compress this vid on a PC :alert: with Sony Vegas. To my surprise, it wasn't totally awful, though it couldn't output into H.264, so lovely Visual Hub (which was discontinued in October :cry:) came to my aid yet again. 

I'm gonna take my mute Mac box into the nearest Gold Coast Apple Store tomorrow and hope these wacky Aussies know their Apple stuff as well as their beers, barbies, and boomerangs.

21 Comments » | Tagged in Travel, Videos

How to take great portraits of your pets

Chip the Papillon. 50mm f/1.4 lens, f/4, 1/400, ISO 200.

1. Snap pets when they are sleepy and happy

With pets, there are somewhat predictable patterns of alertness and sleepiness. Like at 6am, they are usually wide awake. "Yap yap yap! Good Morning! I'm up, why aren't you? " Obviously, you don't want to photograph a pet when they are rocketing around your living room or fast asleep. Try to find a time where they are fed, happy, and partially sleepy. That way they will be patient enough to sit and pose for you. Keep a few little treats in your pockets to keep that "happy-time" glimmer in their eyes or just to give you some extra snapping time.

2. Photograph pets at their eye level

Photos taken of animals from above are less personal and look very observational. If you want to show the personality of your fantastic pet, then you'll have to shoot them at their eye-level. This often means crouching or lying down in some uncomfortable position in something wet, itchy, or hard, but it's worth it. If you have smaller pets, you can prop them up on a pillow on a chair to make it a bit easier on your knees.

3. Find a simple, contrasting background

Use a simple background that contrasts with the colour of your pet's fur, feathers, scales, tentacles (?) A grey cat against a grey wall will not stand out enough. Opt for a lighter colour to make your pet pop from the background.

4. Shoot in soft, even light

Indoors: Shoot in front of a big open window. Use a sheer curtain to diffuse the harsh light if it's really sunny, or shoot a bit later in the day (about 1 hour before sunset). If you are getting a lot of shadow, use a bounce or a whiteboard to reflect light. Make sure you don't blind your pet in the process. Meow!

Outdoors: Shoot in the shade or on a cloudy day. Make sure the light on your pet is consistent and not dappled. Harsh bits of sun mixed with shade never looks good and you can never really correct it in post. Avoid dappling! It can ruin the best of pictures.

5. Focus on the eyes

Whatever you do compositionally, make sure your focus on the eyes is tack sharp. It's also nice if you can get the nose in focus as well. If you have sufficient light to increase your aperture, set it around f/5.6. If not, you can try using a tripod (depending on how patient your pet is), or try shooting your pet in profile.

If you have any other tips or tricks for photographing pets or any photos you'd like to share add them to the comments.

Good luck and remember to fill your pockets with tasty treats!

18 Comments » | Tagged in Featured, Photography

Photography tips I learnt from this Rainbow Lorikeet

50mm f/1.4 lens, f/4, 1/160, ISO 200.

I wanted to share the story behind this colourful photo of the mostly lovely, attack lorikeet I met at the Currumbin Sanctuary. While at the park, I took over 600 photos of fun creatures, most of them during the harsh lighting hours of 10am to 4pm. It was impossible to get a good shot of the lorikeets in this lighting. Because it was so scorching hot, most of them stayed up in the shade of the tall gum nut trees far out of the reach of my 50mm lens.

I had almost given up, when suddenly at about 5pm, the light became magical. It got all warm and soft and yummy. Everyone was leaving the park as it was closing, so I had a nice clean shot of the birds as they were happily slurping their honey water. I shot maybe 30 images of the lorikeet in different lighting conditions, (shade, direct sun, diffused light), so I felt like I had at least one good shot.

When I got home and went through all my photos, I was really disappointed with my lorikeet shots. I just didn't see the magical shot I wanted. A couple days later I scanned the images again and found one that I felt was "decent". I worked on it for a while in Aperture. I played a lot with the composition of the image. Check out the before shot:

This image is far too busy with the other bird in the shot and the blue metal feeder in the background. I cropped in really tight on the head, but making sure there was enough negative space around the head to create nice shapes.

I also blurred out the background even more and desaturated the green in the background slightly so it wouldn't distract from the lorikeet. I increased the saturation and vibrancy of the feathers minorly and spent ages cleaned up all the tiny imperfections on the eye, beak and feathers.

The lessons I learnt from this experience this were:

1. If you are at a wildlife park or zoo, enjoy the experience of hanging out with cool animals during the harsh light hours and take your serious shots during magic hour. Because photos taken during magic hour are always better than ones taken in harsh light. It sucks, especially because most parks close right when the light becomes magical, so you really have to push it to stay out there until they kick you out!
2. Take several passes through your photos before discarding any "decent" shots, especially when you are going though hundreds of images after a shoot when you are tired and creatively zapped.
3. You can take a photo from good to great if you spend a good chunk of time in post. Really get critical with your images. Analyze them and ask others for criticism. Make them as perfect as possible.

And you never know, maybe your photo will end up on the front page of flickr explore!! :D

17 Comments » | Tagged in Featured, Photography, Travel

Mostly Lisa’s Australian Animal Adventure

As you might have already guessed from the post title, I'm in Australia!

I'm here on the Gold Coast to take some great photos and take a wee bit of a hot and sunny vacation before MacWorld in January. I can't wait to actually have a skin tone that contrasts with the pasty nocturnal geekazoids at the conference. I will laugh and say, "Haha! That used to be me! But now look at me... I'm all red and... patchy." Oh yes, I will ride that cool train all the way to the station.

I hope you enjoy all the beautiful Aussie animals I met at the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, Gold Coast. I couldn't believe how accessible the animals were, especially the kangaroos. It's such an incredible experience to just sit in the grass with a pack of kangaroos and wallabies, petting them, taking pictures, and watching them lounge about. I'm hoping to go back again to spend some more time with these magnificent creatures and learn more about the sanctuary.

Can you name any of the crazy Aussie creatures in the video?

33 Comments » | Tagged in Travel, Videos