New Job & storm pics

I start a new job in 7 hours so I'd best make this quick and get in some sleep. Tonight we had a wonderful electrical storm and my shots are on http://www.greenmantle.biz/20081015storm/

Due to the ferocity of the storm and that my car was on the other side of town I didn't make chase but instead enjoyed the view from my balcony.



As for the new job, it's two weeks as fashion photographer for an online boutique and from then goes full time. More news soon. =)

Covenant and Diary of Dreams at the Step Inn Oct 08

Last week Swedish industrial band Covenant played at the Step Inn (Brunswick St, Fortitude Valley) and thanks to Richard at Faith Nightclub I had the opportunity to work with Covenant both through the gig and at the club on the night before. My pre-gig club shots are still doing a slow upload via Adobe Lightroom so I'll post some of those later.

First three shots are Diary of Dreams:






The rest are of Covenant:


Two other bands played at the gig but one was photo shy and the other had logistical issues forcing them offstage after only the second song. (ie: Qantas managed to damage their sampler or keyboard when they flew over)

Piracy Ahoy

I felt the urge to return to a previous WIP to do the final tidy up and finish it ready for production. Above is Imogen Green, modeling in my studio and then unceremoniously dumped back in time 230 years onto the deck of the HM Endeavor.

Corset by Gold Coast designer Asylum7
Jewelery by Houston Texas designer, After Dark Jewellry. (sic)

Higher res copy available here

This image is ©Mark Greenmantle 2008.

Atmosphere

Recently I returned to an old shoot to compile a triptych for Brodie for upload to Model Mayhem. I'd almost forgotten what a fun shoot it had been. Click on the image for the full size photo.

Violet Vex

Last week I shot with Violet Vex, a roller derby skater who also teaches rock climbing and does contortion shows. She's a gorgeous rockin chic and I am sure we'll be working a lot in the near future. =)

Warning Avant Garde Oddness!

This evening should find us shooting in the back yard between the hills hoists between fits of laughter. I'm teaming up with Troy Hansen (2007 UK International Photographer of the Year) to produce some crazy dance shots of Leigh (Mr Token) plus a last minute addition of a pin-up 50's style model to add to the utterly wacky domestic flavour of the shoot. Troy and I have ordered some high powered and very fast studio strobes for the shoot to capture Leigh in flight. (refer to my avatar on Model Mayhem for how I mean by his 'flight')

That leaves me just 4 hours to finish my work for the day AND find a suitable and available TFP pin-up style model. *shakes head* Strange days... strange days. *laughs*

Supernatural

I had taken a hiatus from my work on gothic and supernatural art and photography but after browsing posts at the http://www.wickedlyromantic.blogspot.com/ blog for supernatural flavoured romance writers I'm inspired to get the studio busy with were's, witches and vamps again. While I've currently not a clue as to how one approaches publishers to offer art for book covers, I'm hoping to push more of my work in that way as it's probably the one market that caters directly and specifically in my speciality field.

A recent shoot I was booked for fell well into the witchy realm with the model who booked me adding a prop skull and tarot deck to the mix. (see below)


The shoot was up near Noosa, a three hour round trip but well worth it for the fun. We're due to work on a three shoot series spanning more supernatural themes over the next couple of months.

Welcome to IT Hell!

Things ground to a painful halt in the office as the PC decided that the fairly recent upgrade to Windows XP SP3 was not all it was cracked up to be and consequently... cracked up in a bad way. I discovered that since Style XP had been installed prior to SP3, a conflict arose during the upgrade and Style XP never resolved the conflict with their usually prompt updates. This resulted in pretty much ALL of my Adobe suite programs performing quite bizarre forced refresh sessions of all of its windows, slowly, and infuriatingly when I was working on fine tuning images or critically important layouts.

Thankfully a long search yielded this file which has patched my WinXP SP3 to now work with StyleXP so that my system is again looking how I prefer and much more importantly, isn't hanging on every second mouse movement or button click. I found that the lightstar forums had lots of info on Windows skinning and I'm now considering releasing a handful of pretty landscapes to the skinning communities. (with very subtle branding)

Now that my system is seemingly better, I've got a truckload of shots to process from the last fortnight in Adobe Lightroom. (ouch) Speaking of Adobe Lightroom, I'm dead keen to get my mits on the new version. Lightroom has finally caught up to other pro packages for RAW file processing in that it now gives more control over exposure and editing of shots not only on a global change level but in a more localised way, much more like traditional dark room dodge and burning! The upgrade is about $160 so I'll hit that as soon as I can.

Now that I am getting back into shooting through weekends at clubs and venues I am getting back to being able to focus in very low light manually again, manual flash an old speedlight to suit in the house strobes, lasers, smoke machines and flying hardcore drunks (don't ask) and other nightclub anomalies. This is well and good but it's mostly best for me to be ready for the next big concert shoot, so I can match or better my recent VNV Nation concert captures where I nailed 400 shots in focus through the first three songs. Having a Nikon D3 is a huge factor in this success but if I din't know how to best use it, it'd be a waste of $6000.

Before I go, have some links to sites I have thrown together in the past month or two:
My now weekly Club Blink social shots are now at http://www.greenmantle.biz/BLINK/
The Abbey Medieval Festival imagery is coming together still at http://www.abbeypics.com
and History Alive (Fort Lytton) images will be found at http://www.historyalive.greenmantlestudios.com/gallery/

VNV Nation in Brisbane

I just had the pleasure of working with the lovely lads of VNV Nation. Their warmth for the audience is so clear and the effort they put into their shows was off the charts, so I'm very happy to have been given the chance to shoot their gig as the only photographer in Australia to get accreditation!! I managed to squeeze in just over 10GIG of shots in the first three songs!

Thankfully, the Nikon D3 shot with consistently perfect exposure, most of which was captured at ISO4000, aperture priority with a Sigma 30mm F/1.4 lens (thanks Morgs - I do owe you!) which is small for this sensor but rocks anyway. (hint hint Nikon - you NEED to produce full frame wide primes - real primes - not the slow ass 2.8 shit)

Anyway - pics tomorrow!

Un souffle court avant de plonger la profonde

A quick breath before the great plunge.
So much to get sorted in such a short time and after a day of fighting with the pc's here and at my business partner's home, I just want to chill and take time out. Mais il ne doit pas être! No chance, Friday will be retouching/deep etching fifteen shots I captured yesterday for Bankwest, sorting out what the malware on this beast pc is, buying a new HDD and installing that before returning Khrys's WD640GB with fresh tunes and a big thanks, then wrapped up with *hopefully* a shoot with the gorgeous Imogen Green. I would love for anyone who has heard of couples due to be married and looking for photographers to contact me. My calendar is wide open after the Abbey and call me odd but I do enjoy that kind of work!

*edit* Imogen's shoot is off due to lack of sleep last night for all parties, which never makes for relaxed times in the studio.
and... I just had an email regarding my first sale of photos from the History Alive event as well. The owner of the World War Two German Half Track (shown below) wants a print. I hope he doesn't mind the use of the DX lens on the D3!



The image below is the old Queensland Museum taken with the Nikon D3, hand held half an hour after sunset. Available as prints on request.

iNation live at The Globe, 'sounds of the sea' album launch 2008

More fun INation shots from Saturday night - more at : http://www.greenmantle.biz/elffinarts/pic/thumbnails.php?album=95

No Chance of Idle Hands

Looking forward to a busy week ahead, but also still reviewing an enjoyable weekend behind me.

This included shots for Faith Nightclub, Club Cerberus (for which I am hosting a site but waiting on sys admin DNS changes to show it off....), Hellfire (not really work safe link for this one, google at your peril), iNation album debut (see pic above), a model folio for V Management and endless file management for myself.