Category: Photography

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Eyes on the Road

I was wondering the other day about the best place to mount a camera on a motorcycle to get the best footage. I’ve made some previous videos by just attaching my GoPro camera to the front fairing of the bike but it tends to show quite a bit of vibration and road bump.

I added a couple of GoPro mounts in different positions on the bike, and some are better than others but none are as good as I’d like. It’s possible to remove some of the shakiness in post production by using the Warp Stabiliser tool in Premiere Pro, which does a pretty reasonable job of removing the vibrations by doing a frame by frame analysis of the footage, and realigning everything. It works ok but is very computationally intensive even on my MacBook Pro and it still creates some seriously wavy artefacts in the footage on the really shaky bits.

Anyway, I decided to try a few experiments with five different camera mount positions. On the front fairing, on the front mudguard, on my helmet, using a chest mount, and using a chest mount with an extender. There are pros and cons of each, but I think some are definitely better in terms of actual watchable footage.

Here is the resulting footage so you can make up your own mind. You know, just in case you ever want to do something similar.

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Just Maui’d

I know I haven’t written much here on the blog lately. I’ve been a little consumed with some other things, like getting married to my sweetheart LInda 🙂

On May 20, Linda and I stood on beautiful Makena Beach in Maui and tied the knot in front of a few close friends. It was a lovely ceremony full of symbolism, fun and joy. Here’s a few photos (you can click them for a closeup)

Special thanks to Jennifer from Marbelle Photography for these wonderful photos (all of them!), to Derek Sebastian for the fabulous ukulele music, Joe Miles for his touching ceremony, and to Lori Lawrence from Tropical Maui Weddings for helping us pull it all together from afar.

We have a bit more celebrating to do yet, with a post-wedding party back in Sydney on June 20 and then another in Toronto on June 27.

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Happy Snappy

RockpoolOn January 1 this year, thanks to a bit of prodding from my mate John Pearce, I started a 365 Photo Challenge… whereby I planned to take a photo every single day this year and post it to the web. I’d tried doing this once before but never made it longer than a few days before I lost focus and let it slip away.   So here we are nearly 11 full months into my 365 Days of Light Photo project and I’m pleased to report I haven’t missed a single day yet! ( I’ve been late to post them a few times, but never more than about 48 hours behind schedule either, which I think is pretty darn amazing!)

I post them all to a Posterous site I set up called 365 Days of Light, which in turn crossposts to Twitter, Identica,  Flickr. and PicasaWeb (which is really Google+).  It also used to post to Facebook until I quit my account there).  Here is a link to the collection so far… (minus the first few days of January which I forgot to include back then)

Part of the challenge for me was that I didn’t want to take a photo of just anything, but rather to try and find something of real visual interest each day.  I wanted it become to a collection of interesting artistic images, not just a bunch of point-and-click happy-snaps. Whether I’ve actually achieved that aesthetic goal is probably debatable and certainly not every photo has been a winner, but I must say that there are quite a few photos in the collection that I’m very, very happy with.  It really has forced me to try and be both disciplined and creative every day. Trying to find a new angle, to not be too cliche or derivative, and to still find something interesting each day has been a real challenge, but I’m pleased with how it’s gone so far.

I’m looking forward to the final month ahead, and to get to the end of the 365 days.  My plan is to turn them into a printed coffee table book as soon as I finish taking all 365 photos, and publish a few copies for family and friends. In the meantime, feel free to +1 any you like… I know which photos I’m happy with but I’d be curious to know which ones you like.