Ten years ago when I started shooting weddings around Byron Bay there were 3 other photographers putting their hands up for that work (digital photography and the internet has since unleashed a tsunami of contenders and there is now about 40 in the same area).
Greg Mace was numero uno back then and was getting opportunistic shots on film that most still can’t get with the luxury of digital equipment. Greg’s approach is down to earth photojournalism and he doesn’t rely on photoshop to “make” his images. They are of the “what you see is what you get” variety which appeals hugely to me. We have become good mates and he’s still floating on a rising flood of new contenders.
Three years ago I had a potential client book with another photographer. For me that’s a no lose situation. If I don’t like the photographers work I think oh well they weren’t my type of client anyway , and if I do like the work I think at least I didn’t lose out to a dud. That particular time it was Todd Hunter McGaw.
I looked Todd up on the internet and saw someone who wasn’t into cookie cutter shooting. His (and his wife Alyda’s) work is witty, intelligent and beautiful, but more importantly authentic. A bit like Todd and Alyda themselves, although Alyda is in my opinion is slightly more beautiful than Todd.
Lizzy Sawdon lives in northern Queensland and quietly does her work. The big thing for me is much of her work wants to cut through the bunk that sits over nearly everything, and which photography in the wrong hands perpetuates. This gives her a great photo-doco eye.
I can’t say much about Jonas Peterson that hasn’t already been said, I’ll spare you the wow’s, OMG’s, the awesomes, and the blah about tilt shift, he gets platitudes like
that daily by the dozen. He seemed to come out of nowhere in 2009 and is now a worldwide phenomenon. I found out about him the same way as with Todd less than a year ago. When I heard his name I thought who? His blog set my mind on fire (I’m one of many). The way he used the internet to communicate was a revelation. His unfailing aesthetic sense and sublime writing both show humour and beauty as well as the occasional acknowledgement of pain and melancholy. It gives his work a maturity and completeness that lifts it above the one dimensional stuff often held up as great photography especially within the wedding industry.
In one way or other I owe these photographers, there are others but first things first.
(Wednesday, 10 February 2010)
I’m off to Singpore in early May to photograph Gracie and Kuns wedding. They flew into Brisbane before xmas and we discussed their plans over dinner.
(Wednesday, 10 February 2010)
Before things get too busy again I want put up some weddings from a while ago. This one was eighteen months ago and Christie and Jeremy had popped over from Dubai to get married in Byron Bay. They told me they didn’t want to spend all day smiling for the camera or posing but wanted to spend most of their time having fun. That sounded perfect to me.
It’s the second time I’ve posted photographs at the Byron Bay Lighthouse and it won’t be the last. It’s always different.
The wedding was at the Byron Bay Beach Resort which is now mothballed (as a wedding venue) and we got to the lighthouse just before sunset on a cloudy afternoon. A glider soared in the chilly updraft off the Capes’ 120 meter high cliff face, along with the bridesmaids’ hemlines. As the soft blue light faded the glider sailed back across the bay to Tyagarah airfield and we headed off to the reception.
Great Wedding Photography Byron Bay. Tracey Trezise, Wedding Photojournalism
(Thursday, 28 January 2010)
No comment necessary:)
Family Portraits Noosa
(Thursday, 28 January 2010)
I’ve got a drinking problem, and its my problem not alcohols’. The issue is an intolerance which means even small amounts are potentially fatal. It was quite a process realizing this. As a sixteen year old I indulged in my first teenage drinking session and ended up being given the last rights.
My sweet father-in-law thinks it’s the worst affliction imaginable and most people have a “bummer, glad it’s not me” reaction, but really in itself it’s not a bad thing and arguably a blessing.
A short time either side of that event my elder brother Jim and eldest sister Christine died suddenly after drinking. Only with hindsight have doctors been able to finger the culprit though the chemistry is still not understood. All three of us shared whatever it is that causes a few drinks to be lethal. My elder sister Deb escaped that throw of the dice.
Drinking lubricates most socializing, and when you’re young there’s the peer thing too. In my youth I felt a little sidelined and became more of an involuntary observer than participant.
I wasn’t cynical, but fascinated with something I wanted to be in on, but couldn’t.
After leaving Art College in ’87 I began to record what I’d been looking at for the previous 10 years, by documenting drinking culture, mainly on Friday and Saturday nights in the Brisbane CBD. I wasn’t looking for the unusual or spectacular but the typical and mundane. I attempted to be as objective as possible usually shooting from the hip so as not to be noticed. The wide angle lens and camera body was taped up to lock its focus and hide its shine.
Often there was too little light to see and I never knew exactly what was on the negs until they were developed. Sometimes it was like randomly sending a remote camera to the depths of the ocean to see what was there. Technical excellence ran a very distant second to content; I cared only a bit about the zone system and zilch about the golden mean.
After a while I displayed thirty photographs at McWhirters Art Space in the “Valley” in a solo exhibition I called “A Shot in the Dark”. The exhibition ended up on the ABC’s 7.30 Report which was then state based, and once a week they closed with a story on a current exhibition. The comments book in the gallery was active. Entries ranged from “If someone told me I was looking at the work of the best photographer in the world, I’d believe them” to “not art, f#cking sh!t”.
The experience was in some ways cathartic and afterwards I had an “I’m done” feeling. Apart from plotting some personal stuff, for various reasons I put away the camera for nearly a decade until a few months before the turn of the century.
Brisbane Street Photography, Art Photography
(Thursday, 28 January 2010)