Personal Journey and Adventures of Nina

Interloop Sculpture Installation - Taken with the Samsung S7 without additional lens Following on from my previous post on the Olixar Macro lens , another fun part of the Smartphone Lens Kit is a .36x Super Wide Angle Lens.  There is still nothing like setting up my Canon 5Ds with 16-35mm lens onto a tripod for spectacular city and landscape images but when I'm travelling around with just my phone, this lens kit is a perfect alternative. To test it out, I headed to downtown Sydney, firstly to the scultpure,  Interloop by Chris Fox  where it hangs in Wynyard Station. Upside - Get everything into your frame The above pic was taken straight up with the Samsung S7. Its nice and sharp and bright but we've lost the edges of the sculpture. Below, I've added the super wide lens and I now have everything in the photo. Downside - Loss of quality, light and some distortion. I've lost a little light. The photo isn't as sharp and the edges are qui

I love apps that make my life easier! Some of these are for everyday use, some photography related. Whilst these apps may not be new to the market, they are certainly new to me.  1. Send Anywhere  - Best File Transfer  A file transfer App that blows everything else out of the water. You can send files to colleagues or friends, between devices and between your PC and phone. Real time transfer is cool. There is a limit in file size of 4GB which is generous and you can also transfer entire folders of data. Most apps only allow you to upload one file at a time. Phone to Phone My friend was sitting next to me and sent me a bunch of movies and music. You both have to have the app. Then he pressed send which creates a number. You type in the number and receive the files. The 2GB of data took around 5 minutes. Desktop I've been using this on my desktop to send large amounts of images to clients and it works perfectly. What I love that when you click the link, it down

For a bit of fun, I ordered myself the Olixar lenses for my Smartphone for Christmas. This afternoon I had a few minutes spare so I picked a small branch off our Boungainvillea and set it in front of the camera. 1. Macro Lens I have the Olixar lens set. $22 from MobileZap. Clips on to any smart phone. 2. Tripod . It's really challenging to hold the phone still whilst focusing with the Macro lens attached  so I set it up on a mini tripod. This one is a  Fotolux Mini Tripod - $25 from Photo-Shop Studio . Its not great but does the job. If you can afford more get a better tripod. 3. Steady the subject. The small breeze coming through the kitchen window was enough to move the flowers so that I wasn't able to get a shot so I had to stabilise it on a glass vase. You can use anything. Maybe some tape too. 4. Add Light. I added a little LED ring light onto the flowers so they popped a little and it was also a little easier to focus. You could use a torch or l

For this shoot, I collaborated with the wonderful Blogger and Stylist, Kirsty, with love. She selected the clothing and put the outfits together. You can read her full post here . Hmm. There are probably things I would do differently but I wanted to try this for something different. With headshots, I pretty well use 5 standards lighting setups so it was good to break out of my comfort zone. I also got to use the deep silver parabolic umbrella which was fun. When your model is being cooky! The main light is the Beauty Dish and the fill light is the Deep Umbrella. Because the dish and the deep both have short and abrupt light falloffs, I added the small octa softbox for the suit. A strip light to rim the edge of the suit. I really liked the quality of the Deep and Dish together. I will definitely use this again. EQUIPMENT LIST Profoto B1 Alien Bee 1600 Paul C Buff Beauty Dish Paul C Buff Strip Soft Box Profoto OCF Softbox Octa X Lite Deep Umbrella Paraboli

Today, it has been two years since mum passed but I still think of her every day. Sounds silly because I'm a grown woman but I feel like an orphan. That last person you know who will undoubtedly and unconditionally love you forever, gone. August 2015 with an Oxygen Tank at home now Mothers Day 2014 Unlike my Dad who was struck with a massive heart attack, Mum's demise was slow and painful.  Diagnosed with COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) or the more familiar condition Emphysema. They gave her 4 years. She lasted 5. There were her countless daily medications.  The immunosuppressant Prednisone, Morphine for pain, Ventolin to ease the airways, Bactrim to ward off infection and Seroquel for depression and more.. On occasion, all this was not enough. Her lungs would collapse and we had to call the ambulance.  She'd have interesting reactions to certain drugs. Hallucinating about being surrounded by angels then whispering to me that we had to

With the prep, setup and shoot now complete, we are about half way through the process toward getting you a finished image. The above video is at 4x speed to give you a quick overview of the process involved in post production for each image selected. In actuality, the entire process takes between 5-10 minutes per image. PHOTOSHELTER GALLERY The images are uploaded using Lightroom where I do a run through and select my favourites. Selections are then uploaded onto my website for client proofing. I use Photoshelter  for this process. PHOTOSHOP Once I have the clients selection, I send it to Photoshop (PS) from Lightroom (LR) which keeps my library in order as all changes made in PS will be saved in LR. Here I get rid of stray hairs, dust balls and cat hair using the healing tool. I soften highlights with the clone tool and remove shadows with the curves adjustment. PORTRAIT PRO I then use the Plugin Portrait Pro to take redness our of the skin, mildly smooth out shadows

I could honestly spend every weekend cleaning and organising for the coming week but I decided that life is too short. If I sat around the house, the piles of dishes would taunt me. I've had a pretty stressful few weeks so fresh air and a change of scenery seemed appropriate. It was time to get out of the city! With the wonderful roads now, it only takes an hour to get to Springwood and Blaxland. I remember visiting my Godfather here as a child and it was at least a 2 hour drive. I am definitely grateful for our roads. (but maybe not the tolls!) First stop Lennox Bridge , in Blaxland. Opened in 1833, it is the oldest surviving stone arch bridge in Australia. Usually there would be water running under the bridge but we haven't had any significant rainfall in over two months.  It's only Spring and already we are getting the hot high sun which makes for contrasty images. I would have come out earlier but had to vote in the local council elections! Next time tho