As a restless ‘can’t switch off’ & ‘I’ve always gotta do something’ type, I reckon I hear the following more than most.
This Good Friday in 2016, The Old Keilor Hotel hosted the Guzzlers Rod & Kustom ‘Cars For Kids’ event. There was live music, hot rods, and of course, a PinUp Pagaent. Heading along with ‘Scarlet Soda‘, I managed to get a few clicks of the girls. Super effort from the PinUps, raising over $5,000 for the Royal Children’s Good Friday Appeal, and lots of fun overall. Continue Reading..
I visited Dick Smith today. The shelves looked ransacked, staff weren’t un-uniformed, and the place was a mess. Looking for help, I kept seeing staff written notes around the place.
The Benalla Wall to Wall Festival has run this weekend and I’ve headed north for a 24 hour snapshot of the event. I’m really happy I made the trip and I got to see some amazing work in progress from seriously inspirational artists. Scroll below for a series of photos from 2pm Saturday to 2pm Sunday. Not a complete picture of the weekend, as it started Friday night, wrapping up Sunday night, but I hope it shows the progress of some of the pieces. Continue Reading..
As part of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival 2016, The Queen Victoria Market ran an event called “The Queen Vic River Trail Market” at the base of Melbourne Arts Centre. The weather was perfect, and all up, it was a beautiful day for the event to come together. Continue Reading..
If you’d like the full 150 megapixel resolution image, for non commercial use, download Melbourne in High Resolution right now. If you use it, please let me know. Either on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or link to this regularsteven.com. It’s 33 megabyte file, so best not do this on your mobile. You can print this as big as you like if you like. Please, just don’t sell it or use it for commercial purposes.
As for the quality, here’s the picture at 100%. You can crop in almost anywhere and figure out how to frame a shot. Over and over, a new picture can be found – the quality is crazy!
And, not only, but this picture is cropped down from 330 megapixels. Check out the full view of what I captured while standing in the rain.
The potential detail you can get with consumer cameras is remarkable. This is a photo that has been generated from 50 individual shots, each taken at the same settings, each shot with some overlap from the previous photo, and then stitched up using Adobe Lightroom (actually very easy – select the shots, press Control+M, and it’s almost done). Each shot was captured at 70mm, which is rather tight, but I did that to try preserve straight lines while allowing for a ultra sized end picture result.
It’s me using tools to make for shortcomings in technology, but over time, this will change. I’m an early adopter with photography, but these kind of hacks and results are often what drive future technology.
In the future, there’s going to be all sorts of advancements in photography to the point that photography, as an art that it is today, will die. Or perhaps evolve…
There will always be those with an eye for a shot and an ability to compose on the fly to the point it’s second nature. But as technology advances, the need for those skills while on shoot are going to become less relevant with the progressing technology in post production.
Say you’ve got a camera that captures the following at:
Now, my little future thought has issues. For example, portability with regards to optical quality. There are some rules of physics (with regards to light & capturing it) that will be very challenging. Equally, things such as barrel distortion make for surreal looking pictures (think of fish-eye), but again, this will increasingly be less of an issue; barrel distortion is getting better in consumer post production tools, and it’s only a matter of time.
What do you think? Will photography, as it is today, die?
The Queen Victoria Market always has a sense of hustle and bustle when it’s in full swing. From the regular day sessions, where there’s a healthy mix of “get your sausages” and “get the best fresh fruit here” being yelled Continue Reading..
White Night 2016 has happened and it’s been huge. I’ve been to a number of them, but this was the second time that I headed along with the sole goal of documenting it via time-lapse. The only downside to all this is there are some parts that I just can’t get access to. Looking online, there’s some great shots of the Melbourne Baths and the La Trobe Reading Room at the State Library, but for what this is worth, I hope it gives some idea. So here we go, Melbourne on February 20, 2016, like you rarely see it.
I’ve also got a video up on Facebook – check out the direct link to watch it on Facebook.
To see for yourself, check out Melbourne White Night 2015 time-lapse and photos. See if you can tell which one I preferred…
Ballarat Beat 2016 is just around the corner, so why not re-live the 2015 event? I snapped a bunch of shots and thought I might as well get them up on my blog. Hope they give a little taste of what’s to come, from hot rods, pinups, rockabilly, beer and rum! I’ll be sharing a few this weekend on my @regularsteven Instagram account, if you’d like to follow along.
I’ll be heading along, camera in hand, so if you see me, I’m more than happy to take a photo. But much more exciting, my beautiful girlfriend Amy is entering the The Ballarat Beat Pinup Competition as Scarlet Soda – be sure to follow @ScarletSoda on Instagram. And wish her luck!
I’ve decided to ramp up my photography in 2016, so I’ve kicked off with a bold plan. I want to take a photo a day and share it that same day on facebook.com/regularsteven. Sounds pretty simple, if quality isn’t a goal, but I’m really hoping that I can snap and share something that I’m actually happy with. I’m a bit fussy with my shots; In the past you might see a picture that is cherry picked from 50 (sometimes more, sometimes less). So this project is hopefully going to push me to sharpen up what I shoot and put me under pressure to show what works, and perhaps what doesn’t.
This week has kicked off and I’ve hit every day with something I’m happy with. Some of the days I’ve captured a few shot that I’m pretty chuffed with, and one day (Jan 6 ) where I needed to give it a second crack.
I’m also hoping to get it up on Facebook pretty quickly. So while I might snap something in the morning, I’ll hopefully get it live that morning. Wont always be possible, but that’s the goal.
I hope you enjoy the effort that I’m putting in. It’s gonna have some misses – I know that. But fingers crossed it lets me find another gear and allows me to get some diversity in to my work.
So here we are; Week 1. Some of these were selected for my Facebook page, some have yet to be seen. Feel free to use for your own personal use in a digital sense, such as a wallpaper / screensaver. If you’d like to obtain higher resolution, please hit me up via facebook.com/regularsteven.
I’ll get this out of the way… I don’t really know Ween. I mean, I kinda know them, who doesn’t? But ‘know know’? Not me. I’ve got friends that love them – and they like good stuff, so, by extension, I guess I like them? Well, it’s the same kinda thing with Hello Ween: Tribute to the Boognish. We’ve got quite a few mutual friends, but that’s always what makes for an awesome party. And Hello Ween delivered – they were a fricken party.
So, line up the shots, I’ve got some schnapps…
If you’d like to use them in anyway, I’d appreciate it if you can link back to me – that’s regularsteven.com on the web, facebook.com/regularsteven or instagram.com/regularsteven
You know when you see friends on stage, and you’re just so happy for them? I’m not trying to be sucky or anything like that, but it’s always great to see people you love just doing what they love, while entertaining a bunch of friends and strangers alike. When I turned up, I knew I was a little late, but I didn’t know if Big Leage had started yet. I was queuing up, I heard music, but I thought “all good, that’s just the CD…” but it was Big League. They were great.
Check em out on Facebook or Soundcloud
I’ve never been to Jells Lake at sunrise, let alone Jells Park at first light. I’ve had no real need, and to be honest, I didn’t really know much about it at all. But a local amateur photography competition(#SnapMonash) recently caught my interest, and the requirements are to capture a photograph in the City of Monash. So that led me to having a little explore. On to Google Maps I went, had a look in the region, and I thought ‘that might be nice’.
I used to live just around the corner, but I wasn’t really in to photography back then. And having never been, I had no idea what I’d find, but I’m really happy I got up at 5am on Wednesday morning to check it out . The fog on the water, all the wild life, beautiful colour in the sky – the morning was really rad.
As for the competition, it’s being run from the Monash Gallery of Art and The Glen Shopping Centre. There aren’t too many entries yet on Instagram (check out the #snapmonash hashtag), but this kind of stuff really needs grass-roots support. I’m not a professional photographer, but it really is a massive passion of mine. And the only way these competitions run and encourage people with their passions, is if they get the entries. For all the details, check out the #SnapMonash Competition page
Anyways, here are my photos – I hope you like what I’ve found, and equally, get down there yourself. I just hope I submitted the right one. They say you can enter multiple times, but I don’t wanna be ‘that guy’…
Friday week ago – 16th October – I got surprise. I was tagged in a Facebook post with a quick snap of my photo on the Channel 7 Melbourne News broadcast.
Edit – 2pm on 29th October
I received a phone call today, 6 hours after sharing this story via social media. Simon, from Channel 7 Melbourne, apologised for this mistake and advised me this photo was submitted by someone else. When I pressed for who, Simon didn’t know as there was too much data to sort through. Simon indicated that they would continue to look through the data, and I’m now waiting to find out who submitted this photo. After asking for an ETA, Simon advised me he’d ‘try call tomorrow’ (Friday).
To be honest, we’re talking about 8 nights of photos to go back. This would have been 1 night back had they responded to my initial request, but now it’s 8. The fact they have too much data to go through feels unusual, so I am eagerly waiting Simon’s response.
I had no idea they were using it; they never asked, and they didn’t even let me know. The only reason I knew was because a friend of mine happened to catch it and let me know.
When it comes to my photos, they sometimes ‘do the rounds’ and get picked up, both with and without consent. I advised Channel 7 the Monday after the broadcast. They emailed me that Friday with a “we’ll be in touch”. 10 days after letting them know, I’ve had enough of trying to do this quietly.
On Friday morning, October 16, I had an early start to the day. I was meeting up with some Instagram buddies to head out for a sunrise shoot and meet face-to-face. That morning, I put it up on Twitter, Instagram & Facebook. Here’s the tweet, with a notable favourite…
Turns my Tweet got a favourite that day from Channel 7 News Melbourne Meteorologist Jane Bunn. Then that night, it’s on air.
On the following Monday (Oct 19th) morning, I reached out to Channel 7 via a direct Facebook message and asked what happened. From what I can tell, there’s a few potential scenarios:
Channel 7 did put my name on the photo during broadcast. Crediting, though, is not permission. That’s akin to me crediting Disney when sharing Mickey Mouse material; Disney wound’t stand for it because I am breaching their copyright. And that’s what has happened here.
Some would say not, and that I should appreciate the exposure (yes, I get that a fair bit!). In my opinion, and when you’re in my position, it’s my right to care as it’s my photo used without my permission. That’s what really pisses me off; they should have asked! Making this type of creation isn’t easy and it’s a process that has taken years to refine. I mean, for them to just ‘take it’ isn’t right.
Not only that – how do they actually source any of their photos? I mean, now I wonder if anyone actually sends them in, of if they just pluck things away at their choosing!
All that said, photography isn’t my business. I haven’t made this a professional pursuit, because I value my motivations. I do this stuff for the love of it, and to be honest, the feedback I get is really humbling and encouraging. In the past, I’ve used my photography for charity fundraising. I love giving prints as gifts for friends and family. And I frequently let other artists and students use my work. But it’s not about money.
I’m yet to get any response of substance. I’m really disappointed the Channel 7 News team haven’t reached out to me with any explanation. Brett from the Channel 7 social team has been really helpful, and checked in to follow up, but he’s done what he can.
I want Channel 7 to put something on the table as an apology and acceptance they have done the wrong thing. Like I said, this isn’t my business, and I didn’t create the situation. But I want them to fix it.
In 2014 I managed to get a photo of Russian space junk burning through the sky in dramatic fashion. It was pretty exciting to be honest, and I was approach from ABC Australia, FOX, CNN, and many more requesting permission to use it. Check out CCN and the video: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/11/world/asia/australia-fireball-soyuz/. To the surprise of some, I was more than happy for people to use it. Some thought I should have tried to cash in on the photo, but that’s just not me. I was okay for people to use it on request, and I didn’t say no once. In fact, the real highlight was Scienceworks using it for their Planetarium – I honestly find it awesome that I’ve got something that helps get people excited about space and science.
The key to this space junk example is I was asked for permission. The reason people ask for permission is mostly legal; a major broadcaster should understand copyright, and the nature of copyright is such that it’s implied. Whoever creates it, owns it. That’s it.
