Hey folks, long time no see. I have not posted for almost two weeks, but the reason is very simple: I’ve been super busy prepping for my first proper photo exhibition coming up in the first week of August. Some of you got the invites already, some of you are 15000 km away so getting here would be rather tricky, but never the less, so far it’s been a very exciting process.
Finding the right gallery, selecting what to put up from over 25’000 photos taken, deciding how to print (matte or gloss, border on no border) and how to frame (glass, wood, foam board, clip board, pegs, anything I could think of) etc.
2 months to go and I think I’m in a good place. TAP gallery has been booked, final 100 photos have been selected, will print majority as A4 and 20 best ones on A2, to really get the impact. Finish will be matte and presented on quality foam boards to allow for various framing options, quite happy with the decision, but if you believe I’m making a terrible mistake and you have a better suggestion, please let me know, as stuff has not been printed yet.
Forgot about the final teeny weeny thing, I finally have a hefty budget estimate of 2000 dollars, what it will cost me to put up this show, so any suggestions on potential sponsors and partners that could help cover the costs are very welcome! Have a few ideas lined up already, but the more the merrier, wish me luck and for those who will be in Sydney in August, please do come down to TAP Gallery and say Hi!
Archive for the 'Photography' Category
Preparing for the exhibition
Published May 24, 2012 Photography , Life 1 CommentTags: Travel, Photography, photo, exhibition, sydney, tap gallery, 100 countries under 30
Studio fashion shoot
Published May 2, 2012 Photography Leave a CommentTags: fashion, model, mua, photoshoot, shoot, studio, sydney
Before every photo shoot, I have a certain image in mind what I’m hoping to get out of the session, and you know instantly when you get it (if you get it), it’s like a photogasm. This one above was that image. You shoot, you style you do make up, interact with the model, dance, sing, change angles, blow bubbles, shoot again, and then one second it just clicks, the camera is in the right place, and the hand is on the trigger to capture the moment you were after, when everything is worth it. Don’t get me wrong it is no uber statement about best fashion image ever created, it’s just a small personal victory that you need to keep going and confirm why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Have not done photo shoots in studio since coming over to Sydney, so was quite desperate to get the fix. It was really nice space is Rosebery, just begging to be creative. Will come again.
In four hours I managed to squeeze in the whole shebang, test the lights with my girlfriend (thank you Tasha), 2 hour sesh with model Martina and MUA Antonia (thank you for pulling off some amazing poses and looks), plus a quick portrait session at the end with Ayesha.
p.s. I’ve also updated my photography website: www.ivarsimages.com go check it out!
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bACK iN fASHION
Published April 24, 2012 Photography 1 CommentTags: central, fashion, industrial, Photography, portrait, sydney, vintage
After 2 months of hiatus (due to traveling, holidays and other commitments), I’m finally back to regular portrait/fashion photoshoot sessions. Here’s one I did last weekend with Francesca, at the back streets around Central and Surry Hills. One of my favorite areas to shoot portraits due to huge variety of industrial backdrops, quite allies and central location.
Francesca is also clothing designer, but this time we were shooting just some vintage stuff that worked really well within the environment. I’m increasingly finding that integrating some movement and little jumps in the otherwise static portrait really livens up the shot, bodies relax, emotions come out and the end result is more pleasing to the eye.
Here’s a full deck with Francesca. This weekend I’m going in studio for half a day, so excited, have not shoot studio in ages, will keep you posted about results.
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SYD-SIN-CMB-BAH-DOH-KWI-DXB-MCT-DXB-MLE-SIN-SYD
Published April 1, 2012 Photography , Travel 2 CommentsTags: 100 country challenge, 99, maldives, middle east, Sri Lanka, Travel
Yay, I’m back down under, with 99 countries under belt. Only one left to go, and I still have 3 months to do it, magic.
As you can see from the title, the last mammoth trip was a biggie, 7 countries and lots of flights.
Some of the highlights: checking out some leopards from 5 meters away (in the wild) in Yala National Park, get mesmerized by Burj Khalifa (at 828m tallest building in the world) and getting lost in Dubai Mall (yes, you guessed it, largest in the world), snorkeling with sharks in Maldives, seeing green sea turtles hatch eggs in Oman, smoking shisha and drinking lots of tea in Qatar, lots and lots of elephants in Sri Lanka, hanging out for hours in Kuwait Souks (traditional markets).
Here is a quick photo journey from the trip to share with you. Have a good day.
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Lens Envy
Published February 22, 2012 Photography 3 CommentsTags: beach, camera, equipment, lens, lens envy, manly, nikon, surf, zoom
Last weekend we ventured out to Manly beach, to see Australian Open in Surfing. I was planning to take some cool shots on my 200mm zoom lens of surfers doing jumps and stuff, but instead I got lens envy, standing among the big boys, with lenses 400mm+, so they can actually zoom in full frame on the surfers and capture the fine detail.
Damn, those things cost 10k a pop, and that’s just for the lens, add another 10k for the body, consider that each of the pros have two bodies and two different lenses in use, add other smaller accessories, that’s 50k worth of equipment standing there in the sand.
That would take me a lot of hours working in the media, but hey, as the saying goes, if your tool is not long enough, you just have to work harder, smarter and move it faster. So instead I was looking for creative angles and context, quite like this one.
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Jurrah @ Redfern
Published February 16, 2012 Life , Photography 1 CommentTags: 52 suburbs, Jurrah, photo project, sydney
Meet Jurrah, my latest model and participant in the 52 suburbs project. Jurrah is badass angel if there is such a thing. Judging from tattoos covering her body I assumed she’s as mean as my uncle, but once I met her in person (ok, actually as soon as I started to discuss the shoot details) it was clear that she’s anything but my uncle.
Jurrah loves to laugh and nibble so it was really hard to get a moment when she’s not doing at least one of those, but in the end we did get couple of the serious ones as well. We were shooting in her ‘office’, well more like uber-cool pad where people come together to co-create and have fun, play ping pong, sleep in hammocks, drive around bicycles and other random things, not your typical cubicle space. Thanks Jurrah for waking up nice and early on Sunday morning and keep rocking.
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Waran @ Potts Point
Published January 12, 2012 Photography Leave a CommentTags: 52 suburbs, photo shoot, Photography, portrait, potts point, sydney, waran
Meet Waran, yoga instructor, writer, dancer, performer and all in all a very nice person. Originally from California, but living in Australia for quite a few years. I had the opportunity to work with him as part of my project for Sydney suburbs. We were shooting in Potts Point which is amazingly chilled area with spectacular views of Sydney CBD, only few steps away from gritty Kings Cross. Waran had access to roof terrace where we could see all of Sydney’s down town as the summer sun was slowly coming down, most pics in the set where shoot against this backdrop. We even got some curious visitors in form of parakeets and cockatoo looking for some snacks, looked like they’ve done it before, unfortunately we did not have any food at hand.
Photo shoot was retro themed as Waran had quite a few pieces of original clothing from early and mid 20th century such as this navy jacket and cap among other things. So here you go, again, another part of amazing city that is Sydney. Here is full set from the photo shoot.
Wedding @ Wolfies
Published December 20, 2011 Photography Leave a CommentTags: australia, Photography, sydney, wedding, wolfies
Last weekend I did something I have not done in a while, a photo shoot for wedding. It was last minute gig with not too much preparation and planning, but still lots of fun. Quite challenging settings, all indoors with limited natural lighting, continuous rain outside and venue at maximum capacity with not much room to juggle my camera and get the right angles, but think I managed to pull it off quite OK, you can be the judge. As always, for me the most exiting part is informal banter and emotions on the day, not the formal exchange of bows, but all has its place.
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5 years of taking pictures
Published December 10, 2011 Photography 1 CommentTags: 5 years, hobby, Life, taking pictures
It’s been 5 years since I’ve been doing photography, not just taking travel snaps, but working with models, doing projects and assignments, a real deal so to say. Picture above is my first studio attempt I was really proud of, I got my then flatmate Mariola to pose for me. As it was my first time in photo studio on my own and it was her first time as a model, we decided to share a bottle of wine in the process, and 10 minutes in, wine became the focus point of the shoot, not sure what on earth we were thinking, but at the time it seemed like a good idea.
Also, since there’s nothing like a bit of statistics, I thought I’d share some numbers. In last 5 years I have:
- worked with more than 100 models
- spent more than one full year of travelling (and taking pictures)
- taken 56,000 pictures, on average I keep 5% or 1/20 pictures that I take, so in last five years I have taken 2824*20=56480 pictures, not bad.
- spent $10k plus on photo gear. Photography is expensive hobby. In last 5 years, I have gone through 3 Nikon cameras (D50, D80 and now D7000) and 10 lenses, whilst I still own 5 of them: Nikon 18-200mm VR, Nikon 50mm f1.8, Nikon 24-70mm f2.8, Tamron 70-200mm f2.8, Tamron 90mm f1.8, plus flashes, tripods, stands, umbrellas and other collateral
And of course, it’s all nicely cataloged in my Flickr photo stream, have a look at the sets to travel back in time.
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Roller skating round Marrickville
Published December 1, 2011 Photography Leave a CommentTags: 52 suburbs, living in Sydney, Marrickville, photo project, roller skating, shay, sydney
On Tuesday I was roller skating with Shay. Well, more precisely, Shay was roller skating and I was taking pictures, especially trying to capture the awkward moments like falling, which she refused to do, so we had to fake it to make it.
Marrickville is one of my favourite Sydney suburbs as it has so much character. Like a safer and cleaner version of Hackney in London, but just as cool. If I could afford a photo studio it would be here. It’s mostly industrial, with lots of warehouses that serve small businesses during a day and throw a mad party during night.
My model for the day was Shay, who took me up on bringing something weird to the shoot, so out came the roller skates. That is something I’m always on the look out for, but rarely rely on. It only happens by chance and planning a roller skate shoot is like planning chameleon shoot. A year ago I posted on all kinds of pet forums for weeks to find owner with Chameleon who would allow me to shoot his friend, but no luck. So from that day on, I take the opportunity when it presents itself, but do not count or pre-arranging something random like that, as it never works.
Full set of pics.
