Ever heard the saying: "Happiness is in your own backyard?"... Well it could be said that this is true now more than ever before..Given the current uncertain financial times, there has never been a better time to explore and discover the amazing view of happiness that is right here in our very own Gold Coast! Come meet the locals, whose everday reality is right here on Queenslands Tropical Gold Coast.
In response to the Brief, I would envisage the following Image Concept for this advertising campaign.
Using one large formatted (size/format yet to be confirmed with marketing) Monochrome Image, of a Gold Coast local, who's "backyard" consists of the beautiful hinterland..This B&W image would portray the local standing in front of the hinterland, looking very relaxed and laid back in shorts and tshirt, with a caption in white text saying "Wake up to Happiness in your own Backyard, Just like me"! with another Image beside this one, as a vibrant colour Image of a beachfront backdrop being the second Local residents "backyard"...perhaps with a Mother & Daughter ready for a swim, with the slogan, "Our happiness is right here in our own backyard, why not make it yours?!" What are you waiting for Australia?! Possibly using both Images within the same frame as a contrast between the mono and colour Image.
What do you think guys?? can anyone find an Image example for this??
Posted by Michael 26/05/2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
Bahamas on the Coast!
Tourism on the Gold Coast is likely to be marketed in a similiar way to any 'beach destination' around the world. I had a look at the Ministry of Tourism campaigns in the Bahamas to get some ideas. As we are focusing on a national campaign which basically means exposing interstaters to the Gold Coast, perhaps we could make it more intimate and friendly so that travellers feel like they are visiting friends in a new location.
From a photographic perspective, maybe images encompassing a local (with his name and details underneath)doing something he does every day but a tourist may find different or exciting. For example, bushwalking in the Hinterland with a caption such as "come walk in my backyard..."
Although this campaign in the Bahamas is more focused on one-on-one interaction, it may have some merit. Have a read and a look at the website if you think this may be something to consider"
Buddy Up in the Bahamas: A Cultural Tour
By Bill Belleville
"People to People" is a program created by the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism intended to give visitors, in their words, "a genuine and informal view of Bahamian hospitality and culture as you might see it when visiting a friend."
The program relies on Bahamian volunteers—many of them professionals—who agree to spend time with visitors in the spirit of international goodwill. You register for the free program by contacting coordinators at least three weeks prior to your visit, and giving them a bit of information about yourself, including age, personal hobbies, occupation, and special areas of interest in the Bahamas. The coordinators then match up locals to fit those profiles.
For instance, during a recent visit to Cat Island, I met Sylvia Larramore-Crawford, a writer from Nassau who greatly appreciated Cat's own cultural nuances. We drove around and met her neighbors, had lunch and dinner at her house, and later, visited a local club where Sylvia knew everyone, musicians and customers alike. We were even invited to church with Sylvia on Sunday (unfortunately, we had to leave before then
http://away.com/tripideas/bahamas-cultural-immersion-312628.html
KylieB
From a photographic perspective, maybe images encompassing a local (with his name and details underneath)doing something he does every day but a tourist may find different or exciting. For example, bushwalking in the Hinterland with a caption such as "come walk in my backyard..."
Although this campaign in the Bahamas is more focused on one-on-one interaction, it may have some merit. Have a read and a look at the website if you think this may be something to consider"
Buddy Up in the Bahamas: A Cultural Tour
By Bill Belleville
"People to People" is a program created by the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism intended to give visitors, in their words, "a genuine and informal view of Bahamian hospitality and culture as you might see it when visiting a friend."
The program relies on Bahamian volunteers—many of them professionals—who agree to spend time with visitors in the spirit of international goodwill. You register for the free program by contacting coordinators at least three weeks prior to your visit, and giving them a bit of information about yourself, including age, personal hobbies, occupation, and special areas of interest in the Bahamas. The coordinators then match up locals to fit those profiles.
For instance, during a recent visit to Cat Island, I met Sylvia Larramore-Crawford, a writer from Nassau who greatly appreciated Cat's own cultural nuances. We drove around and met her neighbors, had lunch and dinner at her house, and later, visited a local club where Sylvia knew everyone, musicians and customers alike. We were even invited to church with Sylvia on Sunday (unfortunately, we had to leave before then
http://away.com/tripideas/bahamas-cultural-immersion-312628.html
KylieB
Sunday, April 12, 2009
LIGHTING TRENDS FOR BABY PORTRAITS
For those of you who love baby portraits, you might want to check out New Zealander photographer Rachael Hale at http://www.babylovecollection.com/ .
All her portraits are done in her studio using window lighting for its natural softness. The studio has a full glass wall down one side to allow plenty of natural light in, with multi sky lights above. Sometimes she uses elinchrom flash bounced off the white ceiling and walls to create enveloping light like natural light when working with very active babies. Rachael uses multiple props including bathtubs, miniture washing lines, bowls of fruit, coloured wall paper backgrounds, flowers etc where as photographer Suzette Nesire who also uses natural lighting prefers to use simple props e.g. rugs and crops in tighter. Rachael likes to develop concepts for her images prior to her shoot e.g. the baby holding a strawberry in her gallery was to show just how tiny their hands actually are.
More and more photographers seem to be moving towards building their studio to incorporate natural lighting for its softness. Do you know of any others?
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
TECHNICAL TIPS FOR BETTER PHOTOS
Perhaps a little on the technical side, but five trends suggested by writers at http://www.photosharingnuggets.com which will basically improve the quality of your photos. Some you may already have in your cameras, others maybe not.
In short, they will easily let you take MUCH better photographs.
These five trends are:
1. Noise Reduction
2. Geotagging (GPS)
3. High Dynamic Range (HDR)
4. Smarter Focusing
5. Photo Sharing.
We believe these trends will be much more important in the next few years than than just having more megapixels or lower priced cameras.
Let's talk about each of these trends, and more importantly, what this trend means for you.
NOISE REDUCTION
One of the biggest problems in photography is not having enough light to take great pictures, especially indoors or at night.
There are several ways to compensate -- for example, flash, a slower shutter speed, a wider aperture, or a higher ISO -- but each of these can create other problems.
There is now better specialized noise reduction software you can use to help solve this problem as well.
What this means for you: Over time, we predict more cameras and software will incorporate these features automatically, so it will become easier and easier to get great photos when there is poor light.
GEOTAGGING
Geotagging is the process of adding geographical information, like latitude and longitude coordinates, to a photograph. It's like having GPS in your camera.
Geotagging can be useful to help other people identify exactly where a photo was taken. For example, we've photographed many waterfalls in the Blue Ridge and Great Smokey mountains. It would be handy to know exactly where each photo was taken -- either for us, if we want to go back to a specific waterfall, or for others who also might be interested in photographing that waterfall.
Here's an example. "When we were in Southern California last October, we rented a boat and went up the coast a short distance. I imported this picture into Adobe Lightroom, and it automatically included the longitude and latitude (look at the GPS setting at bottom of this screen capture).
When you click on the arrow to the right of the GPS setting, it automatically opens Google Maps to that location. You can see how accurate it is -- it even shows where we were on the water! If you click on the map below, you can go to the live Google Maps page. Pretty cool..."
What this means for you: In the future, we predict many cameras will have geotagging built in. It will be fun to have the latitude and longitude coordinates (or even altitude information) of your photos, automatically linked with Google Maps.
HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE
One of the most difficult problems to solve in digital photography occurs when you have very different light in different parts of your photograph.
For example, a sunrise or sunset, a dark room that includes a window with bright light coming in (especially if there is a captivating view out the window), interesting bright clouds with a dark landscape, or any dark foreground framing a bright background.
The problem in these situations is that either you blow out the bright areas (they're all white), or you get no details in the dark areas (they're all black). Sometimes that's the effect. But if not, it's been almost impossible to get detail in both the light and dark areas.
You can now use specialized HDR software combining several similar photographs with different exposures. It works by combining three or more almost-identical images of the same scene: one with the dark areas properly exposed, another with the light areas properly exposed, and the third with the mid-tones properly exposed (which is probably the photo you'd normally take).
This software (for example, Photomatix, Bracketeer or a plug-in for Photoshop CS3), lets you combine the useful parts of each photo. It creates a composite to give you the best of all worlds (and even gives you some control of how to combine them).
What this means for you: Whereas this is fairly specialized today, in the future, we predict that cameras and editing software will have HDR built in so the camera can automatically take several photos and properly bracket your images to then automatically combine the best parts of each, giving you a compelling photograph of the sunrise, sunset, dark room, clouds, etc.
SMARTER FOCUSING
Cameras are getting a lot smarter about what to auto focus on. A great example available today is the face recognition capabilities in some of the Canon PowerShot cameras.
Face recognition means that the camera can detect a face in a scene, and then focuses on the face so that the face will be in focus (rather than the focus being on some other object you don't care about). Face recognition also guides the camera to optimize the the exposure of the face.
Since cameras often just focused on the nearest object, this can lead to a huge improvement in auto focusing. It also means that a person's eyes, rather than their nose (which is usually closer) will often be in focus, resulting in better photographs.
For example, if you want to take a picture of your daughter holding her new puppy, many cameras today will recognize her face and automatically ensure she's in perfect focus.
Further, as cameras become smarter and make better guesses about what you'd like to have in focus and what to blur, the quality of your pictures will improve.
For example, awhile back I took pictures of my niece and nephew throwing a frisbee (she's a champion frisbee player). I set my Canon XTi on "Sports" mode since they were moving fast and I'd never taken action shots before.
The camera did very well in terms of focusing on them and freezing the action. However, it selected settings that also had the background trees and dirt in very sharp focus. You can see what I mean in this picture of my niece about to catch the frisbee here.
As cameras get smarter, the focusing will likely automatically blur out this uninteresting background so it doesn't distract from the subject of the photograph -- in this case, my niece and nephew jumping to catch the frisbee.
What this means for you: Your photographs will improve -- we predict it will seem like the camera is "reading your mind" and taking the picture you WANT more often, rather than focusing on something distracting you didn't even notice in the shot.
PHOTO SHARING
As we've said many times, most people don't really know what to do with their photos after they take them. We're committed to helping people get their photos off their cameras and computers, out of their shoe boxes, and sharing them in new, exciting and fun ways.
There are already devices that let you upload your photos automatically from your camera's memory card to photo sharing sites over wi-fi. Many people have had good luck with the EyeFi card that can be added to your camera. This makes it very easy to start sharing your photos. But there are SO many more possibilities.
What this means for you: Over time, we predict there will be more -- and much easier -- ways to handle the technical aspects of photo sharing. And, the number of fun and exciting ways to share your photos (which is what this site is all about!) will continue to grow. Very exciting!
So let us know if you have seen any of these trends in action. A friend of mine has a compact digital camera which scans the scene and takes a photo when someone smiles. Pretty cool and yes we have tried frowning and smiling to see how good it really is - and it works!
KylieB
In short, they will easily let you take MUCH better photographs.
These five trends are:
1. Noise Reduction
2. Geotagging (GPS)
3. High Dynamic Range (HDR)
4. Smarter Focusing
5. Photo Sharing.
We believe these trends will be much more important in the next few years than than just having more megapixels or lower priced cameras.
Let's talk about each of these trends, and more importantly, what this trend means for you.
NOISE REDUCTION
One of the biggest problems in photography is not having enough light to take great pictures, especially indoors or at night.
There are several ways to compensate -- for example, flash, a slower shutter speed, a wider aperture, or a higher ISO -- but each of these can create other problems.
There is now better specialized noise reduction software you can use to help solve this problem as well.
What this means for you: Over time, we predict more cameras and software will incorporate these features automatically, so it will become easier and easier to get great photos when there is poor light.
GEOTAGGING
Geotagging is the process of adding geographical information, like latitude and longitude coordinates, to a photograph. It's like having GPS in your camera.
Geotagging can be useful to help other people identify exactly where a photo was taken. For example, we've photographed many waterfalls in the Blue Ridge and Great Smokey mountains. It would be handy to know exactly where each photo was taken -- either for us, if we want to go back to a specific waterfall, or for others who also might be interested in photographing that waterfall.
Here's an example. "When we were in Southern California last October, we rented a boat and went up the coast a short distance. I imported this picture into Adobe Lightroom, and it automatically included the longitude and latitude (look at the GPS setting at bottom of this screen capture).
When you click on the arrow to the right of the GPS setting, it automatically opens Google Maps to that location. You can see how accurate it is -- it even shows where we were on the water! If you click on the map below, you can go to the live Google Maps page. Pretty cool..."
What this means for you: In the future, we predict many cameras will have geotagging built in. It will be fun to have the latitude and longitude coordinates (or even altitude information) of your photos, automatically linked with Google Maps.
HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE
One of the most difficult problems to solve in digital photography occurs when you have very different light in different parts of your photograph.
For example, a sunrise or sunset, a dark room that includes a window with bright light coming in (especially if there is a captivating view out the window), interesting bright clouds with a dark landscape, or any dark foreground framing a bright background.
The problem in these situations is that either you blow out the bright areas (they're all white), or you get no details in the dark areas (they're all black). Sometimes that's the effect. But if not, it's been almost impossible to get detail in both the light and dark areas.
You can now use specialized HDR software combining several similar photographs with different exposures. It works by combining three or more almost-identical images of the same scene: one with the dark areas properly exposed, another with the light areas properly exposed, and the third with the mid-tones properly exposed (which is probably the photo you'd normally take).
This software (for example, Photomatix, Bracketeer or a plug-in for Photoshop CS3), lets you combine the useful parts of each photo. It creates a composite to give you the best of all worlds (and even gives you some control of how to combine them).
What this means for you: Whereas this is fairly specialized today, in the future, we predict that cameras and editing software will have HDR built in so the camera can automatically take several photos and properly bracket your images to then automatically combine the best parts of each, giving you a compelling photograph of the sunrise, sunset, dark room, clouds, etc.
SMARTER FOCUSING
Cameras are getting a lot smarter about what to auto focus on. A great example available today is the face recognition capabilities in some of the Canon PowerShot cameras.
Face recognition means that the camera can detect a face in a scene, and then focuses on the face so that the face will be in focus (rather than the focus being on some other object you don't care about). Face recognition also guides the camera to optimize the the exposure of the face.
Since cameras often just focused on the nearest object, this can lead to a huge improvement in auto focusing. It also means that a person's eyes, rather than their nose (which is usually closer) will often be in focus, resulting in better photographs.
For example, if you want to take a picture of your daughter holding her new puppy, many cameras today will recognize her face and automatically ensure she's in perfect focus.
Further, as cameras become smarter and make better guesses about what you'd like to have in focus and what to blur, the quality of your pictures will improve.
For example, awhile back I took pictures of my niece and nephew throwing a frisbee (she's a champion frisbee player). I set my Canon XTi on "Sports" mode since they were moving fast and I'd never taken action shots before.
The camera did very well in terms of focusing on them and freezing the action. However, it selected settings that also had the background trees and dirt in very sharp focus. You can see what I mean in this picture of my niece about to catch the frisbee here.
As cameras get smarter, the focusing will likely automatically blur out this uninteresting background so it doesn't distract from the subject of the photograph -- in this case, my niece and nephew jumping to catch the frisbee.
What this means for you: Your photographs will improve -- we predict it will seem like the camera is "reading your mind" and taking the picture you WANT more often, rather than focusing on something distracting you didn't even notice in the shot.
PHOTO SHARING
As we've said many times, most people don't really know what to do with their photos after they take them. We're committed to helping people get their photos off their cameras and computers, out of their shoe boxes, and sharing them in new, exciting and fun ways.
There are already devices that let you upload your photos automatically from your camera's memory card to photo sharing sites over wi-fi. Many people have had good luck with the EyeFi card that can be added to your camera. This makes it very easy to start sharing your photos. But there are SO many more possibilities.
What this means for you: Over time, we predict there will be more -- and much easier -- ways to handle the technical aspects of photo sharing. And, the number of fun and exciting ways to share your photos (which is what this site is all about!) will continue to grow. Very exciting!
So let us know if you have seen any of these trends in action. A friend of mine has a compact digital camera which scans the scene and takes a photo when someone smiles. Pretty cool and yes we have tried frowning and smiling to see how good it really is - and it works!
KylieB
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Fake Emotion Photography
Fake Emotion Photography is a series of photographs entitled "Fake Emotions" done by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin which features exposed, naked models who are covering their faces with their hands. This effectively hides any feelings, emotion or facial expressions that the models may have shown. This emotion has been replaced by having artificial faces drawn on the back of their hands, effectively giving the photographers creative control over the emotions in the image.
Fake Emotion Photography
Monday, March 23, 2009
SHADOW FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY
These images (published in Numero Magazine 2008) by fashion photographer Solve Sundsbo (Norweign photographer in London) caught my attention immediately. He is famous for his experiementation with photography though the lens. I love these images because the shadows give another dimension creating mystery. The shadows on the model appear to form part of the model's clothing, like a tight cat suit or stocking with patterns. I'm not sure if he is trying to replicate animal prints through the shadows as the model with the pocker dots above seems to be in an animal pose, maybe a dalmation? The added orange lipstick on the bottom image leads me to think about tiger stripes and her position is very cat like. See what you think.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)