I must apologize to all my friends who stop by here regularly. I haven't posted in ages. I assure you that I have a very good reason, but that still doesn't make a difference to the fact that I am way overdue in posting updates from my more recent studio sessions at the Melbourne Camera Club.

Chiara was one of our two models from a Studio Photoshoot that we had done in July last year. As models go, some are naturals, and some are not so much. Chiara is definitely a natural. There have been few models who have been so comfortable in front of the lens with 25 or so photographers shooting away. She made all of our lives much, much easier by posing as she went along, requiring very little guidance.

Chiara's gallery is available on my portfolio at the following link:

Chiara's Gallery.

The other gallery from some more recent work is that of Selena and Jamieson. This gallery is from our February shoot. Both models were interested in headshots in particular, but Jamieson proved to be the ideal subject to photography the human form. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Check out Selena and Jamieson's gallery.

I'm a little late getting this set up online.

Harley was one of our models during our September shoot. He happens to be a 16-year old working his way through high school. He has aspirations of studying psychology and practices Muay-Thai.

Harley also sports a couple of piercings - a visibile one over his left eyebrown, and a less obvious one through his tongue, which both made for very interesting features while composing a set of images featuring his likeless. Based on his appearance and apparel, I went for the "teen rebel" look while composing thse portraits, though from what I could gather, he's actually quite a well grounded kid.

Harley's gallery is available on my portfolio at the following link:

Harley's Gallery.

On the first Monday of every month, the members of the portait group of the Melbourne Camera Club meet up at the South Melbourne studio to shoot some photographs of a few models. Last night was my thrid time to attend. In the past, we have had an assortment of pretty girls, cute little babies, and the apparent teen rebel (only in appearance - he's actually quite a good kid).

Anyway, go get back on topic, last night, one of our members came along with her family for a family portrait night. Her two daughters had just flown in from the United States (they had barely been in Australia for 24 hours) and were gracious enough to volunteer to model for us. (Rumour has it that mum volunteered them anyway, but that's another matter altogether). While we always appreciate the time and patience that models give us, I must mention how easy both girls were to work with - and note my admiration for the way that they both shrugged off any jet lag after a 14 hour flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne.

Our models for the night were the Zempel Family - father David Zempel, mother Donna Zempel (who is also a member of our club), and daughters Dana and Alison Zempel.

We did discover a few interesting little details - Alison can do handstands (we also discovered that its not really a good idea to try it on a paper seamless backdrop), and that both girls are easily scared by sudden loud noises (such as a Tae Kwon Do "ki-hap"). I'm sure that the girls will be happy to share that particular story with their closest friends in a more casual setting - but that's something that I will leave up to them to take back with them to the United States!

The links to their individual galleries are:

The Zempel Family | Dana's Portrait Gallery | Alison's Portrait Gallery

In closing, I'd like to personally thank the Zempel's for granting me their permission to use these images as part of my portfolio.

I'm on the road.

September 17th: A mostly relaxed day of driving as I made my way up the west coast. Who would have ever thought that you could have mountains and pristine beaches so close to one another. Australia's coastlines are a lot more dramatic than New Zealand's - but the Kiwis have much better mountain ranges! I've made it to Franz-Josef. I plan to visit the Franz-Josef and Fox glaciers tomorrow before hitting the road towards Christchurch across the trans-alpine highway and the Cantebury Plains.

If you've been here before, you've probably noticed that several things look the same, yet feel different. If you're wondering where everything went, its all still here. I had a few problems with my previous web host, and was running an earlier release of the content management system that I use. The new release (which has been out for over a year and a half now) never really worked very well with my previous host - they seem to have had a "host" of configuration issues. After the umpteenth issue a couple of weeks ago, I started hunting around until I found my current host - Siteground - which offers me a suitable functional solution... so here I am now, up and running.

With the change in hosts, I did some serious thinking into what sort of content I would like to offer. As a result of this, there have been a few changes.