I Love Wednesdays - Award Winning Sydney Photography » EDITORIAL

CHLOE {AND CREATING THE MOOD}

Len — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 04:08:25 +0000

About a month ago I decided to try something a little bit different. Something to challenge myself and to work in a completely different way. A little test, if you will. I always find that they’re a great way to discover a new way of working, a way to see something differently and this was no exception. This shoot came together extremely quickly with the help of my good friend, and makeup artist extraordinaire Natalie Biller.

I’ve been umming and aahing about whether to post these on the blog, they are markedly different from the weddings and lovely couples that I get to shoot, but in the end, while they may look a little different, at the heart of it they showcase who I am just as much as everything else. The create a mood and tell a story. The story in this case isn’t the story of a wedding day, but rather it’s all about a particular moment in time and the feel was inspired by one of my favourite bands, Elbow and their song Mirrorball.

“You make the moon a mirrorball,
The streets an empty stage.
The city’s sirens, violins,
Everything has changed.”

For my film geek friends this was all shot on Polaroid 600SE with Fujifilm FP-100C

GHOST TOWN {WPPI}

Len — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 07:00:00 +0000

I’m not really sure whether the title Ghost Town is really deserved for this little spot just outside of Vegas, because it’s turned into somewhat of a tourist attraction/photographer and director haunt. In fact, while we were there, there was a band photo shoot taking place, I’m honestly not sure what band it was, but they had their boy band poses down to a t.

I love all the knick knacks, animal heads and random ephemera around the place and it was nice to slowly saunter around the place looking at all the things they’ve accumulated over the years. Everything just had so much character and the things were obviously built to last which was lovely to see.

I think I could’ve spent a week there just going through everything, but was happy to have had the hour or so to go through it all. Here are some of my favourite piccies. Hope you enjoy.

xoxo Len

ELYSE {WPPI}

Len — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 10:43:41 +0000

I’ve been sitting at the computer for the last half hour attempting to describe the experience I’ve had over the last few days at WPPI, but I honestly can’t. I sort of thought that it would be more about workshopping and visiting vendors, but honestly that was the smallest part of it. I’m sitting here at 2:30am with three friends and a fourth we’re all talking to on Skype and it feels like we’ve known each other forever. A few of them have already left WPPI, and by Friday I will be on the road as well and I’m ridiculously saddened that I probably won’t get to see them in person for months, maybe years.

The photos below are the culmination of a random thought that we wanted to do a photo shoot in the desert while we were here. There were only 12 of us and the photos below are modeled by the lovely Elyse Bouvier who is a talented photographer in her own right.

To my WPPI peeps, I’m going to miss you guys and I love you all and thank you so much for making this one heck of an amazing week.

To everyone reading, I hope you enjoy.

xoxo

{FLURRY HOME}

Len — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 23:13:32 +0000

I’m getting all my ducks in a row for my trip to Vegas and WPPI this year, and this photo and song just remind me of the mammoth road trip that I will be undertaking and that feeling of excitement and longing that goes along with it. Mammoth might be an over-statement, but it certainly will be fun.

I will be Stateside from Sunday 20th February until Tuesday 8th March, but I should have internet access throughout, please bear with me if responding to emails takes me a little longer than usual and I’ll keep updating the blog as normal.

xoxo

A NEW WEDNESDAY AND A NEW I LOVE WEDNESDAYS {Sydney Wedding Photography}

Len — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 01:44:25 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot about I Love Wednesdays and who I am, what I want I Love Wednesdays to be. When I started out, much like most people, I looked at what was around me, and how to make myself fit in with everyone else; but really, I’m not like everyone else, we’ve all got our own little idiosyncrasies that make us us.

I decided that 2011 would be the year that I embrace those idiosyncrasies and that includes changing the branding of I Love Wednesdays to something that more fully reflects who I am. I have ALWAYS loved the I Love Wednesdays logo, but it seemed a little too clean for me, so you’ll notice that almost everything has changed or been tweaked to reflect I Love Wednesdays as it always should have been.

For followers of the blog or my twitter for that matter, I’m sure you know that I am a camera fanatic and while that’s something that I have mentioned, I have hidden the extent of my fanaticism. I counted my cameras and I THOUGHT I had 20, but apparently I’d forgotten about all the ones strewn about my house and the count is now at 31.

So…I think it’s time to say goodbye to the I Love Wednesdays of old and hello to the I Love Wednesdays of the future.

xoxo Len

P.S. For those of you that follow me on twitter, you would know that I had a slight disagreement with a flight of stairs, and the stairs won, so I haven’t had a chance to finish off updating the portfolio site, I will be doing that today and it will be up tonight, so keep an eye out for it!

LADIES AND GENTLEMENT THE FABULOUS ADORA {Sydney Fashion Photography}

Len — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 06:37:16 +0000

Sometimes we’re fortunate to be a part of something that changes the way you see the world, or in my instance, something that changes the way we look at things creatively.

It was an overcast Tuesday that threatened to storm when a friend of mine called wanting to do a photo shoot. We’d planned to roughly do something, though we didn’t have anything specific in mind – an hour and some crafty packing of my little car – we were in Centennial Park in Sydney with a Louis XVII chair and with Edith Piaf’s “Je Non Regret Rien” stuck in my head.

“No! Absolutely nothing…
No! I regret nothing
Neither the good that I’ve done nor the bad
All this is much the same to me!

No! Absolutely nothing…
No! I regret nothing…
Because my life, because my joys
Today that begins with you!”

Thank you to the Sydney weather for keeping the rain away until we finished shooting and thank you to the Fabulous Adora for being so open and letting me be a part of something that made me a better photographer and that was a heck of a lot of fun

AMY {A PORTRAIT} Sydney Fashion Photography

Len — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 04:38:44 +0000

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a friend of mine and fellow photographer, Amy about a location that I love to shoot in. It’s a great spot and lends itself to a very fashion look, however, it is a bit of a secret spot for me and I don’t share it with everyone and since Amy and I have wanted to do a shoot together for quite possibly as long as we’ve known each other, I thought it would be the perfect spot for us. The shoot came together rather quickly and unexpectedly one Friday afternoon, so quickly that I didn’t even have time to charge my lights.

Like the prep, the shoot itself was ridiculously quick and I only took a handful of shots, but we knew what we wanted and only needed to take a few. These are a few of my favourites. I hope you like them.

JAGA GLASSWARE {SYDNEY PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY} Something A Little Bit Different

Len — Mon, 31 May 2010 03:53:04 +0000

I’ve recently had a chance to do something a little bit different and shoot some glassware for the lovely and talented Roxanne Costello from Jaga. She needed some product shots for her range and I was excited and nervous to shoot it. I was nervous because I wasn’t sure what the space was like that we were going to be shooting in and what I would need, so carried pretty much my entire studio up quite a number of stairs.

If there’s one thing that I learned from this shoot, it’s that I am not made to carry an entire studio worth of supplies, and that I will either bring an assistant or need to workout.

Thank you to Roxanne for letting me be a part of her new range and you can check out her full range on her website soon or at Gaffa Gallery in the Sydney CBD.

AWARDS

Len — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 23:54:40 +0000

My grandmother left this very sweet message on my mobile last night. “Hi chook, it’s grandma, I just wanted to congratulate you on winning your Silver Award, even though I’m not sure exactly what it is for.” It was actually one of the many calls I received from my very proud, yet slightly confused family. They were all so happy I won an award, but weren’t quite sure what it was. I was too nervous to tell them that I’d entered in my images, so when they found out it was all rather a jumble of information, but they were all proud none the less.

That being said, I won my first Silver Award at the NSW AIPP (Australian Institute of Professional Photography) Awards that were held over the weekend. I loved seeing work from other incredibly talented photographers in NSW and I can’t wait for the National Awards in Melbourne and seeing work from all over Australia.

This is my Silver winning print from the Pocahontas shoot.

THE CREATIVE ACT

Len — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 08:07:14 +0000

The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box. – Henri Cartier-Bresson

I think these really are the perfect words to describe what we photographers do. In a sense we hunt out the perfect photo. I know that I wait for it, obsess about it, plan for it, but at the end of the day, it usually comes down to a second. A second here or there; and you end up with the perfect selection of photos or ones which are just ok.

In a race, a second, or even a fraction of a second, really is the difference between coming first and last.

Photography is the same.

I always want to come first.