What I use for Your investment…

I am very happy and proud to announce that I had my First Silver Award in the Wedding open category for my first entry to the APPA 2009 (AIPP Canon Professional Photography Awards).

I used to say that cameras don’t take pictures, and I still do.

I tried once to put a camera on a tripod, fully loaded with batteries and memory cards and yes the lens was on as well with the front cap taken off.

I turned it on and sat next to it for a while. Guess what, it doesn’t take any picture by itself.

What I need to stress here is that no matter what Camera you have, it won’t take photos by itself: You do.

Don’t get me wrong: without camera you can not take any photo either.

With an IT background and a limitless passion for photography, I invest intensively in photography equipments. When saying equipment, I don’t only mean camera and lenses. It also involes all the equipements needed for my workflow: turning a RAW image into a piece of Art.

On my shelves, I have:

- Canon 5D. A legendary (first) full frame D-SLR with 12 digit serial number

- Canon 5D Mark II. World’s first 21 Megapixel full frame camera with full HD video features. I am proud to say that I was one of the firsts to get one in Australia (at the time of this post, some fellow photographers in the US are still on waiting list)

- Canon 1D Mark III. Extreme pro level camera with a blasting speed of 10 frames per second.

Just added in the bag: Canon 1D Mark IV.

This is an amazing camera when paired with the awesome Canon EF 85 f/1.2 L II …

So, what’s in the bag ?

And what about lens?

Well, I have a Canon focal range from 14 mm to 400 mm, needless to say that  my slowest Canon lens has an aperture of f2.8.

While it is rarely used during an actual wedding, my 300 mm lens is very solicited for an event and sport coverage.

As shown in the photo above, the Canon 85 f1.2 L lens is RRP for $3600 alone. There is no room for cheap equipment when it comes to capture the most important Day of your life.

Do I limit myself to Canon only equipment? When a lot of (pro) photographer use exclusively one brand of equipment, I use several. I am always on the search for the best equipment for each individual assignment and therefor sometime my Canon gears will perform best some time my Nikon system will. Also it’s a matter of choice and taste.

In my Nikon bag I have:

- Nikon D200. Camera of the year 2006

- Nikon D300. Camera of the year 2008

- Nikon D700. Nikon famous FX format

- Nikon D3s

- Line up of Nikon lenses from 12 to 300 mm for an effective coverage from 12 mm to 450 mm, on various camera bodies.

And as mentionned above, perpetual search for the best piece of equipment for each individual assignment, I also use a range of Carl Zeiss and Leica lenses wih lens adapters to fit on my Canon bodies.

Available light. This is what lots of photographers will tell you about their photography. It is certainly nice for a few shots BUT with available light, you only use what you have on the set. Again, I like to have control and while I also shoot available light, I prefer to have TOTAL CONTROL of my lighting, combining the ambiant with my flash guns. In my bags I have not less than 7 flash guns (from Canon, Nikon and third party models) and also the best wireless triggering systems which include the Pocket Wizards and Radio Popper systems.

During a wedding I pack no less than 80 to 100 GIG worth of memory.

To edit your photos and design your albums, I have a personalized work flow using 3 Apple iMac and 2 multi core PC computers. My various in house and off site servers have capacity of several Tera Bytes in storage.

image courtesy of Apple

I also have various laptops, multi core and MacBook Pro, that I carry for on location assignments.

image courtesy of Apple

My main workstation is an 8-core Mac Pro with 4 TB hard drives, loads of RAM and a massive 30″ Apple Cinema Display.

images courtesy of Apple

All your photos are backed up in 4 different copies and three different locations in Australia and overseas.

You may ask how I deal with all these gears? Do I pack them all for your Wedding?

The answer is NO.

Before your Wedding Day, I usually meet with you several times, at least 3: initial appointment, a second appointment for your special requests if any, and a final meeting a few days prior to your big Day for the last details.

Also that I would have visited the locations before hand, I can narrow down what equipments will be used to capture your precious Moments. Of course, selected equipments come with their back up.

Most of couples I had the joy to capture are very happy with my approach and the better we know each other the more natural they’ll be.

My photos speak for themselves.

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