Nouville, Noumea

Having a new-born in your life leaves little time to go out shooting. Very busy figuring out a lot of things from the baby’s needs to medical visits, everyday chores and who does what, when. Organisation and finding a routine is key though. Apart from eating and sleeping, babies don’t do much else but a small shifted of just 30 minutes in their routine can make or break your day… and night. Ozalee started to have a fairly steady night routine about five or six days ago. Let’s hope it lasts.

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So I may not have a lot of time to go out and about shooting sunrises or sunsets, I do have the time to photograph my baby girl. Videos are important too. They show how they move, react to things, their changing facial expressions, their laughter, the sounds they make and many more things that a photograph can not portray. Don’t worry, I won’t bombard you with baby photos. I have a Lightroom catalogue full of photos I want to share with you.

This photo was taken the day after her birth and at approximately the same time too. She’s one day old here. I took a few shots from different angles and this was the best of the lot. The photo was taken with the Sony a7 III with the Tamron 28-75 ƒ2.8 lens, zoomed all the way in at 75 mm. I went with an aperture of ƒ/4 to get enough depth of field to get all her eye in focus. A shutter speed of 1/125th second was plenty as she wasn’t moving. The ISO was too high for my liking but I had no choice with just a small light illuminating the room. I was pleasantly surprised though to see the photo void of noise. The light, shadows, tones and subject made for a beautiful black & white conversion and very little edit was needed. I’m going to get this one printed for sure.

Well thank everyone for you patience and putting up with my baby photos. Hope to see you in a few days for an old photo dating back to 2013.

SONY a7 III

24MP full-frame mirrorless camera from Sony’s Alpha series. Also does 4K video. A great all-round camera.

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TAMRON STANDARD ZOOM LENS

Tamron E 28-75 mm ƒ/2.8 Di III RXD is a standard zoom lens for E-mount camera. A perfect match for the Sony a7 III.

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SONY BATTERIES

Sony’s NP-FZ100 lithium-ion from it’s Z series are reliable and long lasting.

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SANDISK EXTREME PRO

SanDisk Extreme Pro SDXC memory cards are fast and reliable. With 128 GB you never run out of storage for photos or videos. It’s what I choose to use.

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GIOTTO CLEANING KIT

This lens cleaning kit from Giotto includes a Rocket blower, a soft dust brush, pointed/rounded cotton buds, a microfibre cloth and cleaning solution. I also use it to clean the outside of my camera.

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UES CLEANING SWABS

Cleaning swabs by UES for full-frame sensor cameras. DSLR or mirrorless. I clean my camera sensor at least once a year, more depending on where I’ve been.

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KYOTO, JAPAN

This is one of my favourite photos from Japan. Blue hour with warm colours for contrast, my friend in action with an icon in the background to show where she is, the blurred background, the lighting… definitely one of my favourite photos of the trip.

If you have read my last post, you’d know we were unable to go up Kyoto Tower because of a bomb scare. The men in black were still in position. So we took photos of the tower from the Kyoto Station side. We were also surprised by a small water, light and music display which is what Géraldine is photographing here. It was quite delightful.

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1/80th second @ ƒ/2.8, ISO 1600, 28 mm

KYOTO, JAPAN

As I mentioned on my last post everything is larger than life here. This is the terrace and huge side entrance of the Founder’s Hall of the Higashi Honganji Temple. As you can see the doors are huge, I’d say around three metres high. Just awesome. Again I asked Géraldine to pose to show how high these doors were. I think she’s around 160 cm tall.

You probably noticed she’s barefoot. That’s because you have to take your shoes off before stepping onto the terrace and inside the halls. They provide plastic bags to carry them because you may start from the Founder’s Hall and finish at the Amida Hall, which are joined by an extension of the terraces.

Photos of the interior weren’t permitted, as I mentioned in previous posts, so I can’t show you the magnificent hall. I guess I could have snapped a shot from the terrace but I didn’t want to offend anyone by doing so. There were people praying and they were preparing for a ceremony or something. It’s sacred and private and I respect that.

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1/80th second @ ƒ/2.8, ISO 200, 32 mm

KYOTO, JAPAN

The Higashi Honganji Temple has two halls, the Founder’s and the Amida. The roof of the latter is what you see here. You would have seen part of this roof on a previous post too. I asked my friend, Géraldine, to pose to show perspective and add a human element to the image. As you can see just by the railing that everything is grandiose. The structures are made of huge wooden pillars. Very impressive. It’s hard to believe these structures have stood for centuries. I can’t imagine the work that goes into maintaining it all. It’s a shame we weren’t allowed to photograph the interior because it is amazingly beautiful. Check this link to see interior photos from their website. You’ll be blown away.

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1/500th second @ ƒ/2.8, ISO 100, 28 mm

Copying one of my favoutire photographers here, Paul Zizka. He often posts landscape photos with himself in them to show the scale of things. That's not me in the photos though but a friend that I invited to tag along. I may do more of these kind of photos with someone in them to show thw scale of things. What do you think?

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