Our Easter Show TVC for the Royal Agricultural Society finally made it to air – produced on a very tight budget its a pretty good step up from where they have been in the past…flying pigs and all that. There was quite a bit of pre production planning to ensure the live action and 3D animation meshed seamlessly.Thanks to James from Maven Productions, the Chee’s and a great crew who worked an extremely long day to bring it all together. Well done.

Recently we shot/directed a 30 and 15″ TV ad for the Royal Easter Shows 2013 campaign. We had to set up the show…with out setting up the show! It was a MASSIVE day!. The CD made the comment that he doesn’t think he has seen that many shots fit into one day before – Well its called Daylight saving and a LEGENDARY crew!!! The spots had some very technical aspects to them as we were mixing live action and 3D animation…then we had the deadly 3: kids/animals/outside locations. But we pulled it off. The spots are now in post production and looking great. Thanks go out to our amazing crew, Maven, Chee Productions and the agency Deepend. Stay tuned to see it on air…hopefully not to client affected!

Howdy – early December we shot a new TVC for Bay Leather Republic. Initially the brief was for a 15″, but it quickly became apparent that a 30″ was in order. I think the results look great and it represents my 4th TVC in a directing role – hey this directing thing may actually catch on! (while on the topic – we are shooting another TVC for the Sydney Easter Show in Jan)
Many thanks go out to James from Maven and all the crew for a fantastic job. Also many thanks to CD Dan Mercer (from the agency: Strategy Design & Advertising) for being a blast to work with. Enjoy

The boys and I recently shot Clarkey and Glenn McGrath. It was on the back of a TVC for Toyota and, as usual, we had only 10mins to get the shots – but due to the TVC running a little over we got what we needed in 8 min – all went well and everyone was really happy. Above are some behind the scenes photos.

I’m a bit late in posting this but the Port Macquarie Tourism TVC ‘Little Treasures’ went live (about a month ago) – The guys a Port Macquarie Tourism and people in the region are loving it as a fantastic, realistic and fresh way to illustrate what they already know: the Port Macquarie area is dreamy and beautiful… and yes you can also get great coffee from the many cool cafes…ticks all the boxes really. I have posted the TVC on my site (Commission>motion) or you can click vid thumb above or see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6gQu6zVSe8
My site also has some of the recent print work (just in rough layouts) that we shot at the same time as shooting the TVC.
I also suggested that we create a downloadable PDF that shows people where each each scene from the TVC was shot – the idea being, that if interested, someone could download a map and take the journey we did – it’s called ‘The little treasure trail’ The guys at PM tourism loved the idea and it has turned out to be a great little tourism initiative: you can check it out here: Little Treasure Trail
Enjoy.

Well we are not long back from a fantastic shoot for Port Macquarie Tourism – where we had an unprecedented 7 days of pure clear skies and toasty sun. We were shooting a TVC that I thankfully got to write and direct along with fitting in a stills campaign at the same time. The shoot went really well and we have a very happy client as we fitted a lot in for their budget. A huge thanks goes out to the crew and talent who made it yet another truly fun experience. Look for the TVC on air later this year.

Here’s a sneak preview of couple of images from the project I am currently working on titled: Made by Man. The project will be shot over a few years and attempts to illustrate the beauty that us, as humans, can add to the natural landscape…but only if we think carefully about it! I love wind turbines – when I first see them they always catch me by surprise as their abstract beauty reminds me of an alien from ‘war of the worlds’. The images are shot using an Arca Swiss 6×9 field camera with a various high end digital backs – showing them small doesn’t really do them justice as they are shot to print huge….but hey this is just a sneak preview. hope you like

It seems that I lucked out and got into the finalists for the 2012 National Portrait Prize that will be exhibited by the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra.
The image of mine above is of an indigenous cattle handler working in the Northern Territory.

Well lucky for us. Our little 45″ TVC creation for Northern Territory Tourism picked up a few awards and nominations. nice!

TThis project came about after Richard from Department of Doing presented the Darwin behind the scenes video we had made to the NT Client. He loved it and they loved it and thought the technique would work well for their next TVC featuring the Red Centre. The brief was essentially “show a couples journey from Alice Springs to Uluru (Ayers Rock) , shot from one of their POV’s” (you can see the finished result in the commissioned (motion) section of my site). We also managed to somehow fit in a stills shoot along the way.

As can probably be appreciated from the BTS video – The project was the most fun any of us had on a shoot – we stayed everywhere from nice hotels to being choppered up to a mountain ridge in the middle of wayout back NT where we slept in swags under the night sky. I pass on a huge personal thanks to my friends who all gave blood, sweat and tears to make the project such a success: Pete, Dave, Chris, Chris T, Megan (who was like 5 months pregnant when shot it!). A huge thanks also to our amazing talent Alex and Grant and of course Richard and NT Tourism for having the faith in us to be able to pull off the project.

I was stoked to see my image of MAYA get selected for the Sydney Life exhibition in Hyde Park. The images are huge (3 x 2 meters) and strung up between the trees lining the main walk through the park. Its a beautiful way to see your work, its also great to anonymously watch others checking it out and adding their interpretation. The caption running with the image was: The end of a long day at the weekend markets, while Maya is not so sure how she feels…her mother knows.

This backstage video is from our Tourism Northern Territory DARWIN shoot.  It was the first job that we had done for them through our new friend Richard Hollingum who is the  director of ‘Department of Doing’ their creative agency. A fantastic time time was had by all and the fun ranged from hanging out of helicopters to BBQ’ing at sunset on a 100 hundred year old pearl lugger.

Well this was a surprise – Advertising photographer of the year – thats great…i think! What i was more excited about was that the Red Centre TV ad that we made got runner up in the Fusion category (Fusion= combining stills and motion techniques). What was interesting was that it received a mark of 85 (silver distinction) but the winning piece got a mark of 80…not sure how that works! But it was a great night and I feel very happy to be recognised by the AIPP.
Above is a pic from the stage (scarrrry!) and a pic of my new stage friends.