excitations

Photos of 2010 Tour of the Murray

Ian Mckenzie — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 11:59:23 +0000

Caught up with competitors in the annual Tour of the Murray bike race. These riders are amazingly tough and after days of hard bike racing, I’m sure they didn’t need the strong winds and driving rain showers that they’ve encountered here in Sunraysia.

Tour of the Murray 2010 – Images by Ian Mckenzie

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Melina and Mathew’s Robinvale wedding.

Ian Mckenzie — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:37:51 +0000

Saturday saw us heading down to Robinvale once again to shoot a wedding, we were excited to be going because we knew we were going to have a great day with some wonderful people. Plus the weather was looking really terrific, after a week of not so wonderful days, that was a relief.

As is usual, we took way more pictures than we should have…. but hey… better to have to many to choose from rather than not enough photos. We got to try a couple of new things, visit a few new locations and generally have a really good fun day with a group of people who where just a pleasure to work with. Can’t wait to see the wedding album now, I know its going to be spectacular.

After shooting a whole bunch of different setups and locations with Mathew and the boys, we decided to go with just one more. Photographed on a shaded verandah and using some converging angles created by windows doors and weather boards, plus a super relaxed pose from Mathew to get this casual looking pre-wedding portrait.

Over at Melina's house , Robyn spotted this great location on a staircase. Light in colour and providing a fabulous elevated camera angle. Melina's symmetrical pose helps create this lovely semi formal pre-wedding portrait.

Soft overcast conditions helped Robyn capture this image of Melina and Mathew with an industrial looking background, complete with graffitti. Ian was shooting main camera while Robyn used the second camera to create a posed but natural looking image from a secondary position.

Melina and Mathew took a step back in time with their immaculately prepared bridal cars. We decided to have a bit of fun with the cars, this is one of the resulting images. Thanks go to Melina and Mathew for persevering with this shot. Let's just say it wasn't as easy holding position as it looks in this fun wedding photo.

Probably my favorite shot from Melina and Mathew's wedding, alone on the dance floor for their first dance , surrounded by soft floating smoke effects and dwarfed by fairy lights and ceiling decorations. I've been hunting this shot for a long while but until last weekend all the elements had failed to come together. This time the smoke billowing up around Melina and Mathew, plus a spotlight being used by Tom, from Oline Video, provided just enough highlight and texture to the cloud effect. Finally a low camera angle added drama to the shot.

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But I don’t want my pictures on your website.

Ian Mckenzie — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 03:10:05 +0000

Something we hadn’t thought of until it was pointed out to us during the past week. Some people are concerned that if we take their pictures, they’re going to end up on the internet. The truth is very few of the photo sessions we shoot ever end up on any of our web sites. And yes there are a few sites emanating from excitations studio.

First off, we always ask you if it would be ok for us to use some of your pictures in our web promotions. So it’s no surprise to the people involved that their photos appears here or anywhere else on our combined web sites. We generally only use pictures that we feel will be of interest to our readers either because of subject matter, or the way we’ve photographed the job. Many, no most of the photography sessions we shoot never end up posted to the internet. We shoot a lot of sittings and it would be nearly a full time job just posting pictures, if we did. Often the stuff we shoot is embargoed because the images are destined to be surprise gifts or are commercially sensitive or the client doesn’t want to share them with the world.

Of course there are people who would love to see pictures of theirs on our web sites, and we try to accommodate those people as often as possible. So long as the images are likely to be of interest to you the reader, or show some photographic technique that maybe of interest.

We're still downloading and backing up photos from yesterdays wedding of Melina and Matthew, but he's a teaser shot of Melina's beautiful bouquet.

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September 25, Locusts start hatching….

Ian Mckenzie — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:26:12 +0000

Wow can hardly wait, all those millions of little locusts getting ready to impale themselves on the grills of our cars, destroy all the lovely wheat crops and turn our gardens into barren deserts. Might as well be back in drought times again… at least we wouldn’t have bugs squashed all over everything.

Locusts last year didn’t effect our wedding shoots, wonder if we’ll be that lucky again, or whether we will face another challenge to creativity…. Or they may provide us with endless possibilities for new and unique photo opportunities. Speaking of photo opportunities, we’re heading off to Robinvale tomorrow for Melina and Mathew’s wedding. Weather forecast looking good, can’t wait to get back behind a camera, as most of this week we’ve been stuck behind a desk. Not my place of choice.

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School yard politics

Ian Mckenzie — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 00:27:01 +0000

And still the fiasco of our federal political system continues to play out on our tv screens every night. A bunch of previously unheard of MP’s milking their new found power for everything its worth, while leaders of the two major parties spend their time grovelling to the new power base that is the independent MP’s.

Is it just me? Or is this really as silly as it looks? Grown men and women behaving like a bunch of very immature school children, trying to decide who is going to rule the school yard for the next three years. All I’m seeing is a couple of political leaders who failed to get the majority of public support now trying to convince three, until recently unknowns that “my team is better than your team”.

Honestly, neither leader looks anything but foolish to me.

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Pushing the envelope….

Ian Mckenzie — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 10:03:30 +0000

Photographers from all genre’s, habitually make a habit of pushing the envelope. Finding new ways to create interesting images or tell stories. There’s always new angles, new equipment, new techniques and now days new software to get us excited and allow us to produce photographs that where unto now, difficult or impossible. For wedding portrait photographers and of course photojournalists, new cameras with ultra high sensitivity to light have been a boon to the way we work. Allowing us to take pictures on day to day assignments that would once have been, if not impossible, certainly cost prohibitive.

Take the image posted below, photographed in a dimly lit ally, using only the meager light emanating from a single lamp high above our beautiful young models. We were able to create images that would have in the very recent past required the use of time consuming and complicated flash photography techniques. Instead we can now shoot in very low light, capturing the feel and mood of our location, while spending more time focusing on our subjects expressions, and creating images that tell stories.

Just because we can do this doesn’t mean we will all the time off course, because that would be boring. But let’s just say this will be another string to our bow. Oh and to all the reception centres out there it doesn’t mean we want you to turn off all the bloody lights during our bride and grooms first dance. Yeah I know it’s romantic, but one candle 25 metres away from the dance floor isn’t conducive to either good photos or interesting video coverage.

Steph and Bianca pose in front of some amazing artwork in an allyway Melbourne

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Two moons on August 27th… only if you have double vision.

Ian Mckenzie — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:04:50 +0000

Been a whole lot of interest lately about being able to see two moons in the night sky on August 27th. Unfortunately a hoax, but a great story that has prick lots of peoples imagination. Check out the real story here at earthsky.

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Weddings, we produce custom made albums and fine art quality prints.

Ian Mckenzie — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 08:52:11 +0000

In this day and age of more for less, we at excitations choose quality over quantity almost daily. We believe that a single photographic image that captures the essence of our subject to be worth more than a disk full of snap shots. Not everyone agrees with us and that’s fine. What a boring world it would be if everyone liked the same style of photography and methods.

When it comes to wedding photography our specialty, is working with couples to produce magnificent hand crafted wedding albums, designed from the ground up to be something our couples will cherish for the rest of their lives. In fact I often tell people that their wedding album is something that is going to get more valuable with age. I’m pretty sure nobody believes me. However, you just have to look at the way mums and daughters look back over wedding albums as the daughters grow up and start thinking about their weddings. Fond memories of that special day come flooding back, fond memories, funny stories, people long since past remembered once again. Memories are a very special thing and that’s what quality wedding photography and beautifully made wedding albums do best. They capture a small slice of time and preserve it for future generations.

For those people not into albums we produce beautifully hand crafted fine art wall prints, using only the finest quality materials and techniques.

Joseph and Gabrielle photographed late afternoon in a field near Robinvale.

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555 Music and a room full of guitars.

Ian Mckenzie — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 03:36:35 +0000

Here’s another shot of William, cigarette man from below, who is a musician. Surrounded by guitars and all sorts of other music stuff. Shot in the vast display area of 555 Music, fabulous location, great people for allowing us to shoot in and around their premises for a while on a wet and windy Melbourne afternoon. We’ve been wanting to do some environmental portraits for a while now and this was a perfect opportunity to get our sleeves rolled up and get into it.

For those of into music and guitars in particular, a visit to 555 Music which is to be found at 555-557 Burwood Highway, Hawthorn, is a must do thing next time you’re in those parts.

Available light photo of William taken with Nikon D3s with the amazing new f1.4 24mm lens

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Election day tomorrow…

Ian Mckenzie — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:25:43 +0000

Tomorrow we get to choose our government and PM for another term. Look carefully at what we have to choose from. On one side we have a man who is campaigning for 36 hours straight…. apparently that has something to do with being a good leader and on the other side we have an incumbent PM whose best shot is apparently that if we don’t vote for her we could end up with the other guy….
So much choice and so little time to decide!

Maybe if we had potential leaders who displayed a tiny bit of vision for the future of Australia and actually looked at the big issues instead of unimportant emotive and just plain silly side issues.

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