It seems as if everybody needed a photographer at once today. I had wedding photos to get ready for a DVD, images of a recent bush patrol to prepare to send the the USA and I’d promised Diane Cassell that I’d come to do a shoot at Madang Lodge for an advertisement in Air Niugini Magazine. Somehow, I managed to get it all done. If you’d asked me at 09:00 this morning what kind of mood I was going to be at 14:21, I’d have said, “Please have 20mg of valium ready for me.” I’m such a wuss. I just can’t take the pressure.

Anyway, because I’ve been taking care of everybody else, I am now facing a blank screen. The only thing that I can think of to do to amuse you (and myself) in the time that I have is to show you the shots that I took at the lodge and tell you how I got them.

The shots that were the most fun were the ones for which I really needed a helicopter, but did not seem to have one handy. I grabbed a workman with a ladder and dragged him around for a couple of hours so that I could climb up trees, hold onto gutters, and leap around on roofs. Strategic positioning is everything for these shots. A few of them required the judicious trimming of coconut fronds that were obtrusive. This is my favourite of the panoramas:There are several more panoramas in the gallery.

This image was also fun to figure out. Di asked if I could get the two statues alongside of the orchids and show the artifacts house in the background. After a little head scratching, I laid down on my side in the grass up against some bushes to get as far away as I could. Then I punched in just a little telephoto and turned on my flash. The flash lit up the orchid posts just enough to keep them from blocking to black and also punched up the colours in the statues. Di went, “Ooooo!” when she saw it, so I was happy: The downside was that when I got up I was covered with tiny little black ants that sting like miniscule wasps.

Here’s a shot of the front of the Artifact House. I’m not too thrilled with this one. It stretched the limits of the dynamic range of my Canon G9. If fact, I busted them.  I would like to see a lot more dynamic range and crisp contrast in the front of the house. It was in deep shade from the overhanging roof:What is it that they say about a poor workman blaming his tools? Mea culpa.

This one makes me much happier. The shadows of the coconut trees add just the dramatic element needed to make this otherwise industrial image pop. I was also able to pull up some detail in the dark shade of on the front of the buildings using the Photoshop Shadows/Highlights filter. In fact, every image in this post was touched by that filter. I find it very useful:

One more and I’ll take you to the gallery. I had to stand back in the parking lot and shoot through the doorway to the garden to get this long telephoto shot. The grounds at the Madang Lodge are gorgeous (as you can plainly see). It’s a pleasure to shoot there:

Now, here is the gallery:

All in a day’s work.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 15:03 and is filed under Photography Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.