I got an out-of-the-blue call from Mr Roc Travers one day to ask if i might be interested to help out on a project he was working on with a theatre troupe from Masterton. Once I heard the brief I was in!
Roc had a bunch of actors and access to some cool vintage dresses and uniforms and wanted to recreate the times of Marie Antoinette, but with a little more punk and a lot less cake.
The theme was based on a simple phrase “She will lead the Revolution” and we took it quite literally, with the girls getting to push the guys around.
The location was an old abandoned house near Greytown in the Wairarapa, near Wellington, and from the moment I saw it I was in love. There was a long walk up a grassy hill to the site and the clouds were just billowing everywhere. All the makings of a great photograph.
We all had so much fun, the actors totally made each scene and Roc did a great job on the stylist side. The cow pats, maybe not so much 
Music has been a huge part of my life for years, I played in bands and even started my own record label. One of the main things that drew me to the scene wasn’t so much getting up on stage myself (even though I do love that) but being able to take photos of these cool artists. Being a live and studio music photographer has always been a dream.
One such group of people are The Charcoal White, a blues/jazz/country/soul/younameit band from Wellington, New Zealand. We got together for a shoot and along with costume designer Tira O’Daly and hair/make-up artist Jaime Leigh we got some pretty cool shots…
Well it’s a new year so I thought I should treat myself to a new blog design to get ready for the big things to come. I hope you like it, there’s more on the page than the last one so I hope it’s not too cluttered. I’d love to get your feedback, so let me know what you think 
I have also loaded some old posts from my travel photography blog which you might be interested in. You can find them in the travel section.
That’s it for now, more to come…
Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve posted on here and I’ve got lots of things to share but just like the Mechanic’s car, a photographer’s blog is always the last thing to be updated in a busy time.
I’ll be posting a lot more over the next few weeks as things slow down for the holidays so stay tuned, but first up is some news about our Photo Booth!
A photo booth is a great way to give your party guests a way to get some fun shots with out the hassle of a photographer getting in the way of the spontaneity.
Guests just hit a button on the booth and after a short countdown it takes 4 shots in a row and prints out the results, which are mostly hilarious!
It’s amazing how relaxed people get when no one is watching
When you hire the booth you also get a whiteboard and markers to write messages, and some dress up items to get that creativity flowing.
The photo booth can print out as many copies as you like so you can give one to the guests and keep one for yourself. It also saves the images to disc so you can view them after the event or create an album.
http://www.photoboothfun.co.nz/
We rent out the Photo Booth for parties, weddings and other events so drop us a line if you want information on prices info@brettstanleyphoto.co.nz.
Close Up
The second brief Jaime Leigh and I tackled was to use 100’s & 1000’s close up. This is from the Canon site:
“This small candy brief is all about getting your lens close to the object.
You must feature these tiny hundreds & thousands but you don’t need to use them all, and if you need more you are free to source your own.”
We had the idea to separate the colours and use the sprinkles as some kind of Make-up. Luckily we found some packets of them already separated, which saved a very boring Saturday night in sorting candy
Jaime set to work sticking the sprinkles to our awesome model Danny De Mure and these were the final photos we had to pick from:
… adding a little water got the colours running nicely.
…and the final submitted image was this one:
Practically Black
The next brief was pretty broad, which does my head in, and it took a while for me to really have any idea what I wanted to submit.
“The ‘Practically Black’ brief is about shooting in dark situations while still maintaining details in the image. We expect to receive very moody imagery for this brief.”
I had already shot this image with my friend Kim and it popped into my mind today:
I really like the darkness in this one and how the sunset is juuuust showing through. I’m quite proud of this one since apart from a little colour correction it’s pretty much out of the camera. Go me! Go Kim for posing. Go piggy
More to come…
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