This bike originally had full Campy Record component dated back to the 80s when i first bought it. Those old enough will remember the Triangular Delta Brakes….. … And after a few year of ownership, it went on to have Shimano Dura Ace from the early 00s till only a few years ago when i TRIED to convert it to a single speed….and gave up…

Here is a picture of it when it was at a half ass Fixie state…. still has the 8 speed cogs, and Dura Ace brake lever/shifters.

And the finished product!

Radial action up front.

16T

Decked out with White Knogs…..

Gold Bling drives the gears…and nipple action

Typical Side on shot.

So I’m 110% happy with the result. And best of all, I haven’t felt so good hopping onto a bike in a LOOONNG time.

I’ve been a bit slack lately… 1) I’m bit lazy waking up on a winter’s morning and 2) I’m bit lazy waking up on a winter’s morning. So I’m usually at home hibernating or when an opportunity comes along like this fine example of a Mazda MX5, I have to get out of bed to do a bit of work….I can’t wait till when spring comes along, and getting back to the outdoors!

I’ll update the post with a bit of more technical info later, but it is time to hibernate again.

But never fear, the water just added a different element to the shoot and the challenge was set to shoot Ryan’s Black Ralliart Colt!

As most will know… black cars are one of the hardest colors to shoot, especially at night! So is are a few and I’ll try my best to explain how did the shoot.

(5D2, 1/80, F5.0, 24mm, iso400)

(5D2, 1/60, F5.0, 35mm, iso400)

(5D2, 1/80, F5.0, 70mm, iso400)

(5D2, 1/80, F5.0, 42mm, iso400)

(5D2, 1.6sec, F5.0, 58mm, iso400)

The Shoot:
This was a more complex setup compare to my last shoot and a total of 4 flashes was used for most of the shots you see. And to put it simply, the best way to shoot a black car is to use your surrounding to reflect light onto the car, because pointing a bare flash straight at a black car simply don’t work. Try it, directly point a flash at a black object and see what you get……this video using a similar theory will explain it A LOT better than me…LOL

So Taking the 4th shot as an example. I used:
1xVivtar 285 on the back seat of the car point straight at the roof 1/4 power on ebay triggers for interior
1xVivtar 285 camera right pointing to the ceiling just in front of the car 1/2 power on ebay triggers for reflection on the bonnet
1xCanon 580 camera left pointing to the ceiling just in front of the car 1/2 power slaved for reflection on the bonnet
1xCanon 580 back of the car point straight at the wall, red gel, full power.

I won’t go into any post processing work this time, but it’s similar to my last shoot.

Have fun shooting!!…

We’ve visited a couple of places before settling at this particular location and the plan was to keep the setup pretty simple because it was in the middle of a semi private area, so a quick setup is a must.

So for the setup:
1 x EX580II high camera left bare, about 6 feet away front of the car.
1 x Local Council issued street lamp 20 feet high camera right, bare
Triggered by Cactus V2s.

To keep the setup nice and simple I had to borrow a street lamp from the local council. But from just 1 flash, you can get pretty even lighting on the car with just a single strobe, and using what’s available from your surrounding. The setup took about 1 min…..

Post Processing:
In Lightroom….
- Pump up “Fill Light” and “Blacks” all the way.
- Reduce Vibrance and Saturation.
- Vignettes

In Photoshop….
- Levels, and Curve, and Sharpening.

Not much to talk about there, just normal tourist stuff. But I only had a 24mm Tilt Shift lens in my bag, so I tried to use it to focus on areas of interest on some of the shots.

Flinders Street Station beautifully lit by early afternoon sun. (5D2, 24mm TS, 1/4000, f3.5, iso100)

Lights along the St Kilda Rd Bridge. (5D2, 24mm TS, 1/1250, f4.0, iso100)

Underground walkway along Southbank Promenade. (5d2, 24mm TS, 1/30, f3.5, iso100)

Night time on Soutbank looking at Melbourne’s CBD. (5D2, 24mm TS, 3secs, f5.6, iso 200)

(5D2, 28mm, 1/5, f13, iso50)

(5D2, 18mm, 0.8sec, f18, iso400)

(5D2, 35mm, 1sec, f16, iso400)

Had a chance to head out for some photos with fellow JDMST member Sidd after an extremely busy month at work.

We managed to find this pretty neat spot called Cape Banks @ Little Bay (Right next to La Perouse), along with an old ship wreck and 1m to 1.5m waves!!

Be sure to check out Sidd’s website as well!!

Enjoy!
-Kevin

“….Our Ability to recognize certain objects improves due to cultural conditioning and our memory, In fact, you are so conditioned to recognize objects that you often don’t need to see an object in its entirety to understand what it is. If it’s familiar to you, your brain will fill in the rest….” – Blue Fier

Such a great quote from a true master of composition…. this one statement alone changed my way of looking at anything and everything…….

-Kevin

My website is finally completed! It has taken a while but I finally got there……

So new to this site are:

• My Portfolio containing all of my previous work.
• “Buy” link to purchase some of my selected work through RedBubble.
• Subscribe by email to get live updates to my website.
• An easy to use contact page to contact me directly!

So to celebrate, I woke up at 4:30am to head 1 hour north to Avalon (Thanks Sean!!). It’s a great place if anyone dares to scale a 20 meter cliff with camera gear!!

Thanks to all who have been visiting my site. Your ongoing support keeps me out and about taking more pictures!

-Kevin

Update: I was so excited about announcing the completion of my new site, I forgot to write a little info about the actual photo and the processing involved!!!

This is one photo which I’ve spent alot of time on getting each and every element the way I wanted.

Firstly this is composite of 2 exposures, one for below and one for above the horizon.

After merging the two photos together, It’s a matter of bringing each element out using a series of Adjustment Layers in Photoshop (16 layers to be exact, consisting of Levels, Curves, Contrast and Saturation).

The biggest challenge I had was to bring a bit of balance to the light in the photo. Because the rising sun was so strong, it  over powered the foreground just a tad. So to bring balance, I had to adjust the brightness of the rock on the bottom right corner.

Besides that, it’s just a few adjustments here and there, and Unsharp Mask to finish everything off!

Hope I didn’t confuse anyone!….

]]> http://kevin-yiu.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=632 3 http://kevin-yiu.com/blog/?p=620 http://kevin-yiu.com/blog/?p=620#comments Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:31:09 +0000 kevinyiu http://kevin-yiu.com/blog/?p=620 As part of this upgrade, my new Portfolio Page is now ONLINE!! I’m pretty excited as my website upgrade is now 80% completed.

Please check it out @ http://kevin-yiu.com/gallery/index.html or click on “Portfolio” from the menu above

And here is a new b&w photo I’ve taken recently at the QVB in Sydney.

Thanks for visiting!!
-Kevin

Please bare with me while this site gets overhauled. This gradual upgrade should only take a week or so….

Meanwhile please check out my Flickr Page, and the following sites/blogs I frequent:

www.themotorreport.com.au
http://kevinmcneal.wordpress.com/
http://www.justin-oh.com/
http://brasherphotos.blogspot.com/
http://www.neglectedblog.com/
http://gcimagess.com/
http://www.matthewmead.net/

Kevin