Cameron Laird - Photographer

Relax Australia, Bob’s on the job!

Cameron — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 02:46:37 +0000

I arrived back from Sri Lanka and Singapore at midday on Sunday and had two important issues to tackle. First and foremost – mow the lawn before our 1pm open house, second – try and tame Bob Katter into a few photos.

For those foreigners or Aussies currently living in a cave let me give you a rough guide to what is happening in Australian politics right now.

We had a federal election on Saturday 21st August to determine which political party and Prime Minister will govern in Australia
A political party needs to hold a minimum of 76 seats of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives to govern in their own right
Neither of the major two parties (Labor or the Coalition) won enough seats so we currently have a ‘hung parliament’
Both of these parties and their leaders will now try and ‘woo’ the 1 Greens MP and 3, possibly 4 Independent MP’s to support their party which would then give that party the right to govern.

Ok, that’s a pretty simple explanation but hopefully it will give you and idea of the power that is now wielded by these 4 or 5 minor party MP’s. And Bob Katter is one of those “Kingmakers”. I spent a few hours and had dinner with Bob on Sunday and most of the day with him yesterday at his Charters Towers home. I’m not kidding when I say he was on the phone for at least 80% of this time. And these weren’t calls I could get him off, these were politically important calls and therefore, important to me. Most of the photographs I took of Bob show him on the phone and for good reason. That is ALL he is doing at the moment!

Here’s some clippings from The Australian, The Courier-Mail and the Daily Telegraph over the past two days. The first clipping is a great yarn by The Courier-Mail reporter Peter Michael. Click the image to see a larger version that you can read. I’ve also added some photos from the past couple of days as well.

Click the image to read a full size pdf of the spread

The Australian - 24 August 2010

The Courier-Mail - Click photo to see and read a larger version

Page one of The Australian - 23 August 2010

Bob and grand-daughter Kate wait at a Townsville air charter hanger

Bob Katter and wife Susie in The Courier-Mail (Click the read article)

A stunning day for a Townsville wedding!

Cameron — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 13:52:44 +0000

Today I was lucky enough to photograph the wedding of Townsville Bulletin photographer Megan Brayley and her partner Steven Taylor. It was an amazingly perfect day in Townsville and luckily Megan had set an early time for the church service which gave us a few hours of winter afternoon light to make some nice pics! Here’s a small selection of pics of their day.

Meet the 2010-2011 North Queensland Fury

Cameron — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 11:43:15 +0000

I have been doing a little work recently for the North Queensland Fury ahead of their start to the 2010-2011 Hyundai A-League season. Great people to deal with and along with the Townsville Crocodiles that makes two out of three national sporting teams in Townsville that are good to deal with!

Thought I’d share some recent pics I’ve shot for trading cards and their team poster. Take note though, I had 20 minutes to shoot the 19 players for the trading card photos. You don’t get a lot of time to muck around in this gig

A different type of Canon EF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM demo

Cameron — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 13:18:12 +0000

Had a bit of spare time to muck around today while shooting a football training session so I thought I’d hook my 5D MkII (with a 16-35) to my monopod with a magic arm to give you an idea of the field of view difference between a 16mm lens on a full frame camera compared to a 400mm lens on a 1.3x crop DSLR (equivalent to 520mm on a full frame camera).
It’s not that exciting but hopefully it’s better than a poke in the eye! Feel free to check it out in HD by hitting this link or watch the embedded video below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Great timelapse – shooting an iPhone for a Macworld cover

Cameron — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 03:58:15 +0000

Just stumbled over this great timelapse by US photographer Peter Belanger and thought I’d give you a look. It shows Peter shooting an iPhone Macworld cover on a view camera with a Phase One digital back. Not only is this a great idea of the effort and skill that goes into something that seems like it would be simple but it is also a fantastic and well thought out timelapse showing from start to finish of the production of a magazine cover. Enjoy more of Peter’s great work at his blog here

Click here to view the embedded video.

On an iPhone using iOS4 and having trouble sending photos?

Cameron — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 07:16:46 +0000

The last thing a photographer needs is to have trouble sending photos! I’ve been having a problem with my iPhone sending photos and while this isn’t a problem professionally (as I don’t shoot jobs on my iPhone) it has been bugging me. It appears to be a problem only with iOS4.

A workaround for me was to send the photo as per normal on my iPhone and then go back to the home screen and go to Mail then Mailboxes and then Outbox and you will see the email sitting in there. You can then click on the message and click ‘Send’ and it will send. Easy workaround but annoying when you send lots of pics!

The problem seems to be having a Gmail account set up in your mail accounts more than once. I had an Exchange account set up that was handling and syncing my Google apps account’s mail, contacts and calendar. I also had the same Google Apps account set up separately just syncing my notes back to GMail. As soon as I eliminated the second account that was just handling notes the problem was fixed.

So, in short – if seems as though if you have the same GMail or Google Apps account set up in multiple ways in your mail accounts it doesn’t play friendly when you want to send photos.

Let me know in the comments if this works for you! Good luck!

V8 Supercars charge into Townsville again

Cameron — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 22:52:30 +0000

Craig Lowndes steers his Holden V8 Supercar around the Townsville track

Yesterday was race one of the 2010 Townsville 400 and Jamie Whincup once again finished first. I took the opportunity to set the 5D MkII (with 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM) down to shoot a quick demo 1080 24p HD video of the first lap from turn one while I was shooting with the long lens. Here’s a quick look – feel free to click here to watch in 720p or in the full 1080p res!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Building the Bugatti Veyron

Cameron — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 00:34:11 +0000

Although I’ve never owned anything snazzier than a Holden WH Statesman (with a great 5.7L LS1 engine!) I do love great cars. The car I am really keen on getting (but probably never will) is a Mercedes C63 AMG but like many others my absolute dream car is a Bugatti Veyron. Watching Top Gear’s James “Captain Slow” May take one to 407 km/h (in front of more than a billion TV viewers) was really special and was really a defining moment for what many people call the greatest car ever made.

Enjoy the Top Gear video below AND a GREAT 4 part series of a National Geographic documentary on building the Bugatti Veyron

Top Gear’s James May at 407km/h

Click here to view the embedded video.

National Geographic documentary (Part 1 of 4)

Click here to view the embedded video.

National Geographic documentary (Part 2 of 4)

Click here to view the embedded video.

National Geographic documentary (Part 3 of 4)

Click here to view the embedded video.

National Geographic documentary (Part 4 of 4)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Townsville Crocodiles 2010/2011 season draw

Cameron — Thu, 27 May 2010 11:13:57 +0000

As I’m a sports snapper I always keep the draw for the Cowboys, Crocodiles and the Fury handy so I don’t double book anything! The Crocodiles 2010/2011 season draw has just been released so I’ve done up a Google Calendar for this and have made it public for anyone to utilize.

Calendar links – [XML] – [iCal] – [HTML]

Using Outlook? Try clicking the iCal link to add this shared calendar to Outlook (more info here)
Using Google Calendar already? Easy, just scroll down to the bottom of the calendar below and click the + Google Calendar icon
Using iCal? Easy, Just click the iCal link above

The majestic Wallaman Falls in full flow

Cameron — Mon, 24 May 2010 10:02:05 +0000

I had the opportunity to make my first trip to Wallaman Falls today and even though I was covering a tragic BASE jumping death it still was great to see Australia’s highest waterfall with a single drop of 305m (1000ft). I spent a couple of minutes before I left shooting a quick bit of video on the Canon 5D MkII for you to see just how beautiful it is! If you would like to see it in 720P HD click on this link or you can see it in normal size below.

Click here to view the embedded video.