welcome...

Hi there! I'm Natt - a Sydney based wedding and portrait photographer. This space is for me to share my passion for photography, my latest work as well as bits and pieces of my life. I'd love to hear from you so please feel free to leave a comment or drop me an email. Thanks for stopping by!
nattnee twittered...

new toy

Friday, 27 June 2008
I drove to North Sydney to grab some lunch wtih hubbie today. We bought two boxes of pasta, a coke zero and for dessert we (well me) bought a Canon EF 85mm f/1.8.

My new toy:





I think a lot of people have the 70-200 f/2.8 but unless Canon is going to donate me one, I really cannot afford that right now and so this is my best bet. It's affordable (ahem coughs hubbie), has max aperture of f/1.8 which is a HUGE difference compared to the f/4 and very sharp. It won't reach as far as the 200mm but well I still got my legs. The whole world says it's a great portrait lens so I shall test that out tomorrow.

I am feeling a little guilty about this so I really shouldn't call it a new toy. It's more like a new necessity =)

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YAY! You got the 85mm!! :D I hope you really make the most of it, so your hubby doesn't feel so meh, about it... (28 June 2008 11:02)  

yay! Just sent you an email :) (28 June 2008 12:30)  

actions and cards

Thursday, 26 June 2008
My business card arrived today and just in time for the deadline I had set myself.
Like this blog and most my other design things, it's clean and simple and did I say clean? So clean in fact I think I probably should have put some blurbs on the card such as what kind of photography I do. Too late now =p





Next on the agenda of today's post is Photoshop actions. I have been struggling with the idea of buying actions for a while now. I have always wanted to do everything on my own. I wanted to say all my end product is 100% Nattnee made. It's some sort of artistic integrity issue whatever thing that got suck in my head.

Over a long period of time (I hear someone says six months?), family and friends have been telling me over and over that at the end of the day it is about working smarter. It's about the end result and do I want to be limited by my own knowledge of Photoshop and maybe figure out all this stuff some years down the track or do I want better images TODAY. A friend equates the thinking of this is artistically cheating to the invention of autofocus. He says it's just a tool like anything else.

So far I have been proud of what I can produce on my own but if you look at the end result of the likes of Jasmine Star, who is my idol btw, will I ever get that kind of end result on what I know? Maybe but probably not.

Anyway long story short, I bought TRA2 and Essential Color Pop actions to try them out. I had a look at the steps involved in the actions themselves and OMG there was no way on this planet I would have thought to do all that stuff. No freaking way.

In terms of artistic integrity, theses are not things you can use to get desired result in one click. I don't mean they're not good. These actions will certainly make your photos look better if you just use them straight on the rocks but in terms of knowing what to use and in what combination to get what you want, it's not one click of a button. You still need to develop your own style and have a vision of what you want as the end result. Just because they are available does not mean you will get great photos and believe me I have seen overprocessed (in a bad way) photos. Also let's not forget the fundamental things about photography that Photoshop will never fix!

All in all, I am glad I bought them. I have been an idiot all this time and now I know I was never going to be able to figure half that stuff out. I am satisfy with the artistic integrity issue 'cos I know for myself now that I have them doesn't mean my photos are suddenly better.

What I have to do now is spend some time working all these actions out and see how I can best use them to achieve what I want. In the meantime, check out this sample of my bro. It's got some Grandma's Tap Shoes from TRA2 applied to it.




That was a long rant but an important one for me.

Esmond, if you have read this far, stop rolling your eyes and dude you can't give up on your friends! Next time I'll try to listen about three months sooner =)

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from what I know, jasmine star uses the colour pop actions from the boutwell's TRA1, and some from the Kubota Volumes :) I've seen her post some of her tutorials on some forums and thats what she shared with us. Jessica claire uses the same method ;) I've found that the Nichole V ones too saturated at times, while great for travel photography, a little too time consuming for wedding photos where u need to edit hundreds/thousands at once :) Just my 2 cents :) (27 June 2008 11:22)  

you can only achieve what you dream of doing...dream big and the end result will surprise no one more than yourself! :) (29 June 2008 06:58)  

stylin new blog

Tuesday, 24 June 2008
Hooray! After picking up a CSS book last week and spending many many late nights coding up the new template for this blog, I have finally finished! Tada!

I had fun coding it but boy am I glad it's all over. It has been totally consuming my life for the past few days. You may think meh it looks a little plain but I'm happy with what I've achieved considering I just picked up CSS and no I ain't touching it for a while!

BTW this wasn't done with the new blogger layout thing if you were wondering what's the big deal with this simple layout. This was all hand coded and perhaps it wasn't the smartest thing to do but hey I learnt new stuff =)

As plain and simple as it may be, it sure looks a lot better than what I had before! I'll need to get random pics going for the header at some stage down the track and find out how to add a search but those can wait for a while. I need to get on with other more important things!

Please let me know if you find any bits of this blog buggy, I'd really appreciate it. If an issue is going to come up it'll be in IE6 I bet you so if you're using that, go on, convert to Firefox or Safari =)

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Love the layout Natnee... It's so clean. I feel like if I touch the screen it's going to smudge it... (obviously it's going to smudge the screen), but, I mean, the layout.. :P Anyways, loving your work! Keep it up! (25 June 2008 23:49)  

mary & craig: engagement

Wednesday, 11 June 2008
Do you believe in fate, signs or psychics? Fortune telling perhaps? What if you went to see a clairvoyant and you were told that on a particular day something significant will happen to you? Sure it could be nothing or it could be something but what if that significant event was meeting the person you were going to spend the rest of your life with?

Well that's exactly what happened to Mary. One night, during her holiday in Australia, she was sick in bed. She told herself that she didn't come all the way from Canada to just lie around in her hostel. She dragged herself out of bed, went to the pub and she met Craig.

When Mary got back to her hostel, she picked up her journal to write about that special person she had just met. The entry wasn't blank. It was written in already and it told Mary that this was the day something significant was supposed to happen to her. Few years later, the man she met in the pub that day proposed =)

Mary and Craig are the first couple that have booked me for a wedding and if you want to talk signs well they actually got engaged on my birthday!




The engagement session took place at Willow Glen which is their farm located 4 hours away from Sydney. Check out the previous post to read about our lovely weekend at Willow Glen.

The first spot for our shoot was this historic old rusty bed. I think it had been a long time that this bed has seen any action.








We hadn't been shooting very long when big clouds swept over the sky and the sun was gone. Craig took a quick break and Mary waited patiently for his return.





We know Craig wasn't all keen on the photo shoot and perhaps he was a little shy but when he got in front of the camera, he was quite natural and photogenic. These two have great smiles and this would have to be the most natural couple portraits I have done to date.















"Surely we must be done by now?" Craig asked pleadingly. Ok ok we're done here (for now). Craig quickly ran off once the green light was given haha. I don't know what he was doing as Mary, Eric and I were busy having fun taking photos at the rusty bed.

After a while I turned around to see where Craig was. My eyes caught a picture. I saw the thistles spread out everywhere between me and where Craig was standing. Behind him were trees that have shed leaves for the winter. I quickly told Mary to run up to where Craig was. She ran up and gave him a quick kiss. This is one of my fav photo.





Perhaps Craig and give Mary a piggy back but oh no Craig had other ideas.





Like his spit roast for the reception idea, piggy backing on Mary's back didn't stick either hehehe (sorry Craig, I couldn't resist!).













The first day that I arrived, I spotted the brightly coloured armchair they had in the living room. I had this idea of taking the armchair outside in the open grass area for the photo shoot. Mary suggested putting it on the hill where they ceremony will be held. Great.

What's even more awesome was when we drove back to the house, the cows were grazing right outside. I told Mary and Craig I wanted the armchair right in the middle of the herd! I was so excited about this idea and it turned out quite bizarre and really fun to shoot!

Here we started off with Craig. He is looking quite comfie watching his cows.






In the real world, would an Aussie bloke like Craig be just sitting there in a chair? Of course not! He'd have a beer in his hand!





The beer was a great idea Mary. It kept Craig sticking around for a little while longer =)








We took the chair up to the hill and the cows still followed.





I asked Mary to send the cows away so that she and Craig could have some privacy.









Last quick snaps on the front porch and we were done!







Thank you Mary and Craig for a lovely weekend at the Willow Glen. I can't wait to capture the day you say I do. See you in October!

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Wow... you've been studying hard. Great work !! (05 July 2008 23:26)  

totally love this post. the location is totally perfect and the shots you've captured are very heart-warming, the couple must be stoked :) (15 July 2008 19:35)  

logo - the verdict

Friday, 6 June 2008
Last week I put up a few logo designs and asked family, friends and even strangers to tell me which they thought was the best logo. Everyone liked totally different designs! There was no clear winner apart from maybe the original which I still don't like. I was getting so much headache and thought it was best to not play around with it for a bit.

Today, I picked up where I left off and finally found the winner! It's not even on that last batch but it's something I'm happy with. I only asked for a couple of opinions this time and that's probably a good thing. So here it is:





It's not the most unique, flashiest, greatest, whatever-est but I'm happy with it and happy to move on with life argh! Next bit is business cards and revamping the site and blog.

Thanks to Sylvia for pointing out the little details. Now don't you dare tell me you still like the original! You can think it but you can't say it hehe =p

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