About
I’m Sabrina, just another twenty-something living in Perth. This is a blog is probably going to be a haphazard photolog of random things.
A lot of the photography shoots I have posted are from pre-March 2008. I started studying at uni towards a long-term career change and that has been very time consuming, however I still fit in photos for friends or bring the 400D out for fun occasionally!
FAQ
Honestly, I don’t frequently get asked questions but here are some questions I get occasionally about photography.
How long have you been interested in photography / how did you learn?
I have been actively pursuing photography as a hobby since September 2007.
I “learned photography” by:
- Reading stuff on the internet. There’s a wealth of knowledge out there.
- Adam helps me a lot: I discuss things I don’t understand with him and we debate new equipment purchases.
- Early on, I did a one night photography foundation course which helped mesh concepts in a logical way.
- Started in off-camera lighting by reading Lighting 101 @ Strobist.com and Light: Science and Magic
I say “learned photography” in quotation marks because you can’t really finish learning about it. Nowadays, you’ll find me leafing through fashion magazines in Borders for inspiration, or in the makeup section of a department store standing in an odd place, gaping at the huge faces of models on light boards, trying to figure out how they lit the photograph. Or you might notice me squinting at the setup in the photographic segments of my favourite guilty pleasure: “…’s Top Model”. I’ve picked up some interesting techniques through that tv show :)
What photographic gear do you own?
Cameras: Canon 400D (I use this most of the time), Canon G10 (barely use this, wish I had bought a smaller, lighter camera instead), Diana Mini (new!)
Lenses: Canon 24mm f/1.4 L, Canon 50mm f/1.8, Canon 85mm f/1.8, Zuiko 21mm f/3.5
Flashes: Canon 580EX II, Vivitar 285HV, Canon 550EX (second hand)
Flash Triggers: Elinchrom Skyports with attachment cables from Flash Zebra
How did you learn to use photoshop / how did you process that photo?
I learned to use Adobe Photoshop through a lot of patience, millions of internet tutorials, and practice. I have been using it on and off since 2003.
I do not use actions, I always start fresh, using asdjustment layers and playing around intuitively until it looks “right”. My suggestions would be: Use curves, solid fill or gradient fill adjustment layers. Use different blending modes like “Screen” or “Overlay”. Mask these layers if you want to only play with particular parts of the image. That’s it! :)
I’d recommend Adobe Lightroom. It is a godsend for editing, quick colour changes, batch processing and cataloguing. I still use Photoshop for photos that need a lot of work, but most of the time now I only use Lightroom because it saves so much time.
Do you do paid photographic jobs?
Unfortunately due to other commitments, I generally do not do paid jobs.
However, I can point you in the direction of some friendly, talented photographers in Perth I have met :)