Personal Journey and Adventures of Nina

Short course season changes the game for me quite a bit. With only 25 metres to catch a front on Fly shot, I'm lucky if I get one attempt. The older kids (and I mean over 12yrs) get most of the way down the first 25 without a breath. Breaststroke is still ok so long as the swimmer does the slow glide and not the quick bob up and down. Some swimmers do not come out of the water much at all, then they are just a head on top of the water but at these State Champs, we had some pretty stylish swimmers.  The great thing about short course is that we can get pretty close up shots at some points where is would have been almost impossible in long course. If I had to be at the end of the pool ready for the fly, there is no way I would have time to get the dive shot first before running 50m to the end of the pool. Also, even with the 300mm lens, the 50m pool is too long for the backstroke start shot. Poolside shots are one of my favourite to shoot so I was glad that I h

Well this swim team sure knows how to have fun. What a terrific night and a fabulous team event. The ballroom at the   Novotel Norwest  was the setting and the room looked magical. Swim families were ready to celebrate the end of the swim season and welcome  in the next! The evening started out with Award Presentations and dinner.  A special presentation was made to 41 time World Record Holder, (7 of them from last year) and  International Masters Swimming Hall of Fame recipient, Jenny Whiteley.  Talk About Star Power. In attendance were Ursula and Forbes Carlile MBE . Pioneers and Rock Stars of the competitive coaching and swim school world. It was wonderful to hear their story and watch them make some of the award presentations. The dance floor was pretty popular. Kids and Coaches got to show off their dryland moves! The most popular and fun for us was the Photo Booth that we setup in an adjoining room. All dress

 I like the Country Champs. The vibe is different. There is great team spirit as mostly the teams are there together for the most part of the day. They get into the event too, painting nails, parading mascots and some even wearing coloured wigs to brighten the mood as they cheer on their teammates. Lots of our old favourites were there including Jarrod Poort, Ryan Leonard, Meg Bailey, The Coopers, The Woolleys, The Freemans and The Gilroys. Such elite athletes are wonderful to watch but just as fun are the younger swimmers. Jarrod Poort Ryan Leonard Jenna Freeman The younger swimmers have so much energy and enthusiasm. It is lovely to watch them. The photos too are priceless. I have photos of my own swimmer from when she was doing the fly and breast at 8 years old. We giggle at them now in comparison to her more recent photos were her technique has greatly improved.  For me, the fun part is capturing the emotion. The concentration behind the bl

With my birthday approaching, as it seems to do more and more rapidly each year , I find myself taking stock. What have I learned?  What advice would I give to my children? Some might possibly find enlightenment in my experiences. Some may smile gently shaking their head from side to side with a knowing "girl, you haven't learnt anything yet"!! BEING MYSELF... Gosh this is a big one. I tried so hard to be acceptable to my family, my friends, my husband that I'd assumed a pseudo identity. After a while, it became tiring! High School was painful. I found myself hiding in the music room, playing piano for an hour rather than sit with the rough group and pretend I was tough or the clever kids and fain intelligence. Graduation day was such a relief for me. I entered the workplace with great enthusiasm only to find that it was worse than high school. Climbing the ladder, some people do not care who they crush on the way up. That is when I decided to go into

One of my favourite portraits to shoot are Teen Portraits. They are happy to break the rules a little and do something a little less conventional, in this case a little more fashion orientated. We were lucky enough to have the fabulous Mijung Park for Makeup and Hair today. We have worked together quite a bit but usually business makeup so this was fun for us. We started with a natural look as in the picture above before moving to a more dramatic look. For this first image, I used a three light setup. Alien Bee 1600 on the lowest setting with a 30 degree grid for the background which is my 50% painted gray wall. A Beauty Dish to the model's left, almost beside her and pointed down at a about a 30 degree angle. Laying vertically about waist height was a silver reflector to bounce some of the light back up and rid us of some of the shadows. Camera Settings Canon 1D X 85mm lens 1/160th @ f5.6     Four small changes make a b