• Sonic Animation – The Zoo, April 5 2013 (For ToneDeaf)
• DZ Deathrays – Alhambra, April 4 2013 (For ToneDeaf)
• Birdy – Tivoli, April 3 2013 (For Nova)
• Byron Bay Bluesfest Day 5 – Tyagarah Tea Farm, April 1 2013 (For AMH Network)
• Byron Bay Bluesfest Day 3 – Tyagarah Tea Farm, March 30 2013 (For AMH Network)
• Byron Bay Bluesfest Day 2 – Tyagarah Tea Farm, March 29 2013 (For AMH Network)
• Byron Bay Bluesfest Day 1 – Tyagarah Tea Farm, March 28 2013 (For AMH Network)
• A Wilhelm Scream, The Flatliners – Crowbar, March 25 2013 (For AMH Network)
• Hits and Pits - The HiFi, March 24 2013 (For AMH Network)
• This Will Destroy You, Tangled Thoughts of Leaving, Arrows – The Zoo, March 19 2013 (For ToneDeaf)
• Dinosaur Jr, Red Kross – The HiFi, March 14 2013 (For ToneDeaf)
• MxPx, Spuhtnik – The Tivoli, March 6 2013 (For ToneDeaf)
• The Tallest Man On Earth – The HiFi, March 3 2013 (For ToneDeaf)
• Future Music Festival – Doomben Racecourse, March 2 2013 (For Moshcam)
• Flogging Molly, Lawrence Arms – The Tivoli, February 26 2013 (For ToneDeaf)
• Soundwave 2013 – RNA Showgrounds, February 23 2013 (For ToneDeaf)
• Godspeed You! Black Emperor – The Tivoli, February 13 2013 (For ToneDeaf)
• Stars, Phebe Starr – The Zoo, February 12 2013 (For AMH Network)
• The Smith Street Band, Bomb the Music Industry!, The Bennies – X and Y/Spotted Cow, February 7/8 2013 (For AMH)
• Descendents, The Bouncing Souls, Bodyjar, The Disables – Eatons Hill Hotel, February 6 2013 (For ToneDeaf)
• OFF!, Velociraptor, Undead Apes – The Zoo, January 21 2013 (for ToneDeaf)
• Big Day Out – Gold Coast Parklands, January 20 2013 (for AMH)
• Weezer, Cloud Control, Ball Park Music – Brisbane Entertainment Centre, January 13 2013 (for Moshcam)
• Boys of Summer 2013 (Deez Nuts, Comeback Kid, First Blood, Hand of Mercy) – The HiFi, January 11 2013 (for ToneDeaf)
• Django Django, the Griswolds – The Zoo, January 10 2013 (for ToneDeaf)
• The Hives, Dune Rats – The Tivoli, January2 2013 (for ToneDeaf)
• Parkway Drive, I Killed the Prom Queen, Northlane – The Riverstage, December 14 2012 (for Alternative Music Hub)
• Suicidal Tendencies, Unwritten Law, the Dudesons – The Hifi, December 13 2012 (for ToneDeaf)
• Pour Habit, Totally Unicorn – Crowbar, December 6 2012 (for ToneDeaf)
• The Living End, Ash Grunwald – The Zoo, December 4 2012 (for Alternative Music Hub)
• Primal Scream – The Tivoli, December 3 2012 (for ToneDeaf)
• Bosnian Rainbows – The Zoo, November 29 2012 (for ToneDeaf)
• Lagwagon, Smith Street Band, Army of Champions – The HiFi, November 28 2012 (for ToneDeaf)
• iwrestledabearonce, In Hearts Wake – The Zoo, November 22 2012 (for ToneDeaf)
• Between the Buried and Me, Animals as Leaders – The Zoo, November 15 2012 (for ToneDeaf)
• Refused, Nuclear Summer – Eaton Hills Hotel, November 11 2012 (for ToneDeaf)
• Tex Perkins & The Dark Horses – The Zoo, November 8 2012 (for ToneDeaf)
• Touche Amore, Make Do and Mend, Nuclear Summer – Sun Distortion Studios, November 1 2012 (for OffStreet Press)
• Touche Amore, Make Do and Mend, Travels – The Zoo, October 31 2012 (for ToneDeaf)
• Thurston Moore – HiFi, October 27 2012 (for ToneDeaf)
• Royston Vasie, Immigrant Union, Grand Atlantic – Rics, October 12 2012 (For ToneDeaf)
• Nekromantix – The HiFi, October 4 2012 (For ToneDeaf)
• Deafeater, Blacklisted, Waiting Room – The Zoo, October 2 2012 (For OffStreet Press)
• Fear Factory – The HiFi, September 26 2012 (For ToneDeaf)
• Scissor Sisters – The Arena, September 25 2012 (For ToneDeaf)
• Royal Headache – Valhalla Muay Thai Stables, August 25 2012 (For Offstreet Press)
• One Dollar Short, Bodyjar – HiFi, August 24 2012 (For ToneDeaf)
• Z-Trip – HiFi, August 14 2012 (For ToneDeaf)
• Billy Talent – HiFi, August 9 2012 (For AltMusicHub)
• Say Anything, The Getaway Plan, D at Sea – HiFi, July 17 2012 (For AltMusicHub)
• Terror, Against, Iron Mind – HiFi, July 11 2012 (For AltMusicHub)
• Ceremony – Expressive Grounds, July 5 2012 (For Offstreet Press)
• Trial Kennedy – Tempo, June 8 2012 (For ToneDeaf)
• Josh Pyke – Tivoli, May 18 2012 (For Rave)
• Orbital – Tivoli, May 6 2012 (For ToneDeaf)
• Dead to Me, Cobra Skulls, Lamexcuse, Army of Champions – Basement 243, April 8 2012 (For AltMusicHub)
• New Found Glory, Taking Back Sunday, The Maine, This Time Next Year – The Tivoli, April 5 2012 (For AltMusicHub)
• The Beards – The Zoo, March 30 2012 (For ToneDeaf)
• Urge Overkill – The Zoo, March 9 2012 (For ToneDeaf)
• Enter Shikari, Letlive, Your Demise – The Metro (Sydney), February 29 2012 (For AltMusicHub)
• System of a Down, Dillinger Escape Plan – Sydney Entertainment Centre, February 28 2012 (For AltMusicHub)
• Soundwave Festival – RNA Showgrounds, February 25 2012 (For AltMusicHub)
• Off!, Dick Nasty, Mouthguard – The Zoo, December 4 2011 (For AltMusicHub)
• Getaway Plan, Break Even, Gatherer, Madison Foxx – HiFi, November 23 2011 (For AltMusicHub)
• Harvest Festival, Riverstage, November 19 2011 (for ToneDeaf)
• The Grates, The Tivoli, October 28 2011 (for ToneDeaf)
• Architecture in Helsinki, Oscar + Martin, Mitzi, September 25 2011 (For ToneDeaf)
• Soundwave Counter Revolution – Riverstage, September 24 2011 (For AltMusicHub) (Most of these photos are mine, but some are from the AltMusicHub team)
• Every Time I Die, The Acacia Strain, The Word Alive – The HiFi, September 13 2011 (For AltMusicHub)
• Title Fight, Touche Amore, Break Even, Headaches, Break Even – Old Museum, September 8 2011 (For AltMusicHub)
• Man Overboad, I Am Villain – The Globe, September 3 2011 (For AltMusicHub)
• Jim Ward, Jud Campbell – Alhambra, August 13 2011 (For AltMusicHub)
• The Get Up Kids, City Riots, We Set Sail – The HiFi, August 5 2011 (For AltMusicHub)
• TesseracT, Periphery, Iron Hide – The Zoo, July 29 2011 (For AltMusicHub)

Oh, and here’s one of Linkin Park for blog cover purposes.

I’ve heard many many stories about the chaos of shooting Bluesfest, but it seems this year they had it completely under control (I imagine). There were plenty of staff on hand who helped us out in the best possible way. A lot of the artists had weird rules or didn’t allow shooters, but they fought for us. Paul Simon and Steve Miller were from the crowd, while Iggy Pop and Robert Plant were from the side of the photo pit. The weirdest one was Mark Seymour, who only asked that we shared the photos on his facebook page!

The 4 days I shot were an amazing experience. Without a 24 hour turn around like a lot of festivals, I was able to take it easy and enjoy myself. The lighting was incredible at most stages, with the only exception really being Dropkick Murphys. Most of the photographers were the cream of the crop in Australia and it was a great experience networking, hearing their stories and getting their advice. On top of the amazing artists I saw, it was just one of the best times I’ve ever hard “working”, if you could call it that.

The main galleries can be found here:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 5

But here are some of my favourite photos plus so many more that didn’t make the cut!

If anyone is interested in prints there’s a few of these in my webstore. Otherwise email me and I’ll add them to the store. Or if you’re ever around, I’ll show you the book with even more in them.

The store allows you to get pictures in different sizes as prints, canvases or as framed prints, like the one above. Depending on the success, I am considering offering even more options!

Here’s the webstore link (it has a new random product each time!):



If you’ve ever seen a photo of mine you want printed and it’s not there, just let me know! Thanks for all of the support!

Over the last decade I’ve been lucky to play it over many, many, many courses in America, New Zealand, and most recently Australia with a course opening up not far from my house!

On my recent trip to the USA (lots of blogs/pictures to come when I finally get around to editing the 1000s of photos) I was lucky enough to be taken to a course in the Colorado mountains around Denver. Being high up in the mountains (I believe it’s elevation was higher than the highest point in Australia) I tired out pretty quickly. So I took it as an opportunity to practice my sports photography, something I’ve been wanting to work on for a while. Luckily the guys I was with (Tom, Joe, Mike) are all bloody good disc golfers, throwing a few times a week when they can.

This gallery of photos is mainly for them, as I took way more than I planned on and did not want to post on a social network. Also, I’ve included some photos from the last decade of disc golf I’ve found on my computer, including a disposable camera shots from what I imagine is about 2002.

Technically, the Colorado photos (the watermarked ones) were a lot easier to take than my last effort at sports photography. The light was good the majority of the time in a perfect Colorado summer day. There was a lot of contrast in the forest, and most of the culled photos were in the shadows of the trees or just on the edge of them. Catching a disc in the air that appeared still in a zoomed-in photo was nigh on impossible for me in my f2.8 17-50 mm lens I was using. I had it dialed down to f2.8, but the problem was then I failed to capture the full background of the wonderful forest. It was a good challenge, but a whole lot of fun, given that I was throwing discs at the same time.

I’ve had almost a week to play with it now and I thought I’d share my initial thoughts and impressions. Disclaimer: I’m not going to get technical about it, you can get that from any proper review site. I tend to care less about technical spicks and specs and more about how it feels and works with my style of photography. So here we go:

First thing you notice is that it’s small. Well duh, it’s a pancake lens. The picture below shows my smallest lenses. From left to right: my plastic Holga lomo lens, the 40mm Pancake, the nifty fifty (EF 50mm f1.8) and my generic M42 28mm f2.8 lens (I blogged about it earlier).

When viewed from the top, you can see how small the lens opening actually is. Quite a surprise for me.

I paid $249 for this lens, which makes it one of the cheapest (and fastest) EF lenses made by Canon. With that in mind it was hard for me to mentally separate it from the nifty-fifty, the first lens I got (and the most-used/best value for money one I have).

Size-wise, it’s about half. Construction-wise, it’s much better built. You can see straight away that the connectors are metal, not plastic. If you pick up the lens it actually feels just a little bit heavier than nifty-fifty. But you expect that, especially since the pancake lens is full-time manual focus. And as far as I know, it’s the cheapest Canon lens that let’s you do that. In just a few days I’ve really used the crap out of the full-time manual, especially as the pancake seems to struggle a bit with close-up macro-style focus.

On the body the pancake lens looks almost…wrong. On my 60D the lens just sticks out from the little lump of the flash shoe mount. Only by a few millimetres. With my speedlite on as well it looked so imbalanced. Every time I put the camera down I thought it was going to fall down.

So how did it work for me? The first thing I photographed (as I’ve been doing for ages) is Lego. I just got a new Evil Knievel mini-fig. As mentioned earlier, it really struggled to auto-focus at this close range. But with a little tweak using the full-time manual, it was fine. The one thing that really surprised me though was the depth of field. I was expecting some at f2.8 but nothing as good as what I got. It’s not as crisp as the nifty-fifty but it gives you nice creamy blurred background. Check out a few photos.

I set up some more Lego with about 10 centimetres between them and compared shots by the 50 and 40, both at f2.8 on my 40D. In the 2 photos below, 40mm is on the left, 50mm on the right. Camera in the exact same position. You can see the difference in depth of field, especially the shape of the bokeh. Looking at the LED on my Speedlite in the background, you can see the 40mm has a round shape while the 50mm shows an almost pentagonal bokeh. (EDIT: Don has alerted me to the fact this is because I stepped it down. There you go. I told you there’d be nothing technical about it. I learnt my new thing for the day.)

When used in a bit more of a portraiture mode I noticed a little bit of vignetting around the edges of the photos, giving the pictures a very soft-focus feel.

The nifty-fifty is a heck of a lot sharper, especially around the edges. The pancake lens just kept feeling too soft for me. Not a bad thing for most photos using a high f-stop but it may not be the best for any landscape shots in semi-darkness with a low f-stop.

In my mind, this 40mm pancake lens is going to fulfill special roles. For starters it will become my new hiking lens. Attached to my camera body, it barely protrudes, meaning it takes up no extra room (and not much of a weight difference). In fact, combined with my M42 28mm, it will spend a week hiking and camping through Utah with me in a few weeks.

Another role will be street photography. It’s something I’ve wanted to try but my lenses are too big and bulky, making me stick out like a sore thumb. On my crop sensor cameras the 50mm always was just too long for street photography. However the 40mm seems to be fine for it, based on my little try on Sunday. The STM auto-focus is really quiet too, almost unnoticeable. The only gripe I have with it for street photography is the same one I have with the nifty-fifty: there’s no focal length markers. You can’t manually set and forget. It’s almost impossible to focus without using the auto-focus at some point.

For the price it’s quite a good lens. I’d still recommend the nifty-fifty as everyone’s cheap Canon lens, but this pancake lens will probably get way more use for me as an everyday lens. It’s size and weight just makes it perfect for carrying around with me, and it’s medium focal length allows me to frame most shots.

Here’s a few more pictures I took with the lens over the last few days:

Set in the dirty-surrounds of the Arena (god I missed that place) there was a ring set in front of the stage, lit by a floodlight on each side. Not knowing what the hell I was doing, I spent the night switching between settings, lenses and speedlites. It was a good challenge. My normal low light gig settings just don’t work when people are flying through the air. I had to get the shutter speed faster. Even with the speedlite attached people were blurring too much (1/250s). After a few fights, I ended up going for 1/1000 with a high ISO. Not ideal, but I still got some better action shots.

As I mentioned, I am a fan of combat sports. At the start, this wrestling thing was interesting. A lot of these fighters took it seriously and showed some amazing skill. At times I could have made the mistake of thinking I was watching a MMA bout. These guys especially. Despite one wearing a mask, they grappled impressively showing great skill and technique.

However, as the night went on and the wrestlers got more outrageous, I just became disgusted in the whole thing. It was no longer skill, it was just mindless bashing with no concern for their safety or the safety of those watching. And that’s the thing with most combat sports, the refs are there the whole time to watch out for the athletes, stopping whenever they think someone will get seriously hurt. Not at this amateur wrestling.

One of the wrestlers was sponsored by Naughty But Nice and threw a bunch of dildos in the crowd, resulting in my friend having a nasty cut on her nose that we had to get seen to. Other wrestlers jumped off the upper balcony, threw chairs into the crowd, knocked down the safety barrier hitting people in the crowd and two even chased me out of the photo area all the way into the crowd. The last fight was the worst though. At one point there was about 10 people in the ring, just going at it mercilessly. People were hit with DVD players, keyboards, garden gnomes, chairs, tables, ladders, staplers, bolts, thumb tacks and so much more. And it just went on for over 40 minutes. One guy was knocked out cold. One referee was knocked out cold. And then there was this guy.

He was walking around in a daze for a long time. I honestly thought it was fake blood, until I got up close and could see it gushing out. It was horrendous. They should’ve just stopped it. But they wrapped his head in paper towels and sent him back in. By the time he was finished he was covered in staples and thumb tacks. Not long after this picture I left in disgust, plus I had been hit with shards of broken porcelain from the garden gnome. I was afraid for my safety.

Despite that. Regurgitator were good as always. And I got some interesting shots. Nothing amazing, I need a lot more practice (and better gear) before I do sports shooting for real. Gallery below.

Regurgitator/4ZZZ Rumble Rock Wrestling – Rave Magazine #1046 (19/6/2012)

Strike Anywhere – Rave Magazine #1044 (5/6/2012)

Sick of it All – Rave Magazine #1040 (8/5/2012)

Flaming Lips, TV on the Radio, Bright Eyes (Harvest Festival) – RMA #384 (23/11/2011)

The Go Set – Sunday Mail (6/2/2011)

I was early, and not long afterwards they started their pre-show stretching routine. Watching this, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. But once everyone had comfortably settled in with their drinks (it was just like being comfortable at home watching TV) I saw what the stretching was for. These 3 lead us, at times, on a rather acrobatic journey. There were silhouettes, chases, dance scenes, video projections, audience interactions and lots of playing cards; all set to the music of Radiohead.

Although quite difficult to photograph in the dark surrounds, I still thoroughly enjoyed it. Its last show is tomorrow night (Saturday) so get in if you can. It is a fun time.

As an added bonus, I made a GIF of Mikhala doing a chorus-line-girl-style warming up behind the silhouette/projection screen.

It can probably be best described as an indie-folk musical about a boy escaping on a nautical adventure in a jumping castle, presented via the medium of shadow puppets. It was fun and quite enjoyable, and I had a good chat to Matt, the writer, composer and male voice acting talent.

The gallery below consists of my shots of the puppets and behind the scenes. It’s running again next Thursday, make sure you get in and see it!