AUSTRALIAN PHOTOGRAPHY + DIGITAL JULY 2015 AUSTRALIANPHOTOGRAPHY.COM 19
PHOTOGRAPHER
Brett Ferguson
EDITOR’S COMMENT
Brett Ferguson says, “This image is of my
daughter, who patiently sat for me for some
time until I achieved the facial expression
I wanted. Taking inspiration from the Dutch
masters’ paintings, I wanted to create an ‘old
world’ feel and to incorporate my daughter’s
love for cooking and food preparation.” We
certainly felt Brett Ferguson achieved his
stated aim with this image, evoking as it does
the paintings of the early Dutch masters.
We loved the simplicity of the shot, and though
the impact of post-production was arguably
quite intense, the overall stillness and calm
which the picture captures really impressed
us. It’s a clean composition, which carries a lot
of impact. We felt it was a worthy winner.DETAILS
Canon 5D Mk III, 24-70mm f/2.8 L IS
@ 50mm, 1/125s @ f/11, ISO 100, tripod,
shot with Elinchrom studio lights with a 80cm
Octabox. Converted from RAW, saturation
and contrast adjustments made and some
selective sharpeningEDITOR’S COMMENT
And now for something completely different! Wow!
We loved this unique “drain’s eye view” of a
man washing his vegetables, and for its unique
perspective alone we couldn’t go past this image
as a finalist. In truth, this shot wasn’t far off winning,
and our judges debated the toss of the coin for some
time. In the end we felt that arguably the lighting was
marginally less successful here, but nonetheless the
idea (and execution) was of a high standard and we
were happy to make this great shot a place getter.
And to top it off, a very simple camera was used,
which goes to show that a great idea will always be
more important than fancy equipment.
For the record, this is how Laurie Wilson achieved
his effect: “Looking for a different view of kitchen
activities, I decided that it might be an interesting
challenge to capture the point of view of the food
itself! A salad being washed sounded like a good
subject; lots of foreground action, and a distorted view
of the cook. I used an Olympus tough camera, but
the only way to get the shot was to set up the camera
for a macro view on 10 second time delay, place it in
the sink, and start washing the salad. Needless to
say, many shots were wasted, but a few, like this one,
captured what it’s like to be a salad being washed
(and I did get to eat the salad afterwards!).”DETAILS
Olympus TG-630 @ 6.6mm, 1/40s @ f/4.7, ISO 800.
Minor exposure correction and noise reduction in
Adobe Photoshop Elements.PHOTOGRAPHER
Laurie Wilson
WINNER
HIGHLY COMMENDED
AP
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