Meetup #15 – Tobruk Station

Yesterday, myself and about 8 other photographers headed out to Tobruk Station, at Maroota on Sydney’s northern fringe.
The idea was to take a couple of models and shoot some “rural” inpired stuff.
Our models, Lucas Glover and Desiree Hur were great value. Lucas was keen to try his hand at everything… wood chopping, whip cracking, horse handling, things that I suspect were not in his normal day to day experience! Good on ya, Lucas.
And Desiree strikes me as a bit of a coutnry girl at heart. She was very comfortable in the environment (and looks the part!).
If I’m at all disappointed about naything from yesterday’s shoot, it’s in my own performance as a photographer.
Are the images bad?
No, I don’t think so.
They’re perfectly acceptable portraits.
No, I think where I let myself down was in following my mentor’s mantra of “get closer” a little TOO much.
Looking back over the stuff I shot, I realise that I was really obeying that idea of “remove everything that is not critical to the shot”, to the point of excluding some of the character that Tobruk Station had to offer.
So, my words of wisdom, if you can call them that, would be that when photographing a couple of great models (or maybe just family members as the case may be), by all means, keep the composition tight and clean, but also make sure you include some context.
In this instance, I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t include some more background. Tobruk Station has lots of character, and in this series of shots, I kind of missed out on that.
The beauty of practise, I guess.
Learn from your mistakes.
Onward and upward.