My image below was taken on Tasmania’s North-East coast in 2007.

Good photography is a combination of  light and metaphor.

The book featured 81 images from my Lost in Transit series. Initially I designed it in Indesign,  Adobe’s desktop publishing program which was lovely, so easy to use.

Here it is! nb  Since the link is to a flash movie, it won’t work on ipads or iphones.

Lost in Transit book

I then chose Momento Pro, a Sydney based publishing firm, to print the book. Momento Pro has its own software which is a disaster to use. Its primary flaw is that you can only design a single page at a time instead of being able to design a spread. To me, this is a fatal flaw as it means you design pages without really considering how alternate sides of a spread ‘talk’ to each other. Still, the print quality of Momento Pro is excellent and unlike other publishing companies I have used, dust jackets are available which makes books look that much smarter.

The book arrived a week after I uploaded it to Momento Pro which is a very swift turnaround.

The book is now on its way to New York as I’ve entered it into the THE PARIS PHOTO-APERTURE FOUNDATION PHOTOBOOK AWARDS 2012.

I like this image because it is ambiguous -it could be a photo of  Nick during a live performance.

The backdrop was chosen because of the tiling – it looks like Nick is on a stage. I’ve blurred the names on the tombstone to Nick’s right out of respect for the deceased and I ‘ve shot at f8 (as opposed to f19) as I wanted more of the background to come through.

For the first frame, I had the assistant position the Lastolite Ezybox above Nick’s head. I fired the flash and then the assistant removed himself from the frame.

I then took another 31 images and when I got home, stitched them together in Photoshop.

Did this image work? Not really, it looks like Nick has been pasted into the picture so next time, I think I’ll reduce the difference in exposure between the background and the subject and maybe have more light spill onto the foreground so it looks like a spotlight.

I incorporated the crucifix not so much because I wanted a controversial image but because it creates a tension between Nick and it. You start to read Nick’s face in a different light.

Here are three alternatives.

The background to the headshot below was that Nick went through one of his comedy routines and this image was taken after he stepped into his role but before he spoke.

For me the image works because of the internal dialogue. I can’t stress this enough, the relationship between the photographer and the subject is, must be, irrelevant.

Did I mention the portrait wasn’t taken in a studio, only one light was used and it was a windy showery afternoon?

Another portrait, this one inspired by an image of Gurrumul Yunupingu used on his album  Gurrumul.

He, Nick Capper, is a promising comedian and needs images for publicity. I send him an email

I really need to know how to see yourself as a comedian (i.e. 100 words) and what you want to do with the images (posters, web etc)

Nick responds

I will be using the photos for flyers and posters and probably for my website.. I would not like it to be too serious. I would like it to be utterly ridiculous with a morbid touch. Which is probably a good description of my comedy.

I latch onto the word morbid and suggest a local cemetery. Nick’s up for it.

We do the shoot on 11 August –  we start at 3pm and the wind is gale force. We initially scout the cemetery, I ‘m trying to find the backdrop Nick wants, so there is collaboration before I take a shot.

Nick’s friend then turns up- earlier, I had requested Nick supply a voice activated light stand otherwise known as a friend. Having a friend present helped the shoot a lot. Firstly, the friend, Ed, encouraged Nick. Secondly, Ed collaborated on the project making great suggestions and so took the pressure off me and Nick to come up with ideas. Thirdly, Ed tethered the lighting which would have flown away in the gale without him holding it.

Here is one image – I knocked out the ambient light (dull overcast afternoon light) to reinforce the morbid theme by shooting at f19, 1/250sec (to sync with my flash) at 500 iso. To create the lighting, I fired a remotely controlled flash in a Joe McNnally Ezybox. I am a big fan of the Ezybox – it is very directional and has the resulting light has a fine quality.  The Ezybox was positioned about 1 metre above Nick’s head; the closer the flash to the subject, the softer the light.

As the photographer, I considered I had three roles: to come up with appropriate lighting, to determine the image composition and to persuade Nick and his friend I was genuinely interested in their input.

More to come in tomorrow’s blog.

I use cropping to focus on the elements I consider significant in an image, I keep cutting away until I’ve gone too far and then I backtrack.

In an ideal world I would take the perfect image in camera but this is a luxury I don’t have. My subjects aren’t models. I don’t have another 4 babies on standby in case this one isn’t in the mood and I can only use one camera at a time. If I sought to go really close with my 50mm lens, the faces would have been distorted.