Sisson Product Photography

Hey I just realised that clicking these images opens them bigger - try it you'll like it!


The sisson - beautiful pictures of New Zealand - website is finally nearing completion* - thank God!!!

Countless hours have been spent grovelling to the over-lords at google - optimising pages, renaming images and re-working the descriptions for each of our 310 products into uniquely tempting metadata morsels for the 'spiders' and 'bots' to feast upon.

If any of the preceding sentence:

a) sounds remotely interesting to you.
b) made any sense.

I suggest that you sign up on this website for uber-dweebs that I found myself languishing on yesterday. Just don't expect to see The Autocrat trolling the forums with biting witticisms about metatag refresh rates, referring to google and yahoo as simply G & Y, or making suggestions on Alt- Tag optimisations - for the first time in weeks I found a site that I didn't subscribe to.

As usual I digress.

The final barrier to completion has had nothing to do with this techno-babble, it has had everything to do with our photography, more specifically, photos of our finished products deployed in the home.

We genuinely thought that this would be easy - given that we used to earn our living as commercial photographers. We also think that our products actually look pretty snappy.

Unfortunately after three or four attempts at shooting our fine-art prints, photo blocks and photo magnets at home we had exactly zero shots that successfully represented our work.

Both of us were suffering from a crisis of confidence. So we sat down together to analyze the shots. It rapidly dawned on us that our toddler-infested suburban residence was holding us back.

Although it is a nice house, not a single room will ever grace the front cover of architectural digest - or, for that matter, the back pages of remotely interesting homes weekly.

So today we loaded up the car and headed around to Mark & Sharon's house (yes the same Mark that seems to appear in 50% of these posts) to try out our luck there.

I am happy to report that three hours in their beautiful home yielded all the shots we needed and partially re-inflated our sagging egos**!

Now that's more like it! - one of Sarah's shots displayed in a snazzy environment

There are many more shots on the home page slideshow over at sisson fresh New Zealand photography - check them out :)

Cheers! TA


* to our dismay, we have learned that a good website is an 'ever-changing, dynamic organism' that is, by definition, never completed. For more information spend a week or two on the forums at webmasterworld.com :)

** despite outward appearances photographers have notoriously fragile egos - hence the abnormally high incidence of leather jacket wearing press photographers (its a metaphorical thick skin thing).

Battered is Better - No not a discussion about blue cod....

I love 'battle-worn' camera gear. I get the warm fuzzies whenever I notice that the black anodizing has worn through to reveal bare aluminium near a button or switch on my camera body. My pulse quickens when I spy a piece of rubberised plastic slowly dissolving after hundreds of hours of contact with my (apparently quite grimy) hands.

I can't profess to have reached this level of wear & tear but my 4 year old D2X is just starting to get good. No real monster dings or scrapes, more of a cumulative patina of pragmatic decay - including a very stubborn and quite crusty spot of egg yolk ingrained in the rubber at this year's toga party riots in Dunedin.

Toga threesome: glad you lot are having fun.... I'm still finding egg on my gear.

I can trace this admiration for deterioration back to 1997. Sarah & I were at a weekend workshop with Art Wolfe and Nikon had sent some kind of ambassador/legend guy along to show off 800mm lenses and the recently released F5 body.

Nikon F5 - creator of many a late night fantasy during the 1990's and possible vanquisher of bears

This dude was seriously cool. Not that he thought so at all - which, of course, is why he was so cool. He had the air of a survivor, a war-torn photo-journalist turned nature photographer who had seen things that would leave poseurs such as myself looking for a new career.

Apparently his pre-production F5 had been quite instrumental in his continued ability to breath. Casual (yet reverent) inspection suggested that en-route to the workshop, our man had extricated himself out of tight spot with a Kodiak bear - by using his F5 as a club.

Furthermore, It appeared that upon reaching his car he had succumbed to a spot of shock and, for reasons known only to him, attached his camera to the tow ball of his car and high-tailed it to the nearest bar (180 miles away in Anchorage).

His camera looked absolutely shagged. The finder prism was dented in, rubber was torn off, only about 40% of the black anodizing remained - but apparently it still worked like a charm.

Nikon couldn't have orchestrated a better PR campaign if they tried (frankly, I doubt that nikon marketing could never do anything that clever).

I was sold on nikon from that day onwards and despite my grumblings I still am. Their pro body build quality and performance in really tough environments is as exceptional today as it was 15 years ago - cue the Kodiaks!

TA

I forgot to mention......

That our recommended New Zealand camera stores listing is now up on our site.

Anyone needing some new gear should check it out.

TA

NZ Photography Hotspots - Mt Cook/Lake Pukaki

My blog has segued quite dramatically towards becoming a parenting and relationships column recently. The web has enough of that 'content' already, so I thought I had better get some photography postings up before I find myself sharing my to-die-for pecan and maple muffin recipe with you!

So it is with great pleasure that I announce the release of part 1 of our 2 part Mt Cook photo-guide here.

We have also posted several shots from our recent trip on flickr ,so check them out. Everyone is going gaga over Sarah's shots and I am now feeling inadequate vulnerable and under-appreciated - think I'll go bake a tray of my incredible mocha banana brownies OMG they are sooo goooood!!!! I'll get the recipe up tomorrow ;-)

If you have found us on blogger, remember to drop by our website to view our New Zealand Photography :)

NZ Photography Hotspots - Moeraki Boulders

I have just posted a short hotspot review of the magnificent Moeraki Boulders, a location I have had hours of fun shooting at.

You can find it here.