Too much editing to do

Monique; Sydney, Australia; 2009 ©Gabriel PonzanelliI'm so far behind on my editing that I'm feeling a bit anxious. I just never seem to find the time to sit down at the computer for a significant amount of time in one single session and just plough through stuff. Today I sort of did that, but I've also been thinking about this whole editing thing. I think I just don't enjoy it as much as I did. What I really enjoy is the planning a shoot and being out there shooting, then coming back and importing my files. I like seeing them in the big screen for the first time and I actually like sorting through them and rating them. But when it comes to actual Photoshop time, it's so time consuming sometimes that it's a pain. I'm pretty happy working on the first 2 or 3 photographs from a shoot, but once I open the 4th my brain gets bored and I with they were all done. I think a lesson from this is to shoot less. I don't mean go out less, I mean shoot less photographs in each shoot. All I really want is 2 or 3 great shots from each, so why get trigger happy? Anyway, just a thought.

New website and blog finally done!

Jessica; Sydney, Australia; 2008 ©Gabriel PonzanelliJust a quick note to get an image out there and let everyone know that I finally finished messing with the new site and blog. They're now both under a single site/installation so it'll hopefully be much easier to manage from now on and I'll be able to update more often instead of spending hours trying to perfect the site.

Anyway, now for the really difficult part... adding content. I did a quick upload of a few images I had ready for the People of the Globe and the In Motion projects. And I threw in a few random shots into a section called Fashion, but I'm not too sure about that one. We'll see how it evolves.

For now, I have a ton of editing to do. Four shoots to be exact that I'm half way through and I'm shooting again this week a couple of times. I need a good solid 3 days of nothing but sorting, rating, and post processing to catch up but just haven't found the time. Life seems to never slow down. Which is probably a good thing, but it just feels overwhelming sometimes.

Changing my website and blog

I haven't posted much in a while because I'm moving my site from 2 self hosted Wordpress instalations (one for my website, one for my blog) to a single site using Squarespace. So far it's been pretty cool and the support is for the most part amazing. A lot has happened in the last few weeks but I've not posted about it because I'm moving away from my old blog and have already pulled all the content into this one. I still need to update the rss feed, so current subscribers won't see this either. It should all be finished this week.

Last shoot

Emma; Sydney, Australia; 2009 ©Gabriel Ponzanelli

I shot Emma 3 times while she was in Australia. She was one of my favourite people to shoot, naturally good and a great attitude. Sadly, she's gone back to Canada and we didn't have time to do that last shoot we'd been talking about. Hopefully our paths will cross again some day.

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Fatima

Fatima; Sydney, Australia; 2005 ©Gabriel Ponzanelli

This is Fatima, a beautiful friend and a pleasure to photograph.

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Photographs of Fire Water @ The Rocks, Sydney

The 3 photos: Opera House; Sydney, Australia; 2009 ©Gabriel Ponzanelli

I just got back from the Fire Water event at The Rocks. I almost didn't go as I was enjoying a lazy Sunday afternoon, but I'm so glad I did get off my butt because it was awesome and I got some really nice photographs. Of course, so did everyone else (seems like everybody had a camera and tripod today), but still. Here are 3 of my favourites of the Opera House lit with different patterns. The show was pretty good also. They had a ghost ship emerge from the sea in front of us and light up in flames before sinking again. Pretty cool. It was a reenactment of a convict ship named the Three Bees that burned in the 19th century in the Sydney harbour. The music was also very nice, and of course there was lots of food. All in all, a very nice end to the weekend.

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Waiting on a photobook from Apple

Penny; Sydney, Australia; 2006 ©Gabriel Ponzanelli

A few weeks ago I designed and ordered a photo book using Apple Aperture with photographs from my People of the Globe project. Because books ship from overseas (I'm in Australia), it takes 6 to 8 weeks to arrive, so it should be here in a week or two. I wish it'd be faster. Anyway, I'll post my thoughts on the quality as soon as I get it. I'm excited. The photograph above, of Penny from India, is part of the series.

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Big news to come!

Lisa; Sydney, Australia; 2008 ©Gabriel Ponzanelli

Short post just because I wanted to get an image out there. Big personal things happening in my life and I'm very happy. More to come next week.

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Untitled Post (can't think of anything intelligent for a title)

Yesterday I went to the Apple store because the buttons in my iPhone were sticky and it was getting very annoying. I have to say the guys at the Genius Bar were great and exchanged it for a new one, so I'm very happy. Definitely proud to be a fanboy ;-p Anyway, on a different note, the image above is of Lisa, a great model that I shot a while back. We had a great session and got a larger than normal number of keeper shots. I'm looking forward to shooting with her again soon.

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Procrastination

Tetchie; Sydney, Australia; 2008 © Gabriel Ponzanelli

According to Wikipedia, procrastination is "a behavior which is characterized by deferment of actions or tasks to a later time". If that's the case, then I'm definitely procrastinating when it comes to so many things right now that it's just ridiculous. I've been wanting to just lock myself in front of my MacBook to catch up with organising and editing my photographs, and to just finish putting together my portfolio to update my website. But something else always comes up that needs to be done. I feel like I'm drowning in paperwork, appointments and commitments. I guess that's normal, but still. Today I finally had a chance to work on my photographs and I ended up spending 3 hours cleaning up my music instead. After thinking about it for a while, I think the reason I'm procrastinating is that I'm at the stage where I need to pick my very best shots for a portfolio and I find it very difficult to do. No matter how hard I try I'm just never satisfied with my decisions. And the more time I spend looking at them the less convinced I am that they're good enough. The People of the Globe project is a good example. I already have about 35 images that I'm reasonably happy with and I want to put together a book using Aperture, but every time I start working on it I find something in each photograph that I think I can improve. So I start playing with sharpening or adjusting contrast or something that's just a waste of time because eventually I almost always end up going back to the previous one. I have the firm plan of dedicating this entire long weekend to catching up. We'll see how that goes. Anyway, in the image above is Tetchie. She's half Filipino, half German, which turned out to be a great combination. It was shot in Kings Cross, Sydney at night as a fashion spread.

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