For those already in the know, you should know what and where this place is. For those who don't, please enjoy the pictures, but I can't reveal the location here. That said, if you have an inkling of what the place is, it's fairly easy to find the information you need on the Internet.

Since this was a first-time (and quick!) exploration of the place, I kept the experimentation to a minimum, instead immersing myself in documenting the various features of the factory. Thus the fairly constant small aperture for increased depth of field, and long exposure times with the help of a tripod (and a new tripod head).

Oh, also, HDR on a number of images. The power of that particular piece of processing magic is most visible in the high-res pics. 

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Brought my camera out on Friday evening, equipped with my Minolta 50mm 2.8 Macro lens. The ultimate goal was to have a Sugar Hit (part of the International Food Festival here in Sydney) at the Sheraton on the Park hotel, but we went to a Chinese restaurant (Shanghai Tan) prior to that, and also visited the night markets in Chinatown.

Was shooting at f/2.8 mostly due to lighting, thus the very narrow depth of field. :)

Sugar Hit was a chocolate pudding, honeycomb icecream and a dollop of cream, with a glass of wine.

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18 October 2009: I was invited to a proper shoot for a number of Code Geass costumes as a secondary photographer at a familiar battleground, The University of Sydney. The cosplayers were Straw, Minami, Jill, and Aymie, with a number of costumes, including some seen at Supanova. While the shoot started off well, I quickly ran out of ideas, possibly due to the fact that I studied at USYD and had come to take the place for granted. The fortuitous arrival of the primary photographer, Kris from WhatABigCamera.com, however, turned things around. With a fresh take and professional approach, and a highly knowledgeable grasp of light, just observing him in action was to learn more in half a day than I had in months, an experience which made clear, in my mind, the road I have yet to travel in creativity and aesthetics.

As a result, this shoot could be considered one of the better ones. Hats off to all the wonderful people involved.

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This shoot took place over two sessions, due to a combination of failure, low quality figures, and the fact that I probably need a new tripod head. In any case, the final edits turned out pretty alright, and I managed to learn quite a bit more about using flash for macro figure photography. The gimmick this time was to light up the "crystal pillars" built into the figures' bases with high intensity colour LEDs from below, though the effect wasn't too intense with the shooting lights on. 

Copy-pasta from the [figure review blog post]: A number of previous figure review shoots were done with three halogen lamps (one through an umbrella, another reflected on a smaller umbrella, and a third small one diffused through a Lightsphere), but since these were all mounted on my desk, there was limited flexibility in the arrangement. For the second shoot for these figures, I took one of the lamps and put it on a jury-rigged tripod to make a “light stand”, took out the smaller halogen lamp, and used my flash gun+diffuser/reflector combo, tethered to the camera with a control cord. This solution, while working quite nicely, has a deficiency which can be seen in a number of photos, namely, different temperature lights coming from the halogen lamps and the flash.

Readers have suggested using gels to modify the light of the flash. I concur. 

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