Kapa’s Blog

Today at the Greek Orthodox Church of St Nicholas in Marrickville, I was fortunate enough to photograph the christening of a gorgeous little doll called Kleopatra.

The godmother was from Mexico Melbourne, you know what I mean, south of the border. Anyway, she was lovely and one of my favourite pics of the day was this candid just before the service started.

The timing of the christening was late afternoon, right about the time she should have been napping. Moments after I took this picture she had fallen asleep.

The oil used in the service was special, all the way from Greece.

Of course, the one shot I always try to get, the baby immersed in the baptismal font.

Finish of with proof she’s a little doll, one grandma holding her, the other putting the final touches to her outfit before being returned to the godmother for the remaining of the service.

Although the weather was consistent rain for the entire day, this couple and their entire bridal party were fantastic. Smiles, laughter and a super relaxed atmosphere for some fantastic shots.

A proud father looks on the moment before Cherie is about to walk into the church.

There were some lovely floral arrangements in the church.

A relaxed candid.

Here is a tip if you’re getting married. Book a hotel that has a great foyer, bar, and plenty of interesting spaces inside. Hotels usually have no issue with the bridal party using their premises for photographs. As the rain didn’t stop for most of the day, we headed to the Sydney Park Hyatt and took quite a large variety of shots, this one my favourite.

When we were heading to the reception, we stopped off at the Museum for 10 minutes of some quick outdoor shots (it was still raining), and we had a bit more fun there as well.

in the name of love, before your break my heart

Happy New Year, Merry Christmas, and believe or not, they’re already selling Easter Eggs at the supermarket, so have a great Easter as well.

Firstly apologies and thank you to all those that tried to or succeeded in contacting me over the past few weeks. I have finally returned all calls & e-mails, if you haven’t heard from yet me yet drop me a note or ring b/c your message has gone MIA.

I took a break with my family and got away from Sydney for a few weeks. Since I know a number of relatives and friends read my blog, and for past and future clients to get a bit of a feel to my personality, I’m going to indulge myself with a few snapshots and comments from the past few weeks.

All images taken with my pocket sized P&S, love the ease of use & quality it delivers.

I’ll start of with new years eve dinner at the Italian Forum at one of our favourite restaurants Sapore by the fountain.

I’m the one on the right

This was followed by a light rail ride into Darling Harbour to see the fireworks.

We were right under the action and the noise started to scare the young one.

A couple days later we loaded the car & headed north, first stop Coffs Harbour where we did the tourist thing.

That night we went to the local carnival where the kids had fun on the rides and I played with the pre-sets on my camera. I like these, straight out of the camera, no post processing.

Eventually we reached our destination, beautiful Burleigh Heads where the view from our 18th floor room would have been fantastic if it hadn’t been for the weather.

This sign was up for the first few days we were there, heart breaking.

However Queensland didn’t fail us and soon the weather was fantastic and we headed of to the theme parks.

Here is a photographers tip, never store your camera next to an icy cold drink bottle, the lens tends to fog up.

And the boys did what they loved doing.

Should also mention thanks to my brother for lending us MIO that did a fantastic job at not getting us lost, unfortunately, this model is not designed to avoid traffic.

Another gorgeous day, another theme park, somewhere in there you’ll find my sons.

Now for some reason the girls wanted to stop into a certain hotel with an Italian sounding name that is apparently the bees knees. What better place to refresh ourselves with coffee and milkshakes

Finally on our way home with a stopover at a great little place called Forster.
Part of the “Great Lakes”.

I spend one morning baiting hooks with live worms.

Not pleasant but the end result was worth it, both boys caught their first fish.

If you look carefully, he jagged this one by clipping the gill, the bait it still on the hook

When I threw this one back in, the young one got quite upset. He wanted to take it home and put it in a bowl to keep it as a pet.

That’s it for now, next time you hear from me I’ll be updating the blog with some fresh images from the most recent event I’ve covered.

Have a healthy & safe 2008.

PS: For those readers that live in or near New York, there is a 4 year old girl that they are desperately trying to find a bone marrow match as she has been recently diagnosed with MDS leukaemia. My mate & great photographer Christos from Long Island is supporting this little girls cause by publishing testing locations & dates as well as rallying people to come in for a swab in an attempt to find a match.
Click on this paragraph for details.

Today I arrived early at the Annunciation of our Lady Greek Orthodox church so I grabbed the opportunity while no-one was there to takes a few images of the architecture. I really love sandstone cathedrals with the exposed timber rafters, black and white is the only way to show this image.

I was there for the baptism of Zayle Pavlos, and I even tried something different, I stepped outside the doorway during the service of the Catechumen grabbing the architectural lines of the cathedrals doorway.

Zayle gave me some great eye contact, taken just before he was going to be baptised.

Of course my mandatory shot of the child in the baptismal font, as usual, black and white.

At the reception was a great looking Christmas tree, it is that time of year after all. Great backdrop to take a pic of Zayle & his mum.

The symmetry and colours of the bombomniere boxes makes an interesting picture. For those that have been following my blog, I used the remote flash triggers to take this image and the ones of the cake. The flash was sitting on a table about 2 metres away from me pointing straight to the ceiling on 1/8 power. Note how there is no shadows, no bright spots from the flash, beautiful soft light. If I hadn’t told you, would you have thought I used a flash ?

Finally the delicious cake.

Check out the detail, they obviously had some kind of stamp to get this done.

That’s it for 2007. Interesting fact or co-incidence? My last entry in 2006 was also a Christening at the Annunciation of our Lady, I’ve got goosebumps down my spine just typing this

Everyone out there, may God bless you & your family with a safe and happy Christmas, and may 2008 bring you everything you desire.

Kapa

I’ve finally finished refreshing the layout of my website, stage 1 at least. The main changes to note are:
- same colour scheme as the blog
- all images displayed are random, refresh the page for a new selection
- smarter “behind the scenes” coding

Check out my new photography website, or browse the boring old one here

Stage 2 is the difficult one, that’s updating the images and the gallery. Some of the images displayed on my website are more than seven years old, shot on film & scanned !!!!!! Can you spot them?

Today Laura got baptised at St Charles Borromeo Catholic Church at Gladesville. The traditions starts at home, this is when the godparents dress the baby in preparation for its baptism. I love this candid / photo journalistic style image. The godmother is looking at the baptismal dress that Laura is going to wear and if you look in the mirror you can see Laura’s mum holding it out showing it to her. If case you’re wondering, this wasn’t a set up shot.

Laura dressed in her outfit and laid out on her parents bed, she sat there like a little princess.

I grabbed a bunch of close ups, and I really wanted to show off her lovely big brown eyes. Decisions, decisions, couldn’t decide which photo I liked the most, couldn’t decide which treatment suited her best, so here is a combination of all.

Laura held by mum and dad standing right next to her during the baptism.

Outside as everyone was leaving, I grabbed Nadia (godmother) for an idea I got. It was a pearler of a day, sunshine, clouds to add perspective, an old sandstone church, what more could I ask for.

The beauty of a good flash, I manually pushed the output by two full stops to balance the very bright background with Nadia in the shadows.

At the reception, this little feller was being passed around for everyone to sign. A really cool outfit and a fine momemto for Laura to treasure.