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Michael applies his traditional knowledge of photography with the new digital medium with great expertise. A budding photographer in his teens, Michael spent his formative photographic years in the darkroom experimenting with the printing and processing of black and white negatives. In the mid 90s he purchased a large format Toyo View camera. He was inspired by nineteenth century photographs by photographers such as Frank Sutcliffe and the particular aesthetic that was created with orthochromatic negatives (ie Black and white film that has no sensitivity to the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum and is more sensitive to the blue end). He experimented with large format Kodak Professional Copy Film, an unusual large format orthochromatic film with dual emulsion layers designed for the duplicating negatives in black and white. Michael conducted extensive sensitometry tests on the film to find its true ISO when used for outdoor landscape photography as well as its ideal processing times. The ‘Winter Harbour’ series of photographs taken around Sydney Harbour at this time was the result of this study of traditional photography. Michael’s early commercial career focused on using film for both his commercial and exhibition photography in Australia and Singapore. On returning to Australia in 2000 to set up his own studio, he saw the advantages of the emerging photographic digital industry and was keen to apply this to his photographic skills. His first digital camera was a Nikon D1; a good workhorse camera. Michael used this camera for a wide variety of photography, mainly however it was used to create images for the David Jones Online website. Michael began to replace the darkroom and the E-6 photo lab with a computer in his commercial work. He applied his newfound fondness for processing images in Photoshop on his Macintosh G4 to scanning images taken on a Mamyia 7 and manipulating the images for exhibition. The correlation of adjusting the curves in Photoshop is so comparable to but far less time consuming than manipulating the H&D curve of film by adjusting its exposure and development times. In 2004, Michael upgraded his digital camera system to a Leaf Valeo 11 megapixel digital back on a Mamiya 645 camera body. It is also be fixed to his large format Horseman camera. The digital camera back produces beautiful files suitable for a variety of end uses at different image sizes from small crisp jpegs for the internet to large advertising billboards. Michael uses Bowens lighting both in the studio and on location. The images are processed in a mix of Leaf Capture Software, Adobe Photoshop and its Camera Raw function and Adobe Image Ready when appropriate on a Macintosh G5 computer. Whilst predominately shooting digitally, Michael has the skills and experience gained with beginning his career working solely with traditional film.
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