Nikon D2H giveaway closing tonight!

UPDATE - Congratulations to @desherinka, winner of the Nikon D2H body - Can only be 1 winner, thanks guys for your entries and twitter follows!

UPDATE II: Congratulations to Gonzalo Villegas (@desherinka) from La Paz, Bolivia who won the camera, it is now on the long haul to South America!

Closing at 23:59 AEST (13:59 UTC) tonight (31 March 2009) is my D2H giveaway

And, unlike a TWiP/Scott Bourne giveaway, I am happy to send the camera to any corner of the earth! I won't pretend it is the 'lawyers' who say it is restricted to my country only, I am happy to pay the postage whether you live in the street next to me or on a mountain-top in Nepal. Follow the instructions at this link and I will announce the winners tomorrow. (and no, it won't be an April Fool's joke!)

How the papers use my pics...

I've had quite a few people ask me recently about what happens with and who uses the photographs I shoot at NRL games. I have included clippings of the way major metro papers used my pics - they include the Sunday Mail & The Courier-Mail (QLD), Daily Telegraph (NSW) and the Herald Sun and the Sunday Herald Sun (VIC).

The changing face of my recent NRL media tags

Just got a bit of a chuckle when I found my recent NRL media accreditation tags, it's a bit of a shame that they gave me a pic this year - I was hoping to draw something even more interesting this year!

Check out these toads!

Cane toads have been a major environmental menace in Northern Australia for decades and to get locals involved in their eradication the Townsville City Council have offered prizes and trophies for categories such as heaviest toad and the heaviest haul. Trained officials will then identify and humanely euthanase the toads using carbon dioxide gas. The pests will be frozen for use by James Cook University's biology program, or made into souvenirs by a local taxidermist.

I went down to take a look this morning as there is always interest in pics of big toads!

Glenn Cullen with his 556g monster "Bigfoot"

Why is my upload so slow! :-(

This sucks, I am on the sideline ready to shoot the North Queensland Cowboys v Melbourne Storm NRL match and this is the data rate I am getting - My only goal is to upload and of course I am blessed with great download speeds and terrible upload speeds. F**k Telstra!

I'm stuck with redirecting a subdomain to Blogger :-(

UPDATE: PROBLEM SOLVED - I was doing everything right - I think it was a delay in DNS updates.

Hi guys, hoping someone can help me out with some advice!
Currently if you head to my blog from http://blog.cameronlaird.com (give it a try, click the link) you will end up at http://camlaird.blogspot.com with http://camlaird.blogspot.com as the url in the address bar.

I have added a cname record in my GoDaddy domain manager pointing the subdomain 'blog' to ghs.google.com

(click here to see fullsize)

Next I go into Blogger settings / publishing and adjust my settings as per the pic below

(click here to see fullsize)

Now when I go to http://camlaird.blogspot.com I end up with this page below

(click here to see fullsize)

If I go to http://blog.cameronlaird.com it bounces back and forth until it ends up at the same page shown above. Dammit!

Would love if someone could figure this out for me or knew of an easy answer!

Are you an iPhone snapper?

A colleague and I have been doing a simple "iPhone photo competition" over the past couple of months but with only the two of us involved it got a bit dull. :-(

Would love to get some more snappers involved, you only need to follow these qualifiers

1. Photo MUST be taken on an iPhone in the standard camera app
2. Photo MUST NOT be altered digitally in any way
3. Email photo from the "Photos" application on your iPhone to week11lets@photos.flickr.com
4. The subject line of your email will be the title, the body of your email will be the description.
5. View all the pics at this 'iPhone Snapper' Flickr link (iPhone friendly link here)
6. Couldn't be easier!

Have you come upon this post from Twitter or do you use Twitter? Would love you to retweet this by clicking this link - Follow me on Twitter here and feel free to suggest an iPhone snapping theme!

When you have sent a pic why not let Twitter know by tweeting the link to your photo and including the hashtag #iphonesnapper

iPhone Photo of Cammo by Cammo :-)

Porkgasm!

Was just about to make some lunch and stumbled on this thanks to Twitter user @tsvnq. Not so hungry anymore!

Here we have the Porkgasm which consists of Bacon strips, bacon sausage, ham sausage, ham slices, smoked pork sausage and roasted pork belly surrounded by ground sausage shaped into a pig, wrapped in bacon, roasted and then garnished with chili ears and tail. Mmmm, tasty!

You can see some more healthy foods like this at this tasty link!

Nikon D2H giveaway closing soon!

I have set a closing time for entries to win a Nikon D2H (info here). No entries will be accepted after 23:59 AEST on 31/03/2009 (13:59 UTC on 31/03/2009). I will tally up all the entries (in traditional fashion) and I plan to draw it live on air (if it works) on 01/04/2009. (Yes I know it is April Fools Day but this is no joke, there will be an actual working Nikon D2H given away - it's just a coincidence that the draw is on that day!)

I will update this post and Twitter to let you all know about the draw.

Good luck guys!

Grab extra chances to win a Nikon D2H!

I am running a Twitter/web competition to win a used but working Nikon D2H body - info on the competition is here and pics of the actual camera (and my ugly mug!) are here.

To increase your chances three-fold follow the instructions below.

1. Retweet this tweet by clicking here (easy to do, already filled in!)
2. Head over to my website at www.cameronlaird.com and have a look at some of my pics.
3. Put a link to my website on your blog or website (link to Cameron Laird - Photographer http://www.cameronlaird.com)
4. Send an email to websitelink@cameronlaird.com with details of where you have placed the link.

To increase your chances five-fold follow the instructions below.

1. Retweet this tweet by clicking here (easy to do, already filled in!)
2. Head over to my website at www.cameronlaird.com and have a look at some of my pics.
3. Write a post on your blog or website about my photography, mention I am a commercial and editorial photographer from Townsville, Australia and include a link to my website in the post and also in the links section of your blog or website (link to Cameron Laird - Photographer http://www.cameronlaird.com)
4. Send an email to websitelink@cameronlaird.com with details of the post and where you have placed the link.

Best of luck guys, make sure you are following me on Twitter to see who wins, it will be revealed in coming days!

Pics of the Nikon D2H I am giving away

As you may have read yesterday on my blog post here I am giving away a much loved working Nikon D2H. I thought it only fair that I posted a few pics of the actual camera and document the condition.

As I mentioned previously it has served me well and just prior to switching brands the LCD screen cover on the top display was damaged by an over-zealous baggage inspector. The LCD works faultlessly, just try not to go in pelting rain! The only other noticeable issue is with the card-door rubber. Unfortunately this is virtually an inevitable problem with Nikon D1 and D2 models, the card door rubber fell of a majority of these cameras due to poor adhesive. You can read a bit more about it here. It makes NO difference to the operation of the camera whatsoever. Nikon replaced this rubber twice during regular servicing and it would just keep falling off, in the end I just figured it was destined to stay that way!

Still interested in winning this camera? Simply follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Cammo and click this link to retweet and get your first entry.

Nikon D2H Giveaway!

I will be GIVING AWAY a working Nikon D2H camera very soon. There will be a few simple conditions like following me and retweeting on Twitter as well as linking to my website but I will send it anywhere in the world without fail. The camera has served my very well but I have changed over to Canon and this body is just sitting alone in a cupboard and it is itching to get out and shoot! Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Cammo and click this link to retweet and get your first entry.

Update: After you get your first entry head to this post to see pics of the camera and this post to get more chances to win!

Update II: Congratulations to Gonzalo Villegas from La Paz, Bolivia who won the camera, it is now on the long haul to South America!

Note: The giveaway is a body only, no lens - the pic below is not of the actual camera.

Cowboys score an easy home win (and I score a back page)

The Cowboys cruised to an easy 42-14 win over the Wests Tigers in their first home game for season '09. Getting into the swing of a new season was pretty tricky - had a crappy night and only filed about 25 decent pics although in brighter news I debuted the 'custom photographers bench' which left other snappers and Fox Sports guys open mouthed in amazement! :-) (link)

A new contraption makes its debut at Dairy Farmers

A bevy of power-tools and a dozen beers with my mate Ian Hitchcock (pictured) from Getty Images and we knocked up this state-of-the-art photographers table. Laptops protected, power available, plenty of comfort - and all we have to do now is sell advertising space on the front (although I think the NRL might complain!)

You can see some of my photos at this link and Ian's photos at this link

How long should a battery last???

Mum & Dad were sorting through old cards recently when they stumbled on this old "Bon Voyage" card from 1991. Can you believe it, more than 17 years old and still playing its little tune!

A watch phone you could really wear!

Hyundai has developed a watch phone you could really wear, it looks pretty damn cool - what wouldn't be cool is walking around with your left arm up to your ear. Anyway - cool concept but I think I'll stick with my iPhone for now! Check out the video below

I'm a bipartisan snapper!

I had to do some fresh pics of Thuringowa MP Craig Wallace last week and just as I thought, he pulled me up on the embarrassing pic I had of him in Brisbane's MX newspaper last week (I blogged about it here). He was a good sport and saw the funny side of it so to give him even space on my 'bipartisan' blog here is a pic of him with his shirt on!

Robbie Fowler lands in Townsville

Most thought this day would never come. Former England international and Liverpool star Robbie Fowler signing with debut A-League team North Queensland Fury FC? Well it happened and today he jetted into town for a two year stint with the fledgling club. About 150 supporters welcomed Fowler at the airport before he spared time for local, national and international media at a press function. I was there and shot video of the conference and pics which have been distributed internationally.

Robbie Fowler Press Conference from Cameron Laird - Photographer on Vimeo.

Photo: Cameron Laird - Copyright 2009

Some of my clippings eventually online!

I have been doing a bit of a springclean of my cupboards and have started scanning and archiving newspaper and magazine clippings. My dream is that every time a paper or mag ran a pic that they would automatically send a pdf of the page to me.... Wishful thinking! Anyway, newspapers are at this link and magazines are at this link. I only have probably one in twenty things that have ever been used but I guess i have to start somewhere!

Amazing House!

Did a few pics last week of an amazing house built by engineer Dick Cerny in Townsville. The Courier-Mail's Melissa Ketchell blogged about it here (link) and I have put a few pics below to show you all.

Wedding photography, I'm back!

Well, not really as I am pretty picky nowadays. See the below questionnare to see if you would qualify.

a. Is your wedding in the NQ area between 01 November and 31 May?
b. Do you object to me wearing short sleeves?
c. Do you want a big flashy super-expensive album filled with overpriced prints to stick in a drawer?
d. Would you object to just getting the well prepared high-resolution files on disc?
e. Do you want to spend your whole wedding reception being photographed rather than relaxing?

If you answered yes to any of these then I'm afraid that I am probably not your man [I could make exceptions for a. providing your whole wedding takes place in a climate controlled dome set at 23C and about 34% humidity :-)]

Want to see a few samples from a couple of recent wedding? Click here

The wedding of Carl Webb and Renee Masterson - 10 October 2008

R U a Coldplay fan?

Quite a nice interview with Chris Martin on Australia's 60 Minutes last Sunday night. In 2 parts below for your viewing pleasure :-)

'Drive' - 275km in 2.5 minutes

I bought myself a Canon G10 last week for an upcoming long-term commercial timelapse job. Thought I would give it a quick battery test while driving the between Townsville and Airlie Beach on Saturday to cover Cyclone Hamish. The video contains 2268 frames which only used about 2/5 of the battery in the camera. Great news!
Soundtrack is Nocturn (Even Numbers Remix) by 2Inventions
Click here to watch in 1280x720P high definition


Drive from Cameron Laird - Photographer on Vimeo.

Handyman with a soldering iron!

Had a bit of a brainwave today and realised I could adapt my cheapo chinese intervalometer (which is AWESOME!) to work with both my 1DMKIII's and my new G10. I cut the 3 pin N3 type plug (for EOS1DMKIII) off and soldered on a 2.5mm stereo plug wiring it as pictured below.

I then added a 2.5mm female stereo socket to the left over bit of cable with the 3 pin N3 plug wiring it so that it matched up with the wiring as above. Both work perfect!

I just love chalk street art like this!

You'll need to get up earlier to beat me Craig!

Ok, I feel a bit bad about this but then again, what's a news shooter to do when a couple of pollies get changed by the roadside - this image from Brisbane's MX afternoon paper. [click image for fullsize version]

Fantastic Lego recreations of famous photographs

Just stumbled upon a set of truly fantastic photos by UK snapper Mike Stimpson. You can find the full set at this link but make sure you also check out the photo notes for info on how Mike shot the pics. Enjoy!

Below is the original Henri Cartier-Bresson's "Behind the Gare Saint Lazare" as well as the lego recreation and the studio setup.