BugGiRL are pretty much the most rocking brother and sister rock duo going around the world. Jack and Meg White look like they’re retirees compared to the all out rock factor that BugGiRL possess. Take a mix of AC/DC, The Divinyls and just a hint of everything good about 80s metal, and you’ve got BugGirl.

These shots were taken in a small room in a commercial/industrial complex that the band have. It was ghetto all the way with a couple of bedsheets acting as my seamless black and white backdrops.

I had my mates Rich and Mick helping me out on the day. Mick supplied the lubricant for the festivities (ie. beer) while Rich was lighting assistant #1. Thanks fellas!

These guys are just about to head into the studio to record their new album so keep an eye out for it and keep an ear out for their blistering rock shows throughout Australia and then Europe in the northern summer.

I appeared in a small article on the LA Times Technology blog after the now “world famous” Cookie Monster photo!

Check it out!

You’ll have to scroll down a bit to find me.

A bunch of Soph’s friends tease me about not being a very manly man. I don’t really take much offence because it’s mostly true. I don’t find the need to settle my differences through aggression and violence, I’m not a yob by any means and I (shock horror!) don’t drink copious amounts of beer! I’m not saying this is what defines a manly man, but you get the idea.

I’d like to think that being a gentleman is something that men can still aspire to in modern society, and I guess I’m comfortable with that aspect of my personality.

So you needn’t visualise me, in my feminine ways, this is perhaps what I would have looked like was I born a girl (or would look like if I pursued a career in cross dressing). The skinnier nose, thinner eyebrows, bigger eyes and changed jawline indeed do make me look very strange but I’m actually quite glad I wasn’t born a girl because I nearly burnt off both of my ears using Soph’s hair straightner; It’s something I hope I never have to use again!

FOR REFERENCE?

Strobist: 580EX into reflective umbrella above camera @ 1/8, 430 into shoot through umbrella below @ 1/8

The Watt Riot are an awesome rock band from Wollongong and have been around for a few years. I’ve known 3 of the band members for nearly 6 or 7 years in their various bands and have been keeping an eye out on them since they became The Watt Riot a few years ago.

We headed to an abandoned factory deep in the Southern Highlands and took a couple of hours worth of promos.

The empty spaces in this factory were amazing, if we had more time, there would have been numerous other shots taken throughout it.

I borrowed a few flashes from a mate of mine so ended up running a combination of PocketWizard triggered and Infra-red triggered flashes. It kinda got messy and I had lots of problems getting the flashes to go off consistently so that’s something that definitely needs work on my behalf! I think I had channels and master/slave things mixed up which should really teach me that I should stick to what I know instead of trying to get really fancy! :)

By a strange twist of fate, my latest self portrait, featuring the Cookie Monster, was submitted by someone to digg.com, a popular social bookmarking site. The way these sites work is people submit their links and others vote the content of the link up or down, until the most popular ones end up at the top of the list. My social bookmarking site of choice is reddit.com, the content there is more intelligent, the people less immature and generally, a more intellectually stimulating place than digg. In fact, I make an effort to read reddit everyday, just so I know what’s going on around the world.

Anyway, back to the photo. Somehow, the photo managed to get onto the front page of digg, and in around 48 hours, had amassed around 105000 views on my flickr stream. Kinda cool huh?

I had been pretty surprised and had no idea where the huge traffic was coming from; A simple check of the stats showed digg as the main source and having found the submission on digg, I read through the comments. While nearly 1100 people had “dugg” the photo (ie. vote up), nearly all of the comments were hilariously stupid! These are some of my favourites!

its funny, but it doesnt look too real

OH MY GOD
i get it it’s cookie monster.
he looks more scary in real life.
shouldn’t he be eating carrots now or something?!

I’d been a user of digg in the past (before I realised how negative and mindless it was) and using my login, I left a little note saying that it was my photo, part of my 52 week project, blah blah. You’d figure people would see it, appreciate the photo for what it was and stop being idiots, but no, the humour continued!

This remind me of my ex girlfriend… shes such a bitch.

Not that impressive. Just a tub full of jizz with a layer of cookies on top. Oh, yeah, and Cookie Monster.

I find this unsettling.

that looks like crap.

‘tarded

Thanks digg, you’ve given me a couple of days of humerous reading while also making me realise why I chose reddit! :)

Oh, me LOVE cookie!

om nom nom.

Me love lots of cookies!

om nom nom.

Me in bath. EATING COOKIE!!

om nom nom.

SEE BIG COOKIE?

Strobist: 580EX into roof, camera left. om nom nom.

COOKIE COOKIE START WITH C!

Image courtesy of january20th2009

Ok, so this is a photo/music blog, but politics is something I’m deeply interested in. The current American Presidential campaign has finally come to an end with John McCain’s concession of defeat, heralding a new era in American politics. The election of Obama is something I’m almost as pleased about as the defeat of our last Prime Minister, John “The Weasel” Howard. Congratulations to the people of the USA who now can hopefully leave hatred, division and negativity behind. I hope Obama sticks to his principles and allows the USA, and the world, to be a better, more inclusive, non-violent and safe place. If I was electing a leader, I’d want him to be a MUCH better person that me, and Obama has clearly shown that he’s smarter, more knowledgeable, more tactful, more charismatic and inspiring and a tremendously superior orator to me. So you’ve chosen well!

Anyway, I hope many of you celebrating Americans wake up with horrible sore heads from a night of partying, safe in the knowledge your country has re-earned my respect! :)

The Dandy Warhols played to a packed out Enmore Theatre tonight. I was kicked out of the venue after the 3 songs, but told I could come back in if I cloaked my camera gear (which there was no way I was going to do). So I ended up driving home in a little over an hour and in the last hour since getting home, have managed to download the the shots onto my very ill and slow computer, sort through the 120 or so photos, gently massage the best ones in photoshop, upload to flickr and finally make a blog post, possibly resulting in my most efficient performance on a gig night EVER!

Lighting was pretty spectacular with a nifty LED array at the back, but what we saw overall was mostly backlit and not much from the front, meaning lots of silhouettes and dimly lit faces.

I shot in RAW tonight for the first time in ages. I haven’t been able to find a workflow I liked for RAW and all my shots ended up yellow/green tinged. I think I’ve managed to get over this hurdle with a bit of education on the internet and the end result is not too bad!

It was great to hear some of the tracks that I’d loved when I was a bit younger back in the 90s. :)

Oh yeah, if you get to this point, can you be kind enough as to tell me where you’re all coming from? I’m kinda curious because my web traffic has doubled since around the 25th of this month, and I have no idea why, nor can I see anything in my web stats… People on RSS feeds and regulars need not apply. :)

My real name is Lakshal, but everyone calls me Lucky. Laksh- is a very common prefix in Sri Lankan and Indian names, it just seems that everyone who has that prefix in their name gets called Lucky. I have a close family friend called Lakshan, and him and I used to argue about who the "real" Lucky was!

I’m not particularly lucky in real life, I haven’t really won anything serious. The only things I ever seem to win are skill based (eg. trivia nights) so I don’t know if that can be considered lucky. But then again, I’m fortunate enough to be born into a life of non-poverty, unlike around 1 billion people around the world who live in less than $2 per day. So putting things into perspective, I’m pretty lucky to be where I am, and so are all of you!

PS. I think this photo sucks, but I’d done too much of it to stop and do another one. I promise next week will be so much better! I’m cranky because the last few weeks have been so good and this one is so lame. :(

So I finally scratched that medium format itch I’ve been having with the purchase of this little baby.

I don’t know what model it actually is (i’ve narrowed it down to one that only uses 120 film), but the optics are really clean and everything seems to work ok so I can live with that. I’m pretty sure there’s meant to be a light meter module attached on top (where the actual model name badge goes) but it’s not there. Apparently the metering is quite bad though, and you’re better off with an external light meter.

If you can identify this camera for me, I’ll give you a prize.*

So this is going to be a REALLY steep learning curve. I’ve never used film before (not even 35mm) so it will indeed be a challenge. Wish me luck!

Strobist: 430EX @ 1/32 power above with purple gel, 580EX @ 1/4 into DIY crap ring flash mounted on axis

* Prize may or may not be real

I finally got around to making a few updates on my wedding site, lakshalperera.com (cue cheesy cross-promotional segue way).

I’m located in the Illawarra (Wollongong) region on the south coast of New South Wales but can travel. If you need a wedding/events photographer who’ll give you hand-crafted and beautiful images at a very reasonable price, give me a yell. :)

The name Mulletgod came from a "slight" obsession my friends and I had during the early years of University. I have no idea why we were focused on ridiculing mullets, but it might have had something to do with a couple of people in our classes who were sporting very classy mullets that just so happened to be douchbags as well.

I even played in an indoor soccer team called "Mullets Rock", the logo on our shirt was very close to the silhouette of this photo!

Strobist: 580EX @ 1/8 into collapsed umbrella high above me, 430EX @ 1/4 with 2 blue gels into wall behind my head.

I’ve been a vegetarian for nearly 11 years. Even though my entire family is Buddhist, they still eat meat and I’m the only vego in the family. My choice is based on a number of factors:

1. I didn’t feel comfortable having animals killed for me to eat
2. Raising livestock for human consumption is a terribly inefficient use of grain, water and land which can otherwise by used for humans. Production of 1 kilogram of meat utilises approximately 20000L of water, wheras only 2000L is required for 1kg of grain.

I don’t judge anyone for the choices they make regarding the consumption of meat, but I can’t say the reverse applies. Thankfully, besides the friendly jibes I receive from my friends, I’ve been pretty lucky to be in an environment where I can make this choice. I must admit though, I’ve been to plenty of parties and bbqs where I’ve had to eat tomato sauce sandwiches!

Technically, this was probably one of the hardest 52 weeks photos I’ve had to work on. I honestly had no idea how to do this in Photoshop and only managed after about 5 or 6 failed attempts.

Strobist: bare 580EX @ 1/16 camera top right, reflector camera left

This is my photo5 entry for the crayon. I do actually have a crayon stuffed into my nose, but it was of the magical sinus penetrating variety so it’s gone through my skull and come out of my ear.

There are some awesome entries in there this year, I’m not expecting to win, but you gotta be in it to win it! And I’ll tell ya, I really wouldn’t mind a new 5D MkII and a couple of new flashes from Canon. :)

I was considering making this my 52 weeks effort for this week, but I think I’ve got a funnier idea that I’d love to do.

Strobist: 580EX into reflective umbrella above camera @ 1/8, 430EX @ 1/16 into shoot thru umbrella below camera (aka clamshell lighting). This method is always better if you have 2 umbrellas that are the same (which I don’t) and the ability to put the 2 sources close to each other in the vertical direction and stick your camera between.

This is Soph’s sister Kate with her kids Indy and Zane. These are the first real sit down official shots I’ve taken for Kate and the kids and if I don’t say so myself, the whole set came out quite nicely. I’ve not worked much with kids, but they’re so familiar with me now that they were quite natural while I was hiding in the bushes snapping away.

The colours look almost fake, but they’ve only had a really small amount of Photoshop (a couple of curves layers) performed on them.

Indy wasn’t in the mood to be photographed for too long so decided to jump the fence and run away. I though I’d leave the catching to someone else and I would simply document his escape.