lest we forget

gus

April 25th is ANZAC day in 0z & Kiwiland ...& Gallipoli in Turkey.

I wont go into explaining it too deep but here is a web link. We lost 60 000 in WWI & for a country that only had a population of 5 million...that was a lot.

Between the 0zzies/kiwis/british & turkish....about 246 000 men died in an 8 month campain. Figues are very vague.

We no longer have any Gallipoli survivors..our last died about 18 months ago & we only have one WWI survivor & he is 105....the oldest man in 0z. So it was cheering to see a much increased number of Vietnam Vets marching...they had a different look on their faces & their chins were held higher i noticed.

I made a total mess of nearly all my shots...i thought i could hand hold in poor light & lost maybe 50 photos. I will have to get a mono-pod. These are all i could save...as poorly focused as they are. I had assumed it would be easy to photograph people but ...andy i have to take my hat off to you...its a lot harder than i thought.








Their forearms & hands could tell a story or two....

rahmonster

Absolutely wonderful shots!

Anzac Day means alot to me and you captured the emotions perfectly. Especially the mateship. Great job

ian408

Wow. I was thinking the other day as I drove past Golden Gate National
Cemetary that the number of survivors of the World Wars was deminishing
at a much greater rate.

Who will remember for them?

Nice work 'gus. Especially the handshake.

Thanks for sharing.

Ian

gus

Tks RM & ian...i recon i stuffed them all. Im still using the kit lens @ 55mm but in my cropping i think ..maybe im finding it isnt as sharp in some parts of the shot.


RM...what do you think of this shot ?? Possibly the most unaustralian sign i have ever seen ! I was sooo sooo close to walking in & asking what their issue was. I searched the entire inner city for a two-up game & there was none to be found in 3 hours of walking.

I think the pubs have gone forever & we are left with 'bars'

imax

Great pictures Gus, I especially like the handshake one. Have a good one

Joe

gus

imax wrote:

Great pictures Gus, I especially like the handshake one. Have a good one

Joe

Tks for stopping in & having a butchers at them mate...man that particular photo is a huuuuge crop. Maybe 15 feet at 55mm. I am off the planet waiting to get hold of my new lenses.

gus

Some hard looking men marching..

simon bennett

With a name like Humungus I should have known you were from Oz. Spent Monday playing two up with a crowd of about four hundred. A real good day.

Thanks for the photos... and, oh - Bubba Zanetti says hello.

Andy

great set, 'gus. thanks for sharing anzac with us.

Khaos

The handshake and the last medals shot are fantastic.

lynnma

Very moving Humy..thanks for sharing xxx

Lynn the pom

wxwax

Thanks for the info about ANZAC day. How easilty we forget. Nice set piccies. I too like the handshake, very powerful. Cropping is your friend.

gus

Tks everyone...i lost sooo many due to shake. I am still not in the mode of stopping & thinking about settings. Funny part was that i was there with all my gear in my pack having a really crappy time changing lenses (not that i should of bothered) when a pro from our local newspaper walked by me. All he had was a MKII...a 70-200 L & 16-35. No bags just one single sling type lens bag that would only hold one of those lenses at a time.

rutt

Great set. The two of the old men are very fine. My dad was in WWII and when he died last year he was the last of his group of buddies from the war.
But I think about WWII a lot.

The handshake is a moving picture. Who's hands are they and who is in the background. This looks too young to be WWII vets.

Is the handshake a natural shot or a composition? If natural, I think you have way oversharpened. I can see the light halo on the top of the hand on the left. If it's visible at this size, it won't be good at any larger size (a print, perhaps.) Perhaps you sharpened and then cropped? That doesn't usually work very well if the crop is radical.

gus

Tks rutt...they are vietnam vets so the youngest would have to be 50 or 51 (i have the full shot & the chap in the background looks 50). I pretty well do my own thing in processing & dont really look into it too deep....im more into taking photographs than getting too anal about this type of stuff. Its a huge crop & i wont be printing it.

The man with the tattoo is a menber of the Patriots motorcycle club (ex servicemen) & the other is a WWII vet whom i was talking to....why he wasnt marching i dont know.
I was looking at the WWII men & they now look like the WWI men did to me when i was a kid. Our crowds are getting bigger & bigger each year now & the schools are really teaching kids all about it now.

MuskyDude

My Dad, who turned 84 this year, is a WWII vet of the Canadian Navy (when we had one). As such I find your shots poignant and moving. You may not have got all the shots you wanted, but these are great.


Along with my father, I will be attending the grand opening of the new Canadian War museum on May 8th, and hope to document some of the very same type shots. I will share my good ones here.

Thanks for sharing these,

AJ

Harryb

Hey Gus,

When I was a young tadpole one of my earliest memories was attending our local Veteran's Day Parade. My uncle Pete was a Spanish-American War vet and we would watch him march in the parade. Your pics evoked those old memories. Good work.

Harry

Angelo

Hey Hummer - you done a good job honoring these men and educating us about ANZAC. Thank you.

Angelo

Humungus wrote:

I searched the entire inner city for a two-up game...

and two-up would be...?

gus

Tks all...was fun to shoot it.

Angelo may be best to have a read of the rules here.
Make a ring & 'come in spinner'

Kalamata

Just as a side note, i thought the viet nam veterans club (motorcycle) had changed its to veterans motorcycle club in order to draw from a larger pool. The black and white and sepia in particular are great shots.
cheers, ed

gus

G'day ed ed...im not sure of any name change. The patriots were marching also.

Tks for looking.

rahmonster

Humungus wrote:

Possibly the most unaustralian sign i have ever seen ! I was sooo sooo close to walking in & asking what their issue was. I searched the entire inner city for a two-up game & there was none to be found in 3 hours of walking.

I think the pubs have gone forever & we are left with 'bars'

WHAT?!?! WHY NO 2UP??

That is truly un-Australian Wish you had found out what their problem was. Nice shot, but the sign saddens me.

rahmonster

Humungus wrote:

Tks all...was fun to shoot it.

Angelo may be best to have a read of the rules here.
Make a ring & 'come in spinner'

Great shot

I really love the pics of the Vietnam Vets. As my Pop was a Vietnam Veteran and its so nice to see them getting the credit they deserve. The handshake captures so much emotion. If I were you, I wouldn't worry about all the ones that ddn't work out. That one makes up for it.

gus

Tks RM..that 2-up shot isnt mine...i googled it to show angelo how its done.
A picture is worth 1000............................

Angelo

Humungus wrote:

Tks all...was fun to shoot it.

Angelo may be best to have a read of the rules here.
Make a ring & 'come in spinner'

Hey Hummy, that link doesn't work for me and I can't quite tell what those boys are doing in the pic.

gus

No worries angelo...here is a cut & paste..



Two-up is thought to have originated in the early nineteenth century on the Australian goldfields. The game had its hey-day with the diggers stationed in Flanders in the first world war. It remained popular for Australian troops during WWII and is an institution in pubs and clubs on Anzac Day.

* Two-up is legal only on Anzac Day except in Broken Hill, Kalgoorlie and casinos.

* It can be played with either two or three coins.

* In Broken Hill the game can only be played legally at the Musicians' Club and in Kalgoorlie at a designated two-up school.

* The kip is the piece of wood the coins are thrown on.

* The person in charge of the game is called the boxer or ringer.

* A nob is a double headed coin.

* "Come in spinner" is the call for the coins to be tossed.

* The person who looks out for the police in an illegal game is called a cockatoo.

* In the casino version of the game punters cannot place wagers with other players but in the diggers' version they can bet with as many people as they like.

* The object of the game is to spin a pair of heads.

* The spinner must throw heads three times in a row before he/she collects the winnings

Angelo

Humungus wrote:

No worries angelo...here is a cut & paste..

thanks humster... sounds like an interesting game. I guess the wagering can get pretty high and intense?

pathfinder

Humungus wrote:

April 25th is ANZAC day in 0z & Kiwiland ...& Gallipoli in Turkey.

I made a total mess of nearly all my shots...i thought i could hand hold in poor light & lost maybe 50 photos. I will have to get a mono-pod. These are all i could save...as poorly focused as they are. I had assumed it would be easy to photograph people but ...andy i have to take my hat off to you...its a lot harder than i thought.








Their forearms & hands could tell a story or two....

Gus - I looked at your smugmug gallery and I don't understand your comments above about difficulty hand holding. ISO 400 f5.6 1/320 to 1/500 for many of your shots, shot at about 55mm This should be emminently hand holdable for shooting a parade or people walking. I don't think a monopod would be that helpful for that short a focal length lens at the shutter speeds you were using.

I think you must have cropped some of these images quite a bit. I liked the images in color - especially the fellow walking in front of the banner and the forearms shaking hands. Was the shift to B&W to create an old, antique, weathered look? How did you convert to B&W and sepia? I kind of liked the colored images on your website myself.

There is a lot of interesting people here and a lot of emotion that you have captured nicely. I think you just needed a little longer lens to give you the focus and isloation of details that you wanted - Maybe a 28-135 IS might be helpful in this context.

mereimage

Gus I love these shots =I think they are great fit for the subject matter--- I suspect perfect exposure etal would not make these any more moving. Sometimes you have to break the rules to get really great shots and I think you've done that here. /////Congrats Mereimage

gus

pathfinder wrote:

Gus - I looked at your smugmug gallery and I don't understand your comments above about difficulty hand holding. ISO 400 f5.6 1/320 to 1/500 for many of your shots, shot at about 55mm This should be emminently hand holdable for shooting a parade or people walking. I don't think a monopod would be that helpful for that short a focal length lens at the shutter speeds you were using.

I think you must have cropped some of these images quite a bit. I liked the images in color - especially the fellow walking in front of the banner and the forearms shaking hands. Was the shift to B&W to create an old, antique, weathered look? How did you convert to B&W and sepia? I kind of liked the colored images on your website myself.

There is a lot of interesting people here and a lot of emotion that you have captured nicely. I think you just needed a little longer lens to give you the focus and isloation of details that you wanted - Maybe a 28-135 IS might be helpful in this context.

Tks for looking everyone & your comments PF.

Yep...inexperience was the culprit. I wasn't allowing the slowish kit lens time to find the target so poor focus more likely what happened. Thats my take on it. I have deleted all he shots i messed up...the ones you see are the only ones salvagable.

Mate i did them in B&W because i wanted to...that simple, my mind does some really weird crap & i just agree with it to keep the peace.

The lens issue...thats exactly the reason why i bought the 135mm f/2... so i can photograph people. Canons super sharp speed king. No-one will stand a chance against me in a crowd like that again !!