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Latest photos...

I try to be pretty active and post new photos to sites such as Instagram and Flickr. You can see my most recent uploads below. If you like, follow me on Instagram or Flickr.

Ponatahi House

When I was initially contacted about photographing a rural Wairarapa home, this is not what came to mind. Ponatahi House is a unique, architecturally designed home, set on a 20-acre block in scenic rural Wairarapa. Shot over a few days to capture the evening light, only using natural light. This is a fantastic property to explore and photograph.

Both traditional and aerial photos were taken, as well as footage to create an short video showcasing the property. In addition to photographing the main property, photos and a video showcasing the surrounding areas in the Wairarapa were also delivered to the client as supporting marketing materials.

More info about Ponatahi House can be found here.

Castlepoint Walkabout

Spending an afternoon with the family at Castlepoint, New Zealand. Walking along the cliffs to take in the fantastic scenery. One of our favourite local spots in the Wairarapa. Captured with a DJI Osmo Pocket at 4k 60fps.

Dry River Wines

I was recently commissioned by Geoff Francis of Goodeye and the team at Dry River Wines to capture photographs for their annual magazine sent out to regular customers globally. It was a crisp and calm winters morning in Martinborough the day of the shoot, offering up ideal conditions for both traditional and aerial photos. I was able to spend the morning exploring the winery seeking out interesting compositions, making use of the great morning light. I particularly enjoyed the top-down aerial photos exploring the lines and textures of the vineyard. I am very pleased to be able to work with a fantastic and well respected brand such as Dry River Wines as well as having my photos put to use by such an excellent designer as Mr Geoff Francis.

Year One

I've had my Mavic Pro for just over a year. It's my first drone and approaching it as a photography tool, I love it. After gaining confidence in using the drone, it really is amazing. I'd love a better camera on it, even more so the ability to change lenses but considering how small and capable this drone is makes it a very impressive piece of kit. I decided to put together an edit from the footage collected over the past year. Still a lot to improve in terms of getting the most out of the Mavic but it's been a blast to use. Please watch with audio if you can.

OSMO Auckland CBD Tour

Needed some practice using DJI's Osmo before a shoot so I decided to take it for a walk around Auckland's CBD. Footage shot and edited in 4k at 25fp, exported in HD.

Music - Lemaitre - Cut To Black (Instrumental)

Noteworthy

Some creative pieces that I've come across the past few months that are, well, noteworthy.

3D Printed Dancer and a Soup Ad...

Two pieces of work that are pretty darn impressive.

First up, The Mill's work for The Chemical Brothers Wide Open video. It's just amazing.

Next up, is a miso soup ad from Japan. I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that a soup ad exists that is better then anything in my portfolio. Any way, it's epic so enjoy.

Project Profile - 2015/2016 America's Cup Wolrd Series Titles

A comparison of an early animatic vs final delivery for the world feed titles for the 2015 - 2016 America's Cup World Series.

The animatic was created in Cinema 4D with the shots edited in After Effects. The animatic went through many revisions to adjust for things such as music changes as well as animated characters which had an effect on timing and composition.

Style frames created for the initial pitch process, as well as being a bit of RnD early on, served as the starting point for the animatic. I built my scenes to be animation ready.

The project involved elements created in Cinema 4D, Houdini and Maya. Alembic and FBX files were used to export camera and boat animations out of Cinema and into Houdini to create the water sims and Maya for character animation, texturing and lighting. The first two shots came out of Cinema as the boat forming was created with a PolyFX modifier. The Cup was also rendered out of Cinema. Everything else was rendered out of Maya. Everything was then composited in After Effects. You can watch the final results below.

Super Bowl XLVII Package

Kudos to the team and friends at Big Studios for their great work on this year's Super Bowl graphics package for CBS.

Earth at Night

Scientists unveiled today an unprecedented new look at our planet at night. A global composite image, constructed using cloud-free night images from a new NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite, shows the glow of natural and human-built phenomena across the planet in greater detail than ever before.

In other words, NASA putting out fantastic and amazing imagery of our planet. More info and photos over at NASA's website.

Auckland Ferry Terminal

Time-lapse covering rush hour traffic at Auckland's Ferry Terminal.

Insomniac with a View

A quick timelapse shot from my apartment in Auckland with my Canon 7D and 10-22mm. Starting shooting around 11:45pm until about 1:15am or so.

Dumb Ways to Die

Great safety video for Melbourne railway operator Metro.

Art in the Dark Promo

We embraced glitch for this projection promoting Art in the Dark here in Auckland. Art directed and designed Logan Bradley. This was a quick recording of the projection from an iPhone, hope to post a better quality clip soon.

Update - A proper edit of the projection;

Art in the Dark Promo Animation from Robert Brienza on Vimeo.

Video Glitch - Art In the Dark Promo Billboard from Brandspank on Vimeo.

PromaxBDA ANZ Sydney 2012

As part of the team over at Brandspank, I had the opportunity to work on the conference open and branding for PromaxBDA ANZ 2012 in Sydney. The origins for this sequence came from what we had done for the PromaxBDA New Zealand back in May of this year. This time we put less focus on a narrative and emphasize beautiful imagery. I personally worked on the 3D elements, including animation. I also got a chance to help out with some of the compositing but it was team effort to push this sequence as far as we could with the time available. Really happy with the results, especially with the audio which was done in-house by Nathan King. It was a cool project to work on, and it was great to head over to Sydney and check out the conference and attend some great keynotes.

This piece was created with Cinema 4D and After Effects.

PromaxBDA Conference and Awards, Sydney 2012 from Brandspank on Vimeo.

Drive Colour Pallete

I came across an interesting post on Reddit regarding the film Drive's colour palette. I can't find the Reddit post but I did save the link to the Imgur gallery created by user caulkmeat. Check out the gallery he setup with a keen observation of the orange and blue colour palette used throughout the film. This goes beyond colour grading but shows the effort made to weave a visual theme throughout the film. My best guess is that this is all based on the look of traffic at night. It's pretty interesting an makes a great film even better.

Source: http://imgur.com/a/C3jUq#0

God's Country

Exploring past Auckland's city limits, an hour or so west of the CBD and I came across an abandoned church in Awhitu. The day started off with clear skies but as I am quickly learning, winter weather here in Auckland is anything but consistent but I'll take some less than ideal weather if it will help add mood and atmosphere to a photo.

New Photography Focused Site...

I've created a new site to focus on my photography over at robertbrienza.com. Taking advantage of Squarespace 6's fancy new abilities I hope to shape this site into what I've always wanted but lack the CSS skills to achieve.

I will keep this site up and running but it will serve the specific purpose of showcasing my motion graphics demo reel and the blog will focus on animation/motion graphics posts, maybe geeky stuff as well. I'm still figuring things out on that end.

For now, the site is a bit lacking as I play with the new tools available to me, but I hope to start adding content soon.

Cheers.

All new...

Welcome to my shiny new, photography focused site. Taking advantage of Squarespace 6's fancy new abilities I hope to shape this site into what I've always wanted but lack the CSS skills to achieve.

I will keep my other site - robertbrienza.squarespace.com - up and running but it will serve the specific purpose of showcasing my motion graphics demo reel and the blog on that site will focus on animation/motion graphics posts, maybe geeky stuff as well. I'm still figuring things out on that end.

I do hope to post more of my original photography into this blog, I want to see how well the Flickr integration works with Squarespace 6. For now, the site is a bit lacking as I play with the new tools available to me, but I hope to start adding content soon.

Cheers.