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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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I moved to Auckland and I have a camera...

My wife and I have made the move from Toronto, Canada to Auckland, New Zealand. I have the photos to prove it.

Childhood Memories

I'm going through a bunch of boxes my mom has with ALL my stuff from when I was a kid. My mom kept all my school work, all my toys, anything we gathered from trips we took - my childhood is packed away in boxes. I've gone through two boxes so far and it was so bizarre to see some of this stuff, some objects surprised me while others felt like I had them in my hands yesterday.

I have to say the school work was kind of amazing to go through, especially what I wanted to be when I grew up. I had forgotten that I wanted to be a photographer, guess I had it in the back of my mind this entire time.

I've been taken some quick snaps of stuff I find amusing and posting it to Flickr. If you're an 80's kid you may remember most of this stuff. Have a look and enjoy.

My first camera...

This is the first camera I ever used - a Kodak Medalist I which used disc film. This was my mom's camera which she used for taking family photos but I always thought it was the coolest looking camera. It was so small compared to what everyone else was using.

I ended up getting my mom to pull this out of a box for me. The memories of using this, even the places I visited as a child that I know I have photos of because of this camera came flooding back.

I still think the design is cool, still compact. If I could find disc film and a place to develop the photos I'd like to take this for a spin.

Camera info:

Kodak Medalist I Disc
Produced between 1986 - 1987
Lens: 12.5mm f/2.8 Ashperic
Shutter: 1/100, 1/200
Film type: VR Disc
Picture size: 8 x 10 mm

Original Cost: $70

Night at The Ex

Some random footage from the 2010 Canadian National Exhibition, a.k.a The Ex.

This is only the third or fourth time I've used the video recording function of the 7D, the second time using it at night. I must admit that it seems the 7D's video quality takes a hard hit at higher ISOs but this is still an area I need to play with and explore more.

In any case I hope to post another edit from a few months ago of footage I shot with my 7D, at night and of fast movement. Can't post yet as this footage was for a show open that has yet to air. I will say that footage was a lot more impressive then what I got from shooting at The Ex, so it more likely means that problems was with me and not the camera this time around!

Emmy Award winner, I didn't even know I was nominated...

This week the 31st Annual Sports Emmy Awards were held in New York. Big Studios, the shop I work at was nominated for three Emmys this year and walked away with one for work done for the MLB Network's MLB Tonight show package.

This was the first big job I helped with after my one year sabbatical in Australia - my first all-nighter in a while but it seems it was worth it. This is Big Studios 4th Emmy win, so kudos to the team on a job well done.

These Irish guys can still rock the house...

Attended my fourth U2 concert in Toronto last week and I must say it was a mighty fine show. It combined al the best aspects from the Elevation and Vertigo show, evolved them and added that large scale spectacle from the Pop-Mart tour to give fans a really great experience, as U2 show always does.

I brought my trusty Sony Alpha a100 DSLR with me and made do with a Minolta 28mm f/2.8, the results of which you can see below. You can see more on my Flickr page here.

I also recorded a few video clips but for now I'll share a sample of Bono and The Edge doing an acoustic version of Stuck in a Moment.

The AGO Study

I finally got a chance to visit the Art Gallery of Ontario, which completed a redevelopment plan by architect Frank Gehry in late 2008. I didn't have my DSLR with me when I went but managed to get a couple of interesting photos with my small Canon point and shoot. So have a look, and feel free to visit my Flickr page and leave a comment or better yet make me a contact.

New photos w/ a little Fallon on the side

So trying to update this site as often as I'd like is a bit more difficult with a full time job... in case my employers read this I'm not complaining about having a full time job.

I did manage to upload a few more photos to the Urban Life gallery. A small sample of my last photos taken before leaving Melbourne. I've been back in Toronto for almost 3 months and still have 1000 or so photos to still go through from my time in Australia - hopefully those photos will be up sometime before summer!

I also want to point out that Engadget Editor-in-chief, Joshua Topolsky will be on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon Monday March 9th. Geeky tech journalist + ackward talk show host must make for good tv. Any way, here's a clip of Joshua and Jimmy having a little talk from the floor of CES back in January.

Better late then never...

So I finally got around to putting together a website, I guess I just wanted to wait and see if this Internets wasn't just a fad. As you can see this is still a work in progress so mind the lack of polish. I'll hopefull have a few photo galleries up as well as a better version of my demo reel up in a few days.