Miss Hammo

I recently entered this Miss Hammo competition, last Saturday night, the 26th of November, 2011, to be exact. ;) Miss Hammo is a competition for women to be the face of The Hamilton Hotel, in Hamilton, Brisbane.

I have never been in one of these competitions before and decided that I would like to give a whirl, after all, I'm not getting any younger and am already twenty-six, that's over the hill in model years. So I nominated, got myself all tanned and pulled out the old costume, shoes and bikini that I have almost never worn, even though I've had it for several years (I'm not a beach or pool person), and convinced a friend to join me on this little adventure.

We arrived, fairly nervously, and went to the dressing room; at the bottom of a stairwell, no room, just no people but the other contestants. There were seven of us in total.

The first section was Clubwear. We had to strut our stuff on the catwalk in our favourite club outfits.

The next section was Themewear, in which we would dress up as whatever we wanted, preferably as something sexy. I was a Strawberry Tart.

The final outfit that we were to show ourselves off in was the Bikini.

There you have it, a nice shot of my but in a bikini and a hell of a good time. I have to admit, though, it was one of the most nerve wracking and scary things that I have ever done, but I am definitely glad that I had the guts to stand up there in front of all those people, even though I didn't even make it to the finals. All of the girls were lovely, helpful and fun and I now have a newfound respect for girls who do this kind of thing all the time.

Emma's Nude Shoot

This is a nude shoot that I did with my fellow horse rider, Emma. She has been wanting to do a pinup girl or burlesque style nude shoot for a while, and since I am coming up to folio time at school, I thought that this would be a perfect project to add to my folio.

So I had hair and make-up done professionally by my friend and colleague, Amanda Reid, who I have worked with on past projects and, as you can see, she does an awesome job!

Dendy Postcard

The Dendy Postcard brief was an In Design exercise for us photography students to get our heads around the program. It was the first assignment that we had that was based in this program. Despite not having used it before, I found that In Design is far easier and more intuitive than Illustrator, and was pleasantly surprised at how easily I got this project finished.

We were given a template that we had to recreate, using our own photos and recreating all of the other assets in Illustrator or Photoshop and then placing them into In Design. I found the most difficult part was recreating the vector assets in Illustrator, as the tools that we had to use in Photoshop were very simple and probably some of the simplest that we have had to use so far.

We were split up into two groups to recreate the photos and then the rest of the work was done individually. This is the result of my groups hard work and co-operation.

The Heir of Isildor

This is a drawing that I did, many years ago, now, of Aragorn. I am a big Lord of The Rings fan and an even bigger Viggo Mortensen fan, he's my favourite actor and one of the sexiest men alive! So when I saw the poster for The Return of The King with him holding the sword and looking very regal, I decided that it would make a cool drawing.

I had recently drawn a picture of the WWE wrestler, Triple H, using lead pencil and cross hatching, which turned out really well and I decided that I would use the same technique for this poster but in ink instead of graphite. The cross hatching works really well for dramatic lighting; the dark shadows and bright highlights.

I started the drawing in January, 2003, using a biro, which explains the couple of blobs of ink in different spots, and didn't finish until March, 2005. It took me so long to draw because I didn't want to mess it up. I had started on the eyes and then put the drawing away until the next time I felt like drawing. I don't just sit down and draw until I've finished a piece because I don't do it properly if I'm not in the mood. This drawing, especially since there was no room for error, was done very carefully and I didn't do any more than the eyes for a couple of months. I would take it out and then put it back straight away. But, eventually, I had to bite the bullet and just force myself to move on, which didn't turn out as badly as I thought it might, quite the opposite, actually.

So this is the final result, the hands are a little too big and the sword a little crooked, but, overall, I am very happy with the outcome.

Personal Still Life

For this brief we had to take three to four different objects that we thought represented our personalities, while having a background that did the same and was neither plain black or white, and create a still life.

I chose to have a photo of myself on my first city winner. This showed two things, one, that horse racing and horses in general, are a big part of who I am, and two, that I am interested in photography, even though it wasn't one of my own photos.
I then chose the little cat statue because I love my cat, as well as the rest of my animals, very much, and they are one of the biggest and most significant parts of my life.
Next were the connecting charms; these represent my fiance and I as they were my gift to him as a symbol of our engagement, because I proposed to him and wanted something that was a little different and more masculine than a ring. The puzzle shaped pieces are a nice touch, too, for obvious reasons. I also think that the reasons for including this particular item is quite plain to see.
Ah the spoons. There is a thing in my family that started many years ago now, with my dad, where he would take a teaspoon from a place that he got coffee from, if he wasn't happy with the service. It started out because we didn't have enough teaspoons at home, but has now escalated and turned into a big joke, mostly just between dad and I. So whenever I go travelling to nice places or special events, I take a beautiful silver spoon as a souvenir and get it engraved with the particular details. The two spoons in this picture are from Hawaii '08 and New York in '09. They represent my closeness to my family and special occasions.
Finally, the movie tickets represent my love of cinema, movies and television in general, my fiance and I go to the movies at least once a week.

It took a fair bit of playing around with a few different objects; shoes, for example, I do love shoes. When I finally decided on the pieces that I was going to use, there was then the task of making them look good together. I think that the overall composition works fairly well, but I shot this outside and it was a reshoot at the last minute on a cloudy day, which really drained the colours from the background photo. The colour is probably the only part of the final outcome that I'm not 100% happy with.

Basically, this is me in 'still life'.

The Engagement Shoot

Early in second term, we, the class of DCA photographers were assigned a brief where we had to photograph a couple to celebrate their engagement. The couple didn't actually have to be engaged, but they had to look realistic in the photos.

The couple that I chose to photograph were my cousin, Andrea, and her husband, Tim. They were an easy couple to work with, as I obviously knew them quite well, and they were both very comfortable with each other, because they had been together for over 7 years. They came across as very genuine and loving in the photos and I was quite happy with the outcome.

Shave for a Cure

Late last year I decided that I was going to shave my head for the Leukeamia Foundation's 'World's Greatest Shave' this year. There were a number of different factors that contributed to this decision; my boss' grandson had recently been diagnosed with the disease, I had my hair dyed black and wanted to go back to my natural colour of blonde, to do that with hair die would have done so much damage that my hair probably would have fallen out anyway and I like change.

So April came around and I had raised over $7000 for the cause. My fiance was freaking out, but still agreed to shave with me so that we could be baldies together, and I managed to get a whole lot of fellow jockeys to shave with me at the Eagle Farm races.

This photo was taken by Kate Granzien while I was here at Design College, about a week after the big day.

My 1st Go at Film

These are the first photographs that I have ever taken on a film SLR. I have used point and shoot film cameras but never shot with a 'real' film camera.

Since it was my first go, I thought it would be a good idea to use true black and white film, and judging by the results, I believe I made the right choice. Admittedly, some of the images are a little blurry... Ok, a lot blurry, but once I worked out how to use the camera properly, most of the images came out quite well. Luckily for me and my pocket, the camera was quite easy to workout and use, at least after knowing a little bit about shutter-speed and  aperture.

There are more images in this series on my Flickr account. http://www.flickr.com/photos/r_hinricks/6350234208/

Teneriffe

These are my photos from the Teneriffe project at the start of the year. This was our second photographic project and we were only allowed to add some sharpening, slightly adjust the exposure and change the RAW photo into black and white using basic Photoshop adjustments.

We were to develop a story of time and change in the suburb from when it was a working class district full of wool sheds to the slightly upperclass, trendy suburb that it has become. I decided to show the change in meeting and social places, from the old carvings in the trees to the Powerhouse now being a popular social spot.

The full set can be viewed on my Flickr account.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/r_hinricks/sets/72157628109006490/

Business Card Designs

These are some of my different business card designs. The final design is the full blue front with the blue panel and contact details on the back of the card. The word 'photographer' is a clear spot UV while the word 'Hinricks' is metallic silver, and the blue, metallic. It took a long time to come to this conclusion as I started with a completely different design. The design had to be changed as I hope to become a sports photographer and my original design was very fashion orientated.

I think that the final outcome is appropriate, suits my desires and well represents what I want it to.

Bike Shoot

This a behind the scenes photo of a shoot that the Photo-imaging class at DCA did in the dilapidated old building behind the college. The talent is my soon to be brother in-law, Phil.

More behind the scenes antics can be viewed on flickr. http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fwishfulpantry%2Fsets%2F72157628041532188%2Fwith%2F6307925941%2F&h=bAQHUXpL4AQF7tXR4pyDWQVp97M0r5l4ju0Vo8cwnXpySyg

My Street

This was the first assignment that I had to do for school. We were given a brief to photograph things in our street that fit the 4 main rules of composition. We had to shoot it in black and white JPEG and RAW and were not allowed to do any post production to the images.

Full set of Images on FlickrThe full album can be seen on my flickr account.

Learning with instagram

Recently we learnt how to use instagram at school. Previously, I had no knowledge of these special phone apps that can create interesting and sometimes beautiful photos.