Karim Sahai, a world renowned travel photographer & fellow Weta Digital compositor, has organised a great project with a group of us artists from Weta Digital and Weta Workshop to produce a series of thirteen beautiful limited edition fine art prints with all the proceeds from their sale to be donated to the earthquake and tsunami relief efforts in Japan.

These 33x48cm prints are individually signed and numbered by every artist, and are presented in a gorgeous black portfolio box. The stunning prints were made using the finest colour pigments and archival baryta paper. Only 3 prints of each image were made.

Here is your chance to own a very unique memento from some of the artists at Weta. It is also an opportunity to turn our best asset  – our creativity -  into compassion, selflessness.

These very limited edition fine art prints are now available for purchase for $950 per portfolio.
To order one of the only three series of prints and assist the recovery efforts in Japan, please email me at markg@markg.com.au but be quick as there is already a fair amount of interest in these.

The participating Weta Digital and Weta Workshop artists are:

Greg Broadmore – concept artist * Julian Bryant – compositor * Myriam Catrin – texture artist * Mark Gee – lighting technical director  * Ken Gimpelson – lighting technical director * Robin Hollander – compositor * Miae Kang – lighting technical director * Dmitri Krasnokoutski – shader writer * Laure Lacroix – texture artist * Paul Redican – compositor * Marcus Schoo – software developer * Malino Suzuki – motion editor * Masaya Suzuki – texture artist.

Below is a image of each print making up each of the portfolios.

You might remember the shot I got of the Interislander Ferry Aratere, battling it’s way through huge seas on it’s way out of Wellington Harbour en route to Picton on the South Island of New Zealand. Well not only can you order large format prints from me, but it’s also been published as a postcard under the Craig Potton Publishing name.

The postcard (as seen in the above photo) is available from various retail outlets in New Zealand who stock the Craig Potton range of books, calendar & postcards, including Whitcoulls & Borders Bookshops, & the Te Papa Museum in Wellington.

You can also view the original image here.

The Gold Coast Australia is renown for its great surf & beaches, fantastic climate & a great lifestyle. It’s also where I lived for a big chunk of my life before relocating to Wellington, New Zealand. So I am fortunate enough to have lived that lifestyle by the beach, & being able to surf almost every day when there were waves.

I returned to the Gold Coast for two weeks there during May 2010 & wanted to capture some of these aspects of the Gold Coast life. My aim was to get up every morning just before sunrise & go down to the beach & photograph for an hour or so. Luckily for me, it was getting pretty close to winter & sunrise was at a some what respectable hour of 6.30am. I’ve done it before in summer, & because there is no daylight saving on the Gold Coast, sunrise is just before 5am!

The weather was pretty much perfect for the whole time I was there with tops around 21 degrees celcius during the day. Even the early mornings were warm enough on some of the days to head out for a surf in just boardies. This was a far cry from the weather Wellington was getting while I was away. I was even getting emails from people in Wellington a little disappointed that I had posted photos on my facebook photography page of prefect weather & pristine conditions on the Gold Coast, while they suffered in icy cold southerlies & driving rain for much of the time I was away. Good timing for me I say!

The only thing I missed & was hoping for while I was there, was more waves. There were a couple of perfect offshore days where the beachies were firing, but I was hoping for more swell so I could get a chance to shoot some decent waves on the points. I did manage to head down to Burleigh Heads to shoot one day when there was a bit of swell, but it was pretty small on the point. However, I did get a few shots, but it would be nice to catch it on a classic day at Burleigh.

There are 53 photos in total. You can watch the slideshow below & click on the photos to be taken to a larger version of it, of you can click here or on the photo above to go to the gallery.

Gold Coast Australia | Surf & Beach Lifestyle – Images by Mark Gee

My winning entry to D-Photo magazine's D-Kids competition.

D-Photo magazine in New Zealand run some great competitions, & one of them is the D-Kids photo competition. For every issue they run this competition where the winner wins a yearly subscription to D-Photo magazine as well as having their winning image printed in that issue.

I had shot a few kids photos recently so I thought I would enter my first photography competition by entering in the D-Kids comp with one of my photos. The photo I chose was one I shot during a casual game of backyard footy with a few relatives. In this particular photo, I caught Hudson mid air whilst diving for the try line after catching a grubber kick from his dad.

At such a young age, he’s certainly a talented footballer already & he gave me some great opportunities to shoot some really good shots. And fortunately for me, the shot I entered was the winner of D-Photo’s issue 36 D-Kids photo competition.

For those of you who don’t get a chance to see the photo printed in the magazine, you can see it on their site here, or just click on the image above to see a larger version of it.

Strapless kitesurfing in Wellington, New Zealand from Mark Gee on Vimeo.

Every now & then I have the chance to get in front of the camera instead of the one standing behind it shooting the action. This time round I was being filmed by Simo from Stikman Films for a short kitesurfing video for my sponsors – Takoon Kiteboarding Company. But getting out there & kitesurfing is not the only fun thing I get to do on this little project. I’m doing all the editing myself, which is actually not that easy when you are the subject…you tend to become your own worst critic.

The video above is just a few shots from a to be finished edit. It’s all a work in progress with a lot more footage to be shot & edited, but the end running time will probably come in at 3-4 minutes once the final cut is done.

The footage was shot on a Canon 7d all in slow motion at 50fps. I wanted to go for more of a laid back theme rather than the fast paced action you see in a lot of sport videos these days, so we shot slow motion at 720p (1280×720 pixels of resolution) with the option of speeding up to normal 25fps speed by just doubling the speed. We used a Canon EF 100-400mm f4-5.6 L series lens just so we had the versatility of zooming in & out between the focal lengths, & the editing & colour grading was done in Final Cut Pro. Stay tuned for the final cut…

Strapless kitesurfing - A frame from the video

As the Weta Digital VFX supervisors donned on their tuxedos for the 82nd Academy Awards at Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre in LA today, the rest of us Weta Digital crew attended own red carpet event at a venue on the Wellington waterfront in New Zealand. Finally the moment had come for us to see true recognition, that the years of long hours & hard work had paid off as Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew R. Jones made their way up to the podium to accept the Visual Effects Oscar for Avatar.

During my time at Weta, Avatar is the third film that I’ve worked on which has won the Visual Effects Oscar, the previous two films being King Kong & Lord of the Rings – Return of the King. I must say that of the three films, Avatar was certainly the most challenging film to work on, but I am certainly proud to have been a part of it. The hard work from all of the Weta Digital crew has certainly contributed to Avatar’s box office success, multiple Visual Effect Society Awards, a Special Visual Effects Bafta Award & now the Visual Effects Oscar.

Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew R. Jones receiving the Visual Effects Oscar for Avatar.

After two & a half years of working on Avatar, I finally got to see the film in full 3d tonight at the Weta Digital cinema. There was an awesome vibe about the cinema as the screening was for all of us at Weta that had worked so hard on the film.

From the opening shot to the final epic battle, I sat eyes glued on the screen immersing myself in the world of Pandora. It then became apparent to me that all of that hard work had paid off, & the film is something I am very proud to have been a part of.

I will be definitely going to go & see it again, probably a few times in fact. I’m also quite excited to to see the public’s reaction once it opens in the cinemas worldwide tomorrow.

Avatar, as far as I’m concerned it has definitely set a new bench mark for visual effects in feature films. Go & check it out for yourselves. Share and Enjoy:

]]> http://markg.com.au/2009/12/weta-digitals-avatar-screening/feed/ 0 http://markg.com.au/2009/12/avatar-premieres-in-london-early-reviews/ http://markg.com.au/2009/12/avatar-premieres-in-london-early-reviews/#comments Fri, 11 Dec 2009 02:26:04 +0000 markg http://markg.com.au/blog/?p=49

Avatar premieres in London

Avatar, the film I’ve spent the past 2 or so years working on, has finally premiered in London. The media had to sign a form to agree not to publish a review or even express a professional opinion online or in print before its worldwide release, but it looks as though some of the media have either written their way around that or aren’t too afraid of the Fox legal department.

Judging from what I’ve read so far, it looks like all of the hard work has paid off…Here are some of the links of those reviews.

Variety review
The Guardian UK review
The Sun UK review
The Hollywood reporter review
Slashfilm.com first Avatar reactions

Two Lyall Bay Surf Life Saving Club board paddlers head out for a late afternoon training session.

It was a late afternoon, a light southerly breeze blowing & salt haze blanketed Lyall Bay. I headed onto the beach to see what I could capture – initially it was surfing – but the Lyall Bay Surf Life Saving Club was out in force on their training afternoon with swimmers, board paddlers, boaties & even the IRB. The light was fantastic & wasn’t going to last much longer, so I headed up the beach to the East of the surf club & shot away. Click on the above image to view the images.