VettasM – Professional Photographer, Vlogger, Drone Operator » VettasM - Professional Photographer, Vlogger, Drone Operator

If you were unaware I have gone full steam ahead on YouTube and vlogging (dont forget to subscribe to my channel :)), dont know what that is? ok ill make video on it and a little post about it and why over the next few weeks, if you are a subscriber then thank you

You may have followed my journey through Western Australia a few months ago, I have finally caught up and posted my final vlog from the trip, the trip to the airport, at the airport and flying home, there was one big problem however, I thought I would go in to a little more detail about what happened at the QANTAS Business Class lounge.

Watch the vlog below so you can get a bit of context.

So you have the basics right? Let me now break it down.

Over thelast 6 months I have watched, rewatched, spoken to and taken in so much information about improving my storytelling for my vlogs, one of the key components to a good storyline is quick, sharp, clips of a journey, they are whats known as montages (i hope thats right ahah), so one of the montages for this vlog was the trip in to the airport, in to the lounge, doing some work in the lounge then getting on the flight, that was cut short when I entered the Qantas Business Class Lounge.

As I approached the lounge glass doors I began recording, in my head I wanted the shot of the doors opening then a quick zoom to the Qantas logo (here is what it looks like in a photo -CLICK-), pretty cool yeah, so as I move through the glass doors and focus on the logo I say a quick “Hello ladies how are you today” to the staff behind the desks then I pull my camera down and stop recording, thats it, nothing more, no camera shoved in anyones face, camera is down and recording is done, however one of the staff behind the counter began questioning what I was doing, she asked what I was filming, why I was filming, I had no permission to film, its private property I cannot film, I began to tell her what i do, why i recorded, and where it would go, she said that they had sensitive ‘assets’ on their staff passes (her name and title?) and that I needed to delete the footage, to which I replied um well no , I asked her to look at it and see it was not what they thought to which she said if you do not we will have to contact the Manager, I simply said no problem and went about finding a seat and enjoying a beer.

As I unpacked and sat down a staff member approached, I noticed he was the ‘On Duty manager’ his name was Henry, straight away I thought he was here to have a word, but he didn’t, he offered me a beer and gave me a run down of the new facilities, which btw are fantastic, by far the best business class domestic lounge in Australia, I began drinking my beer when I noticed two Federal Police coming my way, I knew exactly what was going to happen, they kindly asked if I could bring my camera and come to one of the meeting rooms, essentially escorted through the lounge in plain site of everybody, they sat me down and asked me a few questions, they told me the ladies at the front desk felt intimidated by my filming and wanted the footage destroyed, the officer began to explain if I didn’t I would be detained and possibly arrested, thinking back, I dont recall him even saying for what exactly, anyway, I was asked to show the younger of the officers the footage and show them that I removed it, as he watched it I could see he really didn’t know why this was made in to an issue, i asked for their opinions but they refused to give it, they needed to act on the complaint and they did, I will say, the Federal Police were only doing their job, they acted extremely professional and not once did they make me feel intimidated, however could you not say dragging me through a business lounge in front of other patrons then throwing the ‘we can arrest you’ line is intimidating? you tell me.

Done, deleted all gone, i was now angry at what happened, not so much about the footage but the way it was handled, calling the federal police to assist in something so trivial? sorry but I feel like they wasted my time, wasted the officers time and created a situation that could have been dealt with by simply having a chat and looking at the footage.

Fifteen minutes later Henry approached me, asked if everything was ok, i simply said no not at all, I travel alot, have recorded video in so many airports, many lounges and this was a first, actually it wasnt, in Dubai last year the lounge staff simply asked me not to film because of religious reasons, they didnt ask me to delete the footage, just handled politely, back to Henry, when I explained to him what I did, what happened (seems he wasnt even told) he did not see the problem, and even apologised for it, a few minutes later he spoke to me and said he had just watched one of my Iceland videos, go figure.

So the take away from all this, I don’t know really, I wont stop doing what im doing, I wont try and hide it, perhaps next time I will walk in, explain to the staff that I would like to film the entry and wont film them, it certainly left a sour taste in my mouth, not so much towards Qantas, but the two ladies and how they handled it.

I rambled a little but now all the information is here for anyone to read, and maybe as a warning to anyone else.

Thanks for reading and if you enjoyed the vlog go hit the ‘like’ button and subscribe to my channel.

MV

On a recent road trip across the southern part of Western Australia (watch my vlogs here) I experienced something very special, a moment, a moment that will remain with me forever.

The moment is what photographers like to call ‘Light Rays’ or ‘God Rays/God Light’. where beams of light blast through the clouds forming just that, light rays, as photographers these are the moments that excite us, to the point where we feel a rush of emotion like no other, for me I start to shake nervously, as I push the shutter button I know I am creating an image that I can look back on and get excited about time after time after time.

These moments more often than not only last a short while, this moment for me lasted maybe 30-45 seconds, just enough time to get a handful of different shots and just enough time to stop and take the moment in with my own eyes, much like Darth Vader when he removed his head mask to see Luke with his own eyes, we so often see everything through our cameras eye piece.

The back story to this was like no other really, I was searching for a different spot to capture sunset, the weather was closing in and I knew my time was limited, as with so many of my stories I found a dirt road, they usually lead to the better stories :), the road led to a small parking lot, then a 500m walk to a lookout, I grabbed most of my gear, rails, tripods, motion controls and was ready to setup for some killer timelapses, I arrived at my spot, found a spot to shoot, began unpacking, I looked up and it started raining, not heavy at this point but the heavy stuff was close, I started to pack up when the scenes below presented themselves, I had all but a few seconds to grab my camera change some settings and fire away, like I said earlier 30-45 seconds thats all I got, within 3min it started bucketing down, by this time I had made my way back to the car and headed back down the mountain.

The take away from all this is to capture that moment but also feel it, see it and experience it with your own eyes.

Make sure you subscribe to my YouTube Channel to keep up-to-date with my travels – SUBSCRIBE to my YouTube Channel

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Check out my latest vlog in Canal Rocks in Western Australia before I started y epic 2 weeks road trip along the south of WA.

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In my attempt to start vlogging more often a few days ago I spent the morning and afternoon adventuring around Sydney town ending at Bondi Beach for sunset, check out my recent vlog below.

Dont forget to Subscribe to my channel.

This is just a quick update to let everyone know that I took the steps while in Iceland to begin the next chapter in BehindVM and finally the introduction of my travel vlogs, whilst I have not been posting vlogs up until now, for the past 2 years I have been recording my movements as I traveled the world

Iceland has always been on my mind as the time to start vlogging, so here goes..

Below is my latest vlog, I will continue to do these as often as possible, daily if it permits as I transition in to 2016 and work on the many ideas I have planned.

Make sure you subscribe and like the videos, give them a thumbs up or a thumbs down and above all please comment and let me know if you enjoy them, what you would like to see from me in 2016 and what you wouldn’t :).

Without further procrastination please be seated and enjoy.

Its almost time, Iceland baby :), I have to admit Iceland hasn’t been on my bucket list very long, in fact it wasn’t even on my radar until late last year when I started making plans for WRC, New Zealand and Machu Pichu have been on my bucket list far longer (10+ years), anyway on November 17th I leave London for the famous island in the North Atlantic Ocean and part of the Norwegian Sea.

After months of planning a simple ‘why dont you come mate’ and now I wont be traveling alone, my good friend and fellow photographer Gilbert Romane from GirOPhoto has decided to come with me to double the adventure, we have 24 days to explore and create.

 

We have been lucky enough to join forces with a number of companies, first and foremost Olympus Australia (https://www.olympus.com.au/) is on board and has been for the entire year, and I cannot wait to share my images of this beautiful country using the OMD, secondly we will be working with the wonderful people at Lagoon Car Rental (http://www.lagooncarrental.is/) who are providing us with a brand new Toyota Rav4 4WD, during our adventure we will be jumping on 4×4 ATV’s and putting them through their paces thanks to the guys at Safari Quads (http://www.quad.is/) who have guaranteed us a day of extreme fun seeing some of Iceland we cannot otherwise go to, our power supply will come from none other than industry leader Goal Zero Australia (https://www.goalzero.com.au/) who have kindly kitted us out with all the essential items for such a trip including the Sherpa 100, Nomad 20 Solar Panels, Venture 30 portable USB charger and the new Rock Out 2 speakers for our tunes. GoEcco (http://goecco.com/) tour company in Iceland are taking us Ice-caving and their guides are actively searching out the best caves for this winter season, and with Ice Caving we need crampons, it just so happens an old friend of mine owns the Australian division of GripRox (http://griprox.com.au/) so we wont be slipping of any ice glaciers any time soon.

We have a number of other companies providing us with other equipment which we will have finalised by the time we leave Australia.

Iceland’s leading Magazine ‘Iceland Magazine’ (http://icelandmag.visir.is/) are also working with us on a few story ideas of our trip, there are also a number of magazines in Australia interested in our ‘expedition’ so stay tuned as we get more information.

Gil and I have been working extremely hard on the planning side of this adventure, 23 full days to cover as much of Iceland as possible.

Our journey starts in Reyjkavic the capital, we then head North West to the famous Snaefellsnes Peninsula where we get to visit arguably the most picturesque waterfall in Iceland, Kirkjufellisfoss and Mount Kirkjufell, if you haven’t already noticed I can now speak fluent Icelandic, it has been tough but in the end 🙂 I kid, it looks like a very complicated language to learn, I am not sure how much of it we will grasp, but we will give it a try.

From there we head south to the Golden Circle where we get to see the famous Geyser and a number of waterfalls.

I forgot to mention one thing 😉 we will be camping, not for the entire time but between 60-70%, every two days basically, so we have one night in a Hotel/B&B/Motel then 2 nights camping, the way we see it is when we see an amazing spot we will be better off camping and being at the ready for sunrise than having to drive then find the spot then get ready, it makes sense, well it does now, lets see how the weather is :), at the end of the day there is plenty of accommodation available, so if we really need to we will find somewhere for the night (dont worry mum :)).

So from the Golden Circle we head further south to a place called Vik and Cape Dyrholaey, there is way to much in this region to photograph, from amazing coastlines, to more Waterfalls including the famous Skogafoss, but high on our radar is the US Navy Plane wreck where we will more than likely camp for a night to capture star trails and the Northern Lights.

From here we start to head East along the ring road. Also known as Route 1, the Ring Road is the main road that circles the entire island, it is the most maintained road as well so during winter this is your main route, if you have a 4WD you can venture off in to what are called the F roads, unfortunately the majority of these roads are also closed during winter, thankfully so many of the locations we have researched are close to the main road, anyway our next stop is the base area of the Vatnajokull National Park which includes the famous Jokulsarlon Glacier lake,  most people know this from pictures, the blue ice blocks floating in the lake.

We then start to make our way north to the East Fjords, we have a number of days here and high on our list is shooting the Vesturhorn mountain, google it and you will understand why.

Our next stop and final destination is Myvatn, we have almost 6 days here, there is so much to see in this region including the Askja Lava Fields which have been used in the past by the NASA as part of their moon space training program, our only obstacle, the weather.

That is it, below is the GoogleMap I created for all the different locations we have researched, alongside Michael Levy’s International Photographer Iceland Map and Road Book they have been our bibles, so much time and planning has gone in to this trip and we both cannot wait to show you Iceland from two Aussies POV.

GoogleMap

I will detail my gear in a later post with a little cool video so keep an eye out for that.

In the meantime make sure you are following both Gil and I on our Social Pages where we will be posting daily, along with blog entries and videos, make sure you are also following our supporters, all of which have helped make this all possible, I will list below all the important links and the important social hashtags for our trip.

Gil can be found below:

Gilbert Romane – Blog – http://www.girophoto.com/blog/

Gilbert Romane – Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/GiRoPhoto

Gilbert Romane – Instagram – http://instagram.com/giro_photo/ – #GiRoIceland

I have also been lucky enough to be allowed to post a few photos of Iceland to wet your appetite from the man who created the amazing Iceland Photogrphers Map, ‘International Photographer’ – Michaël Lévy, this is literally the bible for any photographer, actually anyone visiting Iceland, thanks again for the use of the photos mate.


Dont forget to support those supporting us also.

Goal Zero Australia solar products for recharging camera batteries and laptops. #SolarLife #GetOutStayOut #OfficeAnywhere
GoEcco tour company in Iceland are taking us Ice-caving and their guides are actively searching out the best caves for this winter season.
Lagoon Rental Cars have gratiously provided us with transportation for the entire 3weeks in Iceland, 4WD and studded tyres should prove to be fun.
Quad biking tour provided by Safari Quads taking out us out for a spin in the snow.
Iceland Magazine will be posting some images during the trip read about them here and when we return to Australia an article about the trip will be featured locally.
Keeping our feet on the ground and firmly gripped to the ice GripRox have provided use crampons that fit any boot ensuring we stay safe.

Don’t forget to check out my work on my social media pages, and if you need to contact me don’t be shy.

Check me out on 500px.comhttp://500px.com/MichaelVettas
Follow me on Facebook – http://vettasmedia.com.au/facebook
Tweet me on Twitter – https://twitter.com/VettasMedia –@VettasMedia
Like my photos on Instagram –http://instagram.com/vettasm #VettasInIceland