Looking to escape the southern winter cold, a seething, roiling mass of people all funnel into the Sunshine Coast at this time every year. It’s school holidays, and for us locals that means for the most part we don’t venture out, preferring to avoid the madness and leave the clogged streets and long lines to the blow in’s.
For these kids though, who are lucky enough to live right on the beach at Marcoola, their secluded little stretch of sand doesn’t attract too many tourists and provides hours of fun when school isn’t on the program.
Now this clip was more of a quick test. I shoot the 500D locked off on a tripod most of the time and after the Fiji trip and watching Brett go absolutely psychotic with the 5D MKII handheld and seeing the results, I decided I would give it a go.
Brett has this full on approach to ‘getting the shot’ when shooting people. He gets right up their faces, into the action, where I would normally hang back and be a little more reserved, preferring to give them some space. I realised that because I wasn’t really getting in there, I was missing classic moments and my shots were at times lacking in excitement because of it. So enter this test at Marcoola Beach.
I went down there with the tripod to grab some general wides, as it was a lovely day and I’d been down there for about 5 minutes when a girl came down with her little brother and 2 sisters. So after a brief chat with the eldest sister, in which I assured her I wasn’t some dodgy lecherous old man and offered to show her my Blue Card (A card provided by the government that says you are allowed to work with Children), she agreed to let me film the little tackers going nuts and having a great old time.
I discovered the joy of shooting children (that sounds a lot worse than it is hey? 
) when my father had a little girl about 2 years ago. She was pretty much the cutest most amazing little thing to ever walk the earth (I’m sure there are other Brothers/Dad’s out there that feel their little princess deserves that title. . .I’ll fight you for it! ). She loved the camera and I found her to be great subject matter for all manner of fun little clips. I loved shooting them but I think I mostly shot them for her, as she would watch them over and over, mesmerised by the fact that she was on TV. I got a real kick out of that. But I digress. . .
I started off pretty far away, on my long lens, the old Canon EF 75-300 f4-5.6. After getting a couple of shots with that, I whacked the Canon 50mm f.18 II on there and not being in close enough, decided to get some handheld stuff of the waves. I was just about to pack it up, when they started playing in the sand, digging and drawing things. So up I trot and after asking nicely if I could get right in there, did exactly that. Hand held and just trying to get in and get amongst it. . .There was sand and crap flying everywhere, but it was great fun and I was pleased with the shots. They definitely are a lot more lively than they would have been if I had of stayed locked off on the long lens from 20 metres away.
So did I learn a valuable lesson? Absolutely! I’ll definitely be doing more of this again soon. 
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