Cog Creative Space

15/12/2024

The National Photographic Portrait Prize 2024 celebrates established and emerging artistic talent from across the country. The works by the 34 selected finalists provide a powerful visual record of the year, reflecting a particular time in Australian culture, both socially and artistically. The winn...

12/12/2024

We had a nice little xmas gathering at the studio to help us welcome the festive season. It was lovely to gather friends together and celebrate our connections, friendships, collaborations and networks. Thanks to the amazing Sammy from for the amazing party-starting dance session! Those who felt up to it got right into some cool West African dance moves whilst others enjoyed the show. Sammy was great at getting us into the spirit of the afternoon. Highly recommended for gatherings!! Thanks to the Cog team for pulling together some wicked gin cocktails and a fantastic spread of nibbles . And thanks to for being bad santa. We have had an amazing year, with a full-house of co-working freelancers and all our favourite creatives hiring the studios. Despite the slow wind-down, we are still open right through the festive season and new year to host your creative projects and ideas!

25/11/2024

This week's 'Colour of the Week' in the daylight Studio... Almond, Olive Green & Cocoa. Gorgeous! And how about this beautiful orchid? This quick still-life obviously needs some technical crafting to manage that refection but...shows how versatile these colours are. We haven't cut off the daggy ends of these backdrop rolls (leaving this job for an end-of-year tidy up) so just roll them lower to get a clean bit for your shoot.

04/10/2024

ONE week to go before our STUDIO LIGHTING 2-Day INTENSIVE! This is perfect for photographers who are confident with their cameras but uncertain about studio lighting. This 2-day workshop takes you through the basics, from using a light meter and understanding the inverse-square law & exposure, through to confident and safe use of equipment and multiple-light setups in the studio. We will explore lighting styles, modifier choice, controlling light spill, managing lighting ratios, colour gels, and more. This is a small-group workshop so you will have plenty of hands-on access to lights, including Profoto lights & modifiers.

Experience our bite-size sessions in one giant meal in this 2-day studio lighting intensive.

Students are required to have an understanding of manual exposure and will need their own digital camera and portrait lens (85mm plus). Booking vie our website (workshops & events page). This course is supported by Diamonds & Profoto.

10/09/2024

The Profoto workshop with Ian van der Wolde last night was fantastic! Presented by Diamonds Camera, we were introduced to some of the amazing new Profoto lights and modifiers, and Ian demonstrated some really interesting ways to use the new Profoto Fresnel Small, and the really versatile and exciting Soft Zoom Reflector. Our amazing model Jessie from RMT Management was so fantastic - it was absolutely lovely to work with her. Ian showed us how versatile even the small Profoto A-series units are - using one as a hair light it was amazing to see how it played a part in a lighting setup when partnered with it's larger more powerful siblings! We can't wait for Ian to come back to SA for more inspirational sessions like this :)

06/09/2024

LIGHTROOM CLASSIC 2-DAY INTENSIVE
September 28 & 29 2024 | 10am-5pm I $619

Learn how to use Lightroom to confidently manage, archive, edit & share your digital images. This workshop is aimed at emerging and professional photographers - BYO laptop with Lightroom Classic pre-downloaded (the trial version is fine). A demo catalog will be provided for you to use for this ** small group workshop**

Library Module IN DEPTH
Importing Images - Workflow
Keywording & Metadata
Viewing, culling & rating images
Developing Raw Files
Exporting various formats & sizes
Overview of Map, Book, Slideshow, Print & Web modules
Workshop Tutor :: Sam Oster

Booking via our website :)

29/08/2024

We had the fabulous crew from Shape in the Pro Studio to capture their range of men's and women's shapewear with the excellent Sarah Brion. We snapped a quick shot as they finished their shoot - they opted for the full length flash setup (2 background lights, a large diffused mega umbrella as key light, and a stripbox for fill) to make their setup and shoot quick and easy. Lovely to have this crew back in the studio! :)

03/08/2024

So who's developing film with chemicals that are kinder for the environment? If you're curious, this article offers some insight into alternatives to traditional processing chemistry...

Want to make developing your own film more eco-friendly? Learn chemical substitutions that are better for the environment, how to properly dispose of chemicals, and how to conserve water.

01/08/2024

Thanks to all who attended our first ever industry drinks on Friday night. We had an amazing time and many excellent conversations were had, and connections were forged and built on. It may have got a tad rowdy at the end, but after all, it was Cog resident Ayling's birthday! We had excellent mulled wine brewed by our very own Shaun Li, and Ben Liew thought it was a great idea to use a leaf blower to blow the confetti around after a few glasses of the brew. Cog crew had the space looking lovely, with decor & lighting looking amazing thanks to Peta Grace. The clever people at AK Creative did a great job with the nibbles, and Sam Oster set up the Pro studio with 2 LED sets for a bit of fun with the camera. If you were there keep an eye out for an email with download links for the pics. If you weren't there this time keep an eye out for an invite to the next one!

23/07/2024

We are SO excited about this workshop coming up in August. Limited spaces are available for our in-depth demonstration in the Pro Studio about different ways to light a cyclorama for full length / wide shots in an infinity space. We'll demonstrate the impact of lighting position, modifier choice and light quality, and work up from just one light to a set of 4 / 5 lights. We'll demo this for flash photography using our incredible Profoto lighting, but the principles are the same for continuous lighting with LED. All you need is a pen & paper and a li'l curiosity!

This workshop is supported by our friends at Diamonds Camera and by Profoto. And thanks to our test subject Mason who stood in for us as we tested a few setups before locking in this workshop :) Presented by Sam Oster Silvertrace and Shaun Li .

Booking information is here: https://cogcreativespace.com/pages/whatson

17/07/2024

Hang on...who's that?! Yep it's Australia's 27th Prime Minister and the first woman to hold the office - in our Pro Studio with the crew from The Australian Newspaper recently. The amazing photographer Nick Cubbin flew in from interstate and used our Profoto equipment for this important shoot - we only managed to snap a few images at the end, but it was very exciting to host this crew! Scroll on to see Nick's interesting portraits of Julia Gillard - we love how he has used the space and one of our vintage chairs to capture these gorgeous shots!

27/05/2024

brand shoot with the incredible in the Cog Creative Daylight Studio! (studio booking link in bio!) 📸

Some words from Ben:
I decided to use a dark style of lighting with a Profoto B10 Plus with the 1 x 4 Profoto softbox with a grid to control and minimise the light spill for the overhead shots. For the side on shots, I used the Profoto B10 to fill in the shadows and show the detail of the food ingredients. The black backdrop is the Westcott black wrinkle-free backdrop.

The shoot was styled by Louise from Perfect Ingredient who supplied the slate, golden spoons, and the golden placemats. She also prepared the garnishes, made the pancakes, blini and the potato chips and sourced the dry ice so we could use the vapours to enhance the look and feel of the images.

The golden lid, caviar, branded tin opener and the branded mother of pearl spoons were provided by Yeganeh and Amin, the clients.

Discover more of Bens work at https://benliew.com.au

21/05/2024

This week's colours are a celebration of Autumn, as the deciduous leaves finish their spectacular display and drop to the ground as the temperature cools out there. You can see here how easy it is to control the tone of the colours in our Daylight Studio - no lighting required. Get in while it's still dry and not too cold for indoor shoots with that outdoor light! Thanks to Sammy from AK Creative for being our demo model and holding so still as we rolled out the next colour!

16/05/2024

Our Pro Studio is awesome with it's cyclorama and split black area, but there are also other ways to use the space. Here, Sam from Silvertrace and Headshot Laboratory is working with our Gravity Backdrops and LED lights from Godox Global and Neewer to shoot our very own Peta Grace from Seen Studio for some updated portraits. These BTS shots are thanks to Capture the Present Photography who is also a resident photographer at Cog. Sam had multiple lighting setups (flash and LED) in the studio to allow for a broad range of styles across the shoot. Check out the results on her instagram ...