Today the real work here in Sydney got underway. I had the day yesterday to adjust and had to hit the ground running today for a full 9-hour-day's shoot for Australian men's underwear brand, Cocksox. I have this awesome company to thank for this trip down under and today we began what will be three days in the studio shooting over 180 products for their site redesign launching soon.

It was an early morning and a quick breakfast in the hotel lobby before heading to Hatch Productions Studio, a space immensely and immeasurably larger than my studio back home. Working in the kind of space and equipment this studio provided was not only fun, but affirming as a professional photographer.

We got to work setting up what has become my standard three-light layout for a catalog shoot. I used Elincrom strobes with a single large octabox as my key light and two strobes bounced off large white boards to fill the seamless white background. I'm still working with a Canon 7d (which I hope to upgrade soon) and a Canon 35mm F1.4L USM lens.

Our stunning model Chris Noffke (Chic Management) arrived and after hair and make-up we dove into the fray! One pair after another, we knocked out a full range of angles for each of 60 pieces. Chris was a pleasure to work with, laid back and charming (and of course not bad to look at for 9 hours straight). Back cramps and eye spasms aside, it was a pretty enjoyable shoot regardless of the repetitive nature of a catalog project. The entire team from Cocksox are so pleasant to be around and made the day go by much faster. Two more days of the same doesn't seem too daunting to handle with this great team of people and such a great model... but remind me I've said this about halfway through day three.