Who your friends are

It's interesting who your friends are. And sometimes the people who have your back are not necessarily the ones that you think it'll be. But when somone offers to break knee caps for you, and you know that they mean it, then you know that they've got your back!!

Getting lost on a 'road trip'

Well, road trip may be a bit of an overstatement . . . but we did get a wee bit lost. On Saturday I headed out with some wedding photographer friends to go and find the car museum just off the N1. We did most of it right but apparently missed a small but crucial turn and ended up on a random road with a randomly awesome field and randomly awesome derelict couple of houses. Just your average photo outing :)

If you'd like to see more of my landscape pics you can see them here. They are, like these, at a fairly low res to allow for faster loading.

A photographer is more than their price tag

This post is a rant. If you're not in the mood for reading someone else's crap (i.e. mine) please be warned!
I've just been looking at a wedding photographer's website and their work. On their site I can see evidence of four wedding shoots. Count that: one, two, three, four. They're advertising a 7 hour shoot for R10 000. Fair enough they're adding in a few extras . . . but really!! R10 000 for someone with four shoots under their belt. I also see evidence of portrait shoots, but what worries me is that the portrait shoots are not of the same calibre as the wedding shoots. So I wonder - are the weddings shot by the same photographer? Or were the weddings shot as assistant to a really good photographer - someone who likely set up the shots, chose the location, the lighting, the mood? I have to admit, I'm so angry I could spit. What ever happened to working your way up from the bottom? How does someone with four weddings justify a starting rate of R10 000? It pisses me off because I see a lot of people assuming that this is an easy industry and an easy way to make money! And if people walk in with four weddings and want to charge R10 000 then how is the average client meant to judge what's fair and what's not?  All too often people assume that if the price is high the quality has to be good . . . that is so not the case!
And as a post script of sorts: the photographer whose site I was on: the shots all look like they come off a 50mm lens. One lens. R10 000 for a wedding shoot. F*ck'n hell!
A second post script: each of those four weddings featured had about 10 to 15 shots. I kid you not.

Food Photographer

I've recently been doing food shots for a couple of hotels and restaurants and it's been really cool. So yesterday morning and then today at lunch time I got a bee in my bonnet and just felt like shooting some of the things that Dan and I have been cooking. It's been a seriously lazy weekend - one of my last free weekends before the wedding season hits in earnest and apart from going to a friend's birthday on Friday I've done as little as humanly possible . . . except eat, cook and watch movies. And take the occasional food photo.

So yesterday I woke early and decided to make flapjacks. First I made coffee and then I did flapjacks. Dan normally does the flapjacks in our household. While I'm a pretty good cook I absolutley suck at baking, or baking type cooking . . . it scares me and flapjacks scare me. It was a moment of bravery that led to the scaling of the flapjack mountain. Though, I did have help. Half way through preparations Dan woke from his deep slumber and slumped downstairs. Soon as I saw him I asked if he'd do the actual cooking and flipping of the flapjacks. And when they were done . . . they were just beautiful.

And the recipe comes from a cook book for children so I figured that even I should be able to get somewhere with it. 

At lunch time(ish) Dan's mom popped through. My mom-in-law rocks. She's the type of mom-in-law who pops round and brings food and goodies with her - which is especially fabulous if you're having a lazy as possible weekend and you don't want to leave the house more than what's absolutely, utterly necessary. She brought with her bread, chocolate (yumm), doughnuts and fillet.

There's a tradition in Dan's household that on your birthday you get fillet steak. Specifically, you get old man steak. Which is flambed in brandy and served with a cream, mushroom and rosemary sauce that's had the fillety flambed juices added to it. I once got the recipe for it from Pegs (mom-in-law) but I've subsequently lost it. It was Dan's dad's birthday and anniversary of his death recently (he died ten days after his birthday) and I wondered if that's why Pegs didn't bring us fillet steak (even on a subconscious level). So this afternoon I made my homage to old man steak. You'll see the pics for it aren't great . . . but I wasn't going to stuff about getting the shot right when that was waiting for me to tuck in.

The fillet was magnificent (done just over rare) and the mash was gorgeous: while the potatoes were boiling I added two teaspoons of Dijon mustard and a table spoon of honey. The sauce was loosely based on the old man steak sauce and also loosely based on a sauce my Dad made last weekend. I fried button mushrooms in butter with garlic and rosemary sprigs. Once the mushrooms had released their liquid I added Nomu's liquid beef stock (Nomu stock absolutely rocks) and then I put in about 2/3s of a tub of cream and just let it boil away. It probably could've boiled down for longer but I was hungry and Dan was hungry so I started the steaks and oh my god they were good!!

 You can see more pics from my lazy weekend in this blog post on my site, and there are more food pics that I've shot here. Enjoy :) .

Early Morning Drive

So I'd intended to go into Durbanville and out the back end into the surrounding countryside - I was in search of cows - but I ended up going through the Du Toit's Kloof tunnel and through its grime into the sunshine on the other end. I'd love to shoot in the tunnel. I'd love to take a scraping from it's thick black walls. But I'd need a gas mask. And I have a feeling it's illegal to stop. And I watched a double tanker petrol truck come through and it had a fire emergency truck that had to follow it. So I drove through to where the sun was up in the other side, stopped for coffee at a dodgey little hole in the wall and then came back over the Du Toit's Kloof pass. I passed baboons - a troupe of about thirty - with the alpha at the back sheperding his females with their clinging babies across the road. And I got yelled at by a big farmer in a Toyota bakkie for stopping on a blind corner (the things we do to avoid making roadkill of wildlife and to get a good photo!) I didn't get any good photos of the baboons - it would've involved getting out the car again and that big boy alpha looked pretty fucking mean. But I got a change to pull over a few times on the pass - I love those rest stops - they always look like relics from the 50s and 60s. And then I saw the coolest limo I've seen in ages. The number plate said Baby Lim and the front end of it was made from what looked like an old Mazda. The back end definitely came from a late 80s early 90s Toyota Corolla. And the middle bit was of an indeterminate origin, but the central door had lights around it, like you'd put up around a vanity mirror. I was way too scared of the mean men inside to ask them if I could photograph their ride but I am wondering if it was worth being safe instead of grateful for a really cool photo.

Enjoy the pics. I was feeling fairly dark this morning. Hence the exposures. If you'd like to see more of my landscape photographs have a look at my website.

Photography Lessons: Aperture and Light 2 (working with aperture priority)

Okey dokey. So you should've taken a few pics in aperture priority. And hopefully - because you're an observant visual person - you should've noticed a few things. The first one is slightly harder to spot than the second but I'm going to start there anyway.

A large aperture (low number) throws the background and some of the foreground out of focus.

A small aperture (high number) keeps the the foreground, middle ground and background sharp.

Why is this important? Because of the artistic control it allows you. (Images to follow during the week!)

The second thing should be fairly obvious: there's a relationship between the aperture setting and your shutter speed.

(Shutter speed is how fast or how slow the shutter in your camera opens to let in light. If it opens slowly you let in more light, if it opens quickly you let in less light. Shutter speed is not assbackward like your apperture settings so a big number = a fast speed and a small number = a slow speed.)

If you've been working in aperture priority then you should've noticed inside your camera that each time you change your aperture there's an opposing change in your shutter speed. The relationship is a very simple one.

As you let in more light through your aperture so your shutter speed will slow down to let in less light.

As you let in less light through your aperture so your shutter speed will increase to let in more light.

Why does it do this? Because your camera is determining the ideal exposure for you. It assumes that you'd want everything at about 17% grey. Don't ask me who decided it should do this, but I suppose they had to have some form of standard and 17% grey is what they went for.

So here's your camera with it's built in predisposition towards a light grey. When you have your camera in aperture priority it assumes that you want that photograph to be it's beloved light grey. So every time you change your aperture to let in more light, the camera will change your shutter speed to counteract the extra light you've just let in and it will increase the shutter speed effectively cutting off that extra bit of light. If you change your aperture to let in less light your camera counteracts the impending gloom by lowering the shutter speed to let in more light.

When you're in AV mode and you look at your exposure reading in your camera you'll see that it always stays right in the middle, 'perfectly' exposing your images to 17% grey no matter what changes you make.

So what's the problem.

Essentially that you're not in control of the decision making process. And that, of course, not everything in this world is 17% grey. Photograph black on black or white on white in aperture priority and you'll have an exposure that is wrong. In the case of black it will be too light; in the case of white it will be too dark.

The other problem with letting your camera determine the shutter speed is that eventually you will end up with a shutter speed that is simply too slow for either your ability to hand hold your camera or too slow to capture your subject's movement.

Most people can hand hold at a 60th to a 30th of a second (depending on the size and heaviness of their camera and lens). Very occassionally when I'm feeling particularly zen I can get away with an 8th of a second. I wouldn't recommend this if you're on a job though . . . and I have to admit to a belief that I'm shooting in between heart beats . . . and yes I'm a nut job and I did watch a Discovery showcase on Olympic ski shooters who shoot in between heart beats and the idea that I do something similar makes me feel extra special at night! ;)

But at an 8th of a second chances are your breathing and heartbeat are going to make the camera shake. At a 5th of a second, or at 3 seconds, or 30 seconds, you can absolutely depend on that happening unless it's on a tripod. If the camera shakes you don't get a sharp image - you get fuzzy crap. Fine for the occassional art piece but not fine for most commercial applications.

Also, if you want to freeze your subject in motion then you have to make sure that your shutter speed is moving faster than they are. Imagine you're trying to take a photograph of someone running towards you and you want that picture to be crystal sharp. In almost all lighting conditions you'd need to be shooting at upwards of 200th of a second to make sure that their movement is sharp.

For me, I like AV mode because it's a great way to learn what aperture does: it controls your depth of focus; and because it begins to show you how aperture relates to shutter speed. Beyond a learning tool though I've never really found it helpful and even shooting on weddings when you have to be extrememly quick in making exposure decisions I don't use it.

So the ultimate goal with these lessons is to gain control of the camera, not to let it control you. The next lessons will be on shutter speed, and then the third member of our triumvirate, ISO. In the meantime go back to shooting in AV mode and this time shoot specifically for the following:

1. A high aperture where everything is in sharp focus (easiest outside with relatively bright light if you're shooting in AV mode). Whatever you decide to shoot make sure that it makes sense for the subject to have such a high level of detail.
2. A low aperture where you specifically throw your background out of focus. Again, make sure that it suits your subject to not have all areas clearly defined.
3. Try and shoot in dark areas and take note of what happens to your ability to hand hold your camera. (And shoot without flash!).
4. Try and shoot a fast moving subject under relatively low lighting conditions - what happens to your ability to keep the image sharp? Look out for great accidents on this one, where the blur works for you instead of against you.

Monitor Callibration - how to test if your monitor is properly callibrated?

This is something that I've always struggled with - whenever I read anything about it I get bored senseless and fall asleep! By the time I've woken up the world has moved on and my monitor is still deliriously uncallibrated.

So I thought I'd post on a few photography forums for some help. I asked for short sweet and simple. So far the best has to be: "Get a Spyder". Which leaves me to wonder how an arachnid is going to fix my computer.

No, I'm not that stupid, but I am that facetious. I don't really know what a Spyder is or how it works which is partly what I was hoping to get out of posting in the first place.

In desperation I re-searched for Spyders and screen callibration and came across this dandy article http://www.imaging-resource.com/ARTS/MONCAL/CALIBRATE.HTM on how to check if your screen needs callibration (I'm happy to say that I didn't fall asleep and the world has not moved on and left me behind). I haven't read the link on that page about Spyders (I am weary of a creeping sloth that seems to slither over me when my mouse goes near the link) but I think it might be worth brazening out. I'll let you know if I make it through alive!

Photography Lessons: Aperture and Light

In the last few weeks a handful of friends have asked me to teach them to take decent photographs - maybe I'm nuts but I agreed, and being the good ex-teacher that I am I decided that I should come up with some sort of syllabus and figured that while I'm at it I may as well share my five cents worth with those that care to read it.

So the major thing about photography (apart from those other minor things like the right gear, a decent subject, composition, time, money etc) is light. Light, light, light, light, light. If you don't have light you have a plain black block. If you have too much light you have a plain white block.

Photography is about the artistic representation and the technical manipulation of light. In terms of manipulating light you can manipulate your external light and you can control the way in which your camera responds to that light.

Cameras don't see light the same way human beings do. We can access a huge range of light while a camera's light range is limited. What that means is that at the same time as being able to see very bright things we can also see very dark things. A camera can do one or the other but it typically can't do both at the same time.

So it's up to you, the person behind the lens, to make decisions for the camera about how it should record light.

A typical Sunday morning and all the animals are in the sun spot on the bed. Notice how the light areas have blown out (meaning you can't see detail in the blanket and duvet in the front of the image)? That's what I mean by the camera not being able to record light the same way we see it. We could see the whole scene perfectly - the bright sunlight on the bed and the darker room - but the camera only really records Ninja (our stripey cat) properly.

There are three major controls that your camera has in order to deal with light and they typically work simultaneously . Because I'm not sick, twisted or evil I'm not going to explain all three things together, but look at the three things in three different lessons and then talk in a fourth about how they all work together.

The three controls are aperture, shutter speed and ISO. If you're new to photography and you don't have a Scooby about what those things are, don't worry - we're all in the process of learning different things all the time and while I'm pretty good at photography I wouldn't try and perform knee replacement surgery.

The easiest place to start is aperture. Also referred to as f-stop.

Whenever you take a photograph a mechanism in the lens opens to allow light in.

That mechanism is your aperture or f-stop. If it opens wide then you'll allow in a lot of light. If it opens small you'll allow in very little light.

Unfortunately for people trying to learn this stuff from scratch some brainiac years ago decided that the numbering system we use to describe the size of the apperture should be ass backward! I can only assume it was a Frenchman who came up with that.

So what this means is: a very large open aperture (f-stop) that lets in a lot of light will be described by a small number, for example f2.8

A very small aperture which lets in a teeny amount of light will be described by a large number f32

Go figure, but that's the way it is.

So the first thing that you should do, now that you're armed with this golden McNugget of information is wonder around for a few days with your camera set to AV (which means aperture priority) and see what happens when you change your aperture from a high f-stop (small opening) to a low f-stop (big opening).

Chrissi in the light

I did this of Chris, a dear friend of mine, at a wedding we were both at (she as a guest, me as photographer). We were actually on our way to the loo and I got distracted by the lights which had turned a particular shade of dirty red from the fires (which I think have been in Grabouw and the smoke is coming all the way through here) and figured Chrissi's gorgeous dress would look awesome with that as a backdrop. So it was a slow shutter and freezing her face with the flash. Being in a hurry - to get to the loo before the speeches started - I just left the flash on my other camera, propped the whole thing (5D and 70-200 lens and speedlite) in a tree stump and set it to slave. The flash on my wide angle I just angled back (there was nothing behind me) and off we went. The hardest part was getting the slave to see its master, but it did eventually!

Same Day Different Mood

On the beach again

Dan and I were on the beach again. This time in the mist.

Dan's, "Please, call me Joe" expression (its from an episode of Scrubs . . . and had us smiling like dumbasses for weeks!).

I really struggle to keep my eyes open when the flash goes - majorly light sensitive!

Guess what we saw on the way out. I must've taken about 20 pics of him/her(?) and walked from about 10m away to within a metre and a half. By the time I stopped walking I was right on the edge of my 70-200's focussing limits (so you know just how close I was). He/she let me stay there for quite a while and then, after giving me the evil eye a few times, decided s/he had had about enough of me and winged off into the mist.

A Note

I found this on a scrap of paper in my bedside drawer. I think I wrote it towards the beginning of 2008, but I'm not entirely sure. It's a weird thing when you find something that you've done or written and forgotten about:

Sometimes I wonder about all those secret loves:
these films over things
- dust sheets preserving ancient memories, and dreams;
the porous reality of it all -
the skin flakes
and their dust mites.
And an odd, odd remember-sense
of being alive and beating.

Thought I'd get some T-shirts printed

Minus, of course, the BDBP stuff at the bottom. I've always felt sorry for those lone animals you see when you drive cross country: there's always one sheep, duck, cow, horse, chicken, goat, ostrich, donkey, pig, something, off on their own while the rest of the animals stand around in their groups. Always wondered what that lone sheep, duck, cow, etc was thinking of out there by themselves.

And then this one is specially for Dan (as requested by him). The font is a free font and the little toilet people I copied from something off a stock site - and yep, I redrew them and changed them!

Photo outing with Dan (and Bear)

It's quite annoying that it loads the pics up assbackwards, but it's too early to get too anal retentive! Dan and I went on a photo-outing (clearly I got started very early on in the day).

We started in the Melkbos Nature Reserve (my folks are still on at me to get them a shot of Table Mountain . . . which I'm clearly struggling with!). While there Bear got attacked by a Boerbull - horrible dogs - and I turned into a crazy woman - throwing my camera down in the sand and apparently yelling "Don't you dare bite my dog!" (I have no recollection of this). I do remember grabbing the Boerbull - whose name is Rocky - by the collar and yanking him backwards and then pushing his head into the sand. At which point I kind of thought that I might be being a little braver than I really am. Turns out Rocky decided that I was clearly pack leader and was quite happy to make friends with me (just not with my dog!). Dan - alerted by all the ruccous - came to save his Bear only to discover that Bear had thought being pinned down and throttled a great game. Bullmastiffs rock.

Rocky's owner was very apologetic and said he'd never done anything like that before. And then went on, during the course of our remarkably civil conversation, to explain how he was a Boerbull mixed with a St Bernard and that the reason they went for this dog was because their last 'thoroughbred' Boerbull had turned aggressive and that they'd now done research on these guys and they were meant to be less aggressive. I wanted to ask her what increments she used to measure that drop in aggression. And whether she knew that St Bernard's are also known for their aggression and taciturn natures. But, hey, you can't throw someone else's dog and be rude to them in one day.

So (rant out of the way) we then decided to drive out into the farmland between the N7 and the N1. After that it was off for a farmhouse breakfast at Bloemendal - where Bear got the respect he so very rightly deserves: the chef sent out an extra plate of bacon for him :)

PC Games, asshole gunmen and the role of large official spaces

My husband's a big pc gamer. When he gets together with his PC mates its a bit like stepping into another dimension. Over the years I've learnt how to enjoy his hobby and I've played along with him (his PC linked to mine). I even recently played a game from start to finish on my own - Mass Effect - which I absolutey loved. Naturally, though, I tend to have an aversion to games (unless of course they have a killer story line). The repetitive music and the gratuitous violence; the lack of any real point, except perhaps for 'advancing' your 'character' in order to kill things in more spectacular ways - it just doesn't turn me on. But it does lead me to wonder about the link between school shootings and PC games. And it's a rather weird link that I have in mind. I get the argued for link between the random violence of PC games and the horrific random violence that these men and boys inflict, but I wonder about why they choose schools and colleges as their places of massacre (which is something that that argument doesn't account for). And the thing that comes to me is kind of strange, and I hope not irreverant: I wonder about the overlap in terms of space, both physical and symbolic.

The symbolic space interests me slightly less than the physical space (which is kind of a sick thing to say, I know) but they do overlap and tie in together. Symbolically I imagine these boys as powerless in the school or college space. That large, bureaucratic institution turns them into nothingnesses. And their response, in their quest for power and development, is to take the language of the computer game, the first person shooter, into that school space. To physically stride through those halls looking over the barrel of a gun. I picture them, physically, in those spaces, and I am struck by the particular size and shape of a school building: the large open corridors, larger and higher than what is necessary for a single human being; the many rooms that lead off of those passages; the offices that are out of bounds, that require special knowledge or rank or items (keys) to access. And I see how their game world translates into their everyday surroundings. They go from gaming to school, from school to gaming. And I imagine that they spend about the same amount of time doing both. And when they enter their school worlds the physical space mirrors that of the computer environment. Only here, they are not powerful. Here their development is governed by an other and is not inevitable.

I see these two worlds colliding. Their screens shifting one over the other. And I pity these poor, poor powerless boys. There is no reset button after such pointless bloodiness.

Bear on the Run

My folks asked me to do some panoramas of Table Mountain - not what I'd really choose to shoot, but fun never the less. Dan and Bear came along for the ride and were happily walking along the beach and the dunes quite content to ignore me and get on with their own thing when suddenly Bear decided he needed to be where I was. Don't know why. But I did manage to quickly swing the camera his way and snap off some pics of him charging towards me! For me it's the last pic that makes it - that dumb-ass crazy look on his face - but it's the first two that set up that shot, so I included them all.

Happy Snapping

So Dan says to me the other day, "You know, you haven't taken any photos just for yourself in ages - you really should you know. It makes you happier". And because I'm (just occasionally) stubborn and prickly I think, bugger that, I've taken loads of photos just for myself. Which of course is not true. And it's been a while since I've gone out to shoot something that I specifically wanted to shoot just for myself.


I still haven't taken his advice, though I think I should soon, but in the meantime I took pics of him. And the dog. And our first braai in the new place. Which was a very, very lazy affair on our part (hence Dan in his slippers . . . ). But it was good just to play. And take random photos.

Keeping Warm on Cold Days

I found this pic of Dan the other day - I'd forgotten I'd taken it. It's such a weird experience when that happens. It's like a "Hey, did I do that? That's pretty good!" There's this delayed recognition which I always enjoy. A moment of seeing before the filters kick in. There's a similar thing that happens when I'm out and I see Dan when I don't expect to. It always makes me smile because I'll be minding my own busniness and be vaguely aware of thinking: "Mmmm . . . he's really sexy" and then realise that I'm looking at my own husband. It's good to know that my man still has that magic spark. Dan, who's never put Modesty on his invitation list, loves it when I tell him this.

Inspiration for the wee hours.

I recently read an interview with Eric Clausen where he lists some of his favourite wedding photographers . . . Wow. And wow again. Old Eric's no couch potatoe himself, and I had seen some of Huy Nguyen's work before - courtesy of WPJA - but Justin Demers' work just blew me away. His snow scenes . . . ! And how uncommercial most of his work is. And finally Ben Chrisman's work! What a feast.

I forget - when I'm all busy and wrapped up in deadlines - how important it is to look at other photographer's work - how much inspiration I draw from them; and how much seeing their work makes me want to go out and shoot again!

Some R&R

Definitely much needed after moving, getting boomerang flu, helping out part time at the little primary school down the road, and getting the new puppy! Now that I'm 'on leave' I'd forgotten just how much I love my own space!

A good few months ago a friend of mine's Dad - who teaches at the little primary school down the road - got hold of me and asked me if I didn't want to help out while they looked for a full time drama / art teacher. I said no. Clearly. And look where I am now. I've been there a term. I'm loving it. And I don't think they're really looking for a full time teacher!

When I went in to help them out they'd been looking, unsuccessfully, for two terms (six months!) for an art / drama teacher. It's pretty scary how few suitably quilified teachers are left in the country - though who can blame them when you can go to Dubai or the UK and earn SO MUCH more money. Teachers are really undervalued in this country. Which makes so little sense to me - they're one of the first things I'd pump money into if I were trying to fix our woes.

So, soap box aside, now I'm teaching art 15 hours a week. It's great to combat being on my own for almost all my time (which is what happens when you work from home I'm afraid - the glamorous part of doing shoots only occupies about a fifth of my time!) but I'd forgotten how much energy you need to teach - even for the brief time that I'm there. And then . . . wonder of wonders . . . the term ended and I'm now on holiday! Feels kind of weird having so much time to myself (well, I do spend most of my time working - processing, getting quotes out, seeing clients - but when you work for yourself you can do the work whenever you want to . . . like after that afternoon nap, or after taking the puppy for a walk on the beach ;)

Next term I'll have to see how I go with the teaching though. For me teaching's a commitment that you make to the kids - its not about walking in and telling kids to do the random stuff that the syllabus dictates (anyone could do that), it's about building people up. And you can only do that if the kids trust you. And if they think you're leaving in a term's time, well then, from their perspective, what's the point of them waisting their time? It's horrible leaving in the middle of the year. So I'll probably stay on till the end of this year, but it'll be tough when season hits! Though I have to say that the staff at the school are just fantastic and they really help each other out, which makes such a difference if things get a bit rough.

Anywho, now that the couch is catching the afternoon light, and the puppy has settled down and is no longer trying to use the cat as a chew toy, I think I shall adjourn to the lounge for that nap!