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!!

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 :) .

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.

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.

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!

On the band wagon!

Wow! I'm floored by how some service providers (venues in particular) charge for every little damn thing, and then some. I've just been trying to arrange an engagement shoot with a client of mine - her and her partner wanted to do the shoot at Zevenwacht in the Stellenbosch wine route. They love the farm. They go there often for picnics and lunches. So I duly phone Zevenwacht to find out if it's ok that we go and shoot there (doing the polite responsible thing here and making sure that we can do it without getting in their way) only to be told that it costs R1500 to do an E-shoot on their grounds! Holy crap! The E-shoot would take an hour at most. And my hourly rate is R650. And we weren't even asking if we could shoot inside . . .

I even went a step further and phoned Zevenwacht back to explain to them how opportunistic that charge appears. I don't think I got through to them though. And of course the saddest part is that a venue that held huge sentimental value for my clients has lost almost all of that.

I know that we're all in this to make money (myself included) but at what cost?

To Freebie or Not To Freebie

It's such a tricky question this one . . . should you offer friends or family freebies on photography? I've chatted to some other photographers about this and they've given me some stern advice on this score: people tend to think that all you're doing is 'taking photos'; they don't realise that there's skill and time and training and effort involved. The advice that I was given is that it's our job as photographers to make them aware of that skill and time and training and effort. That it's not just a simple matter of clicking the shutter and then handing over the digital negatives, especially not when it comes to the hours of post processing that we often get into. I know one photographer who gives a 30% discount for friends and family, which I initially thought was quite harsh, but now am beginning to think is quite reasonable as I've sudeently discovered 'friends' smooging around angling for a freebie. I've given freebies in the past, and I'll probably give them again in the future, but I'm really of the opinion that people shouldn't ask for a freebie, that a freebie is that once in a while freely given spontaneous thing. Something that's given because its a joy to give. Or because you feel like helping out a friend. So the advice that I now want is how to deal with those that just don't seem to get that and who, in the process, make the act of giving something vaguely unpleasant . . . like visiting the dentist! And me being the person I am, I still sit and agonise over not giving them the freebie! Bugger!

Documenting the Self

Newsweek have an interesting article by Jennie Yabroff on what she terms the "Look At Me Generation". Yabroff talks about the differences between people born before and after the 1980s - those who are afraid of documentation and those who court it via flickr, myspace, You Tube, Facebook. She wonders, in her article, about the ill effects of such documentation on the youth of today: what does it do to our sense of privacy, does it engender the development of personas as opposed to personlities, what does it do to our sense of self, how do we really relate to others and develop trust?

I find myself occupying quite an interesting space when reading her article. I both self document ('publically' on my two blogs) and I document others through taking photographs of them. Is my personality compromised? Am I going to develop trust issues? Will my sense of self become emeshed in a cyberspace portrayal of who I am?

Unlike the kids of the 80s and beyond, I know that what I'm writing on my blogs is a represenation of certain aspects of my self. And I assume that the people (that little handful) who read what I have to say know that too. I know that until I've met someone my judgements on their trustworthiness are compromised precisely because of this partial representation of self that the net allows. And I know that I'm not that interested in spending hours creating and honing my online personality (or, in Yeboff's terms, is that persona?).

It is true that perhaps my knowing in all of these circumstances comes from the fact that I missed the 1980s time frame that Yabroff gives by a handful of years - my personality had time to form independently of the internet and cell phones and reality TV shows. But by the same token I do worry about some of the kids that I used to teach who spent about EIGHT hours a day playing WoW which in essence is just another form of self documentation - or self creation (where they found the time for eating, sleeping, socialising, school work . . . well, I suppose they didn't really). As I worry similarly about the kids who would rather sprout inanities and send round time wasting videos and quizzes on facebook, instead of actually spending time in the living, breathing company of friends.

But I also wonder about the potential for good that this self documentation holds. It puts us into a world where the private becomes public - a world where dirty little secrets have a habit of being placed in the public arena. A prospect that is shocking to some, but which also means that the power of the secret to shame and embarrass is lessened, even taken away. Imagine a world where abuse (particularly of children) is almos impossible because of the openess and forthrightness of society about such issues. (And cringe as I do to say this, Ricky Lake and Jerry Springer probably have a lot to do with the destruction of the veils of secrecy that traditionally shroud such issues).

I wonder too at the power of self documentation to help us shape our personalities / personsas (Yeboff sees them as seperate . . . but I'm not convinced that they are, or that we don't take what she sees as our personas into the 'real' world with us all the time) and to make meaning in our lives. I think of the kid who played eight hours of WoW a day. In 'real' life he was overweight and deaf in one ear. While immensely likeable and funny, the truth was that he was a bit of a non-entity in the social structure of the school. He played Warcraft because in that world, and to use his words, he was a god. The need for power and self aggrandisement aside, this is a world in which that boy felt needed. In which he had purpose. And if the counter argument here is that he is gaining those things from a world that isn't real . . . well, the counter to that is to ask: "How real is the rest of our life beyond the social value and meaning that we ascribe to it?".

The Hard Rain Project

Was anyone else disappointed by the project part of the Hard Rain Project? I went along on the weekend to Kirstenbosch to go and check out the exhibition and was really moved. The lyrics and images make for a potent combination. But all of that potency just dissipates when visiting the website. Here there's no real project behind the Hard Rain Project . . . well, unless you count the self aggrandisement of Mark Edwards, the man behind the concept and most of the images. Maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe there's something here that I'm not seeing in amongst the plaudits and the praise for the book and the exhibition. One thing I'm really not seeing is a site devoted to concrete action. Which is what I was hoping to find. With an exhibition devoted to the virulent effects of humanity's greed on the environment I was hoping to find a project that does something to counter those effects. But no such luck I'm afraid. The exhibition is still definitley worth a look though.

Power Cuts

I know it's a bit of an odd thing, but my husband and I are loving the Eskom power cuts - instead of sitting in front of our pcs or watching TV we're finding ourselves having the epic conversations of youth! It's remarkable! After fifteen years of being together (we were highschool sweethearts and we've effectively known each other for half our lives) we're suddenly remembering how much we like to talk crap. So much so that we've decided to have at least two days a week in which we're away from TV or pc screens entirely (if you think we're mad you should read what Dr Aric Sigman has to say about the effects of too much television in Remotely Controlled

So in between talking crap we've also started some rather Victorian pursuits - playing cards, playing chess and our latest, reading aloud to one another. Current book: Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Chapter 2: 'The Duce' is unbelievably funny read aloud! And chapter four, 'L 'Omosessuale' had me in tears!