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.