Longboard and Photographs

This weekend past was all about longboarding. For the surf uninitiated, longboarding is surfing on a surfboard of at least 9 foot in length. One has to surf longboards differently too, long flowing carves and turns are the way it is done. Hang 5’s and 10’s (5 or 10 toes over the front edge of the board) and headstands are highly appreciated by anyone watching, and are marvellously difficult to do!

A year ago, my good mate, Andy, created the Freedom Day Longboard Classic to celebrate this old school sport in a very old school manner. This competition is different in that it celebrates our love for this sport and the sea and combines it with a family spirit. What makes it all really special is that the local surfing community is a bit of a tight knit family with generations of surfers on friendly terms with each other.

A week ago, Andy asked me to look after a new element of the competition; the photography! It sounded simple enough, run a photographic contest, give out some prizes and perhaps even sell the pictures. A team of us gave the project some good thought and we got busy!

The competition this year was bigger than last, mainly due to the brilliant weather over the weekend. The forecast predicted heavy winds for the Saturday but they did not materialise at all. Instead it was all about small waves, long boards, sunny rays, and lots of family fun. I even surfed two heats and failed dismally to impress the judges even after a headstand and two handstand attempts.

Photographic reality was interesting. 11 photographers entered our new competition. Their zealousness for the art of pixelating reality far surpassed my wildest expectations and by the end of Saturday a whopping 3,110 photographs had been committed to my PC’s memory. How on earth we were going to sell any of them was beyond imagination, as it would have required days to review them all. And we were only halfway through the competition...

On Sunday I gave up even trying to sell photographs and instead focussed on getting the 20 best pictures out of each photographer. We had a local sports photography specialist do the judging which resulted in our top 6 pictures in two categories; mood and sport shots. Interestingly enough the winner of the mood category was a 13 year old boy with an incredible eye for a special picture. The prizes which had been donated by a local school of photography and art were incredible and well worth the effort.

And that is the story of how we somehow combined the old art of longboarding with the new art of digital photography, and had heaps of fun in the process.

My Sudan Holiday

Welcome back to Southern Sudan!

This sign is beautiful - If you cannot read it, it says 'For your own safety, stay on the road' Who would have thought? It only occurred to me much later that this refers to landmines lying undiscovered in the bush!!! The picture next to that one shows some cleared area of landmines. The system is simple really, the red sticks mark possible landmines and uncleared area; the white ones show safe areas. There are no signs that tell you this, you need to know!!

Here are just a heap of photographs from a trip we made to a town called Yei. It was an education in bruised bones due to the road condition!

Typical roadside ornaments!

One evening presented a little bit of lightning and no rain. I have no doubt that nobody is looking forward to the rainy season which is about to begin. Rain = lots of water = mud = chaos...

and here are the flowers outside my hut. In the mid day heat, they open, and then close for the 'cooler' parts of the day. Are they mad??

Photographs of somebody else's kids

My good friend and photographic mentor, Peter Rimell, took a quick couple of snaps of his children last night and sent them to me. When I think of some quick family snaps, the pictures that I received are not what I had in mind. These are out of this world. He did explain his process, which involved experimentation with an external power source connected to some studio flash, together with his kids on a trampoline. All very simple!!!!

But the effect is awesome...



Looks like I need to get busy in my garden, so much to learn!

Check out some of Peter's other work here : www.peterrimell.co.za

Nigeria in Pictures

I thought I would tempt you with some photographs of Nigeria. Perhaps you too would like to take that once in a lifetime trip to darkest Africa? A land that is quintessential Africa, exquisitely beautiful in parts and violently chaotic and ugly in others. It is certainly a land that requires exploration with camera in hand but that may well lead to your camera not being in your hand, or your hand on your arm....




This is a warped view of the street outside the complex in which I stayed. The white wall to the left is the wall of our complex. This is a good part of town, as can be evidenced by the Mercedes on the pavement. It's time of going is long gone!



Most of the Nigeria I saw in Port Harcourt looks like these pictures. The nicest buildings are those that house fervoured revivalist Christian services and you will find at least one on every block. The sun struggles to pierce the clouds, smog, and humidity during the day. I saw blue sky once as evidenced by the picture below - my first day there!

Here are some photo's of places on the water. Port Harcourt is situated in the Niger Delta and so there is plenty of water all over the place. The waterways are really beautiful. Many houses are built on stilts in the water and would make awesome photographic subjects. Alas my camera spent a lot of time hiding!

There are 150 million people living in Nigeria. It is a hive of activity and there are people everywhere, all the time. Traffic is a debacle. I have never seen anything like it in my life. The driving skills seem to be inversely proportional to the amount of traffic. Perhaps due to the fact that the only driving speed is crawling, great driving skills are not required. I spent a lot of time hanging onto my seat!

This is not a land for the feint hearted! It does have an allure though. Almost a challenge that goes, I survived the place once, I can do it again!

Will I?

Time Out

I took out a day last week to get creative. My good friend Pete Rimmell ( professional photographer) and I went on a photographic safari. Now this is usually one of those things that normally just gets talked about and never done. Yet at 05h00 on Thursday, it all felt decidedly real.

There is a theory that one should take some time out from your work on a monthly basis and spend it doing something creative that you really enjoy. For both of us, taking photographs is that something that brings great joy, while also being creative. You may well laugh at the idea of taking time off, what, in this world??

We started off at a beach for sunrise, where we immersed ourselves in some really special light. Then it was off to a section of hills between Rooi Els and Betties Bay. This entire area burnt about three years ago and in the right light looks a bit like a lunar landscape. We did not have the right light as my pictures show a land well into recovery! By about 09h00 the light was really flat as the sun had turned on its power and so we found ourselves taking a walk up to Leipard’s Kloof (I blogged about this walk a couple of posts ago). The great thing about this walk is that most of it takes place in an indigenous forest, which provides just the right circumstances for photography in the middle of the day.

We took hours to do this short walk. At a certain point, I just sat down on the path. It was beautiful. The stream was gurgling away on my left, birds called to each other in the trees, a woodpecker was busy with his new home, Pete was somewhere or other taking pictures, and I concentrated on becoming one with the forest floor. Where all I had seen was a profusion of trees and leaves, I now saw heaps of photographs that I just had to take.

A gentle reminder that taking time out, even on our day of time out, really brings the important things back into focus! I took loads of photos, most of them not very good, but I learnt so much!! My pics pale in comparison with Pete's, he just has this amazing eye and ability to back it up.

After procrastinating for so long to take this day out, we are now armed with heaps of ideas and the certainty that there will be many repeats!

Accra in Photographs

I often do not see the nicest part of cities as my job requires me to visit some of the poorest out there, and make sure that they are drinking the right product - hmm (an ethical and moral dilema in there that I still need to sort out)!!

Here is a quick collage of a couple of interesting aspects of a shanty town built around a working railway line. These people were real friendly BUT I still took all of these pics as shots from the waist, so as not to offend!!



While drinking a Peroni at Rhapsodies in Accra and looking out of their big picture windows, I had this thought that the view was exactly the same as if I was in Rhapsodies in Centurion (Pretoria, capital city of South Africa) except for the fact that the cars were on the wrong side of the road!!! I was seiously impressed by this town!!

I have not been able to upload any photographs for some time due to a conflict on my PC. BUT that is now history and so I thought I would share one or two things.

Here are 2 star trails that I attempted - Sutherland is a special place in that the sky is incredibly clear (hence why there are so many observatories here), which makes for dramatic star trails. If you have never seen a star trail, this is a long exposure of a point in the sky and the lines of light are really single stars but look like lines due to the earth turning. Here you can actually see the point about which the earth is turning, i.e. the south pole.





This is the SALT observatory - the biggest in the world (right here in SA).



This one, you may guess, but is a picture of a farm dam at sunset! I like!

My post today is a little different. I took some pictures of things around my house, trying to see them from a different perspective.

Amazing what you find inside herb oil - looks like stuff dumped in the sea next to a harbour. Someone probably ate the old tyre, there are always old tyres in the sea next to harbours!

They go up and they go down. Usually up when you want down and down when you want up. They come in sexy colours like this one in tartan. Very useful in the rain except if the rain is accompanied by wind, alas no good in Cape Town!

Last round anyone, even if it is 40 year old miniture Cokes?

Yes, some folks still use the good old spagetti mop. Us too it would seem....


Steven Covey talks about sharpening the saw. I think he meant continuous improvement of your own skill set. My saw is looking like it needs to retire!

This is the sharp end of my axe. Not quite in a state to chop off a leg if it got in the way but useful nonetheless!

I have been looking for the key to life. Even this one does not seem to fit! Perhaps there is not just one key, there are many! I am about to embark on a new venture within my great adventure. It may hold one of the keys that I have been looking for or it may just be an interesting diversion.

It is a great gift to be a surfer and be able to read the ocean in such a way that you know which waves will work and which not. Most of us just guess. Surfers have a great saying similar to nothing ventured, nothing gained. We say; if you don't go, you wont know!

I need to go to know if this key is right!

I spent the last couple of days experimenting with some lighting techniques involving white backgrounds. So far I have had very mixed results as models are scarce, my lights fire intermittently and my skill level is low. I know now why I did not pick up my camera too often when it was filled with film.

My first model was a little frisky! But with some perseverance I managed to subdue the little critter with enough watt hours of light to power the local bakery. The cat on the other hand was pretty amenable but I had to intervene when it started to sniff the chair like a big hunk of tuna!

My second model was an expensive one. Although I tried to light her up with all of the neighbours power, she still almost fell asleep. Luckily my style was so cool, she decided to stay. Forever!

Please note that those pink slippers are looking for a dog with big teeth to love them...

Shes a good model, I think I will keep her!

Another week of solid learning!

I had started to edit one of my earlier chapters, chapter five, late last week. It was like pulling teeth. It was pretty de-motivating to read something that I had already edited thoroughly three times to find that it was so incredibly bad. It did not flow, the points were poorly made and most points were just lost in the words. Surprisingly, I was not really perturbed.

One of my goals this year is to learn Xhosa. Luckily my eldest son’s school has offered Xhosa to parents as a course. Lesson two was last week and heaps of fun. Also being the only boy in the class helps a lot. It sure feels funny to be back at school but at least this time, I want to be there!

I was given the opportunity to take class photographs for the children at my youngest son’s school this week. That required some nifty preparation work over the last few weeks as I have had to learn about light and portraits. I kidnapped my wife to be my safety blanket on this assignment. She understands all of the mommy things about pictures, like hairstyles, clean faces, and wiped noses. Stuff that floats past me in the ether. We made a great team and took some wonderful pictures! I learnt oh so much!!!

Back at our office, I needed to learn how to process just under 400 photographs to ensure that the pictures are brilliant in as little time as possible. To that end, I have learnt how to use a simple function in Photoshop called ‘actions’. Simply put, this is a way of setting up your system so that I push one button and it does all sorts of time consuming things in the background. It has revolutionised my processing abilities!

And then I went back to my problem chapter. Spent a couple of hours reorganising and culling and ended up with something pretty good. When I read it through again last night, it sounded incredibly wise!

There can only be one explanation, somebody fiddled with it the night before!!

It is Sunday evening and I have vowed to get my writing back on track. No more Mr Nice guy when it comes to giving up my writing time for everyone else. Sorry dudes! I have a job and it is time to do it. Any boss would have fired me for my tardy work efforts over the last couple of months. And yet as I have blogged so often, I am so busy. Unfortunately even good waves are going to have to wait for me to ride them from here on in!

This afternoon I refreshed my book plan for hopefully the last time. I had rather a nice gap due to the mother in the house getting special treatment and being allowed an afternoon nap. That reminds me, I cooked a very simple scrumptious lamp kleftica replica. My wife who loves lamb gets an annual lamb feast on mothers day. Personally, I cannot stand the stuff! But today it was heavenly!!

Yesterday was interesting. I tried out some portrait shots of the family. I spent almost a whole day last week trying to find some second hand bits and pieces to be able to use my flash off camera. Well Saturday was about making that work for me. I think we ended up with some special family shots. In my bid to try create my own business opportunities, I have agreed to photograph the children at my younger son’s school. Nothing like throwing ones self into something new in order to learn how best to make it happen. I hope that I now have a handle on some pretty nifty studio lighting and that some parents will walk away with some cheap but professional quality pictures of their little munchkins!

Have a wonderful week. Serve with passion and love. Reflect, think, act! Spread some peace. And stay cool!