About this Blog

Photo Writing is the web version of the Photo Writing mini-magazine produced by Limephoto and Emil von Maltitz since 2010. As of 2015 it is now completely online. Feel free to browse through the articles and please leave comments in the comments section if you would like to engage with us.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Lens Diffraction - Should you care?




light travels as a wave and when it meets an obstacle in its path it is affected by that obstacle. Passing through a transparent medium the light refracts and can diffract due to the different wavelengths of light travelling at slightly different speeds. This is what causes chromatic aberration in our images where the red and violet wavelengths of light become increasingly separated towards the edges of the frame where the light has has had to ‘bend’ the most. In physics diffraction it refers to and explains the apparent bending of waves around small objects or the dispersion or spreading of a wave past a small opening. For photographers diffraction is both inherent in the way that light passes through the glass medium of the lens and is refracted, and in the way that it must travel through a small aperture before it finally lands on the sensor or film. In optics diffraction is the limiter on the resolution of any optical device (camera, telescope, microscope etc.)

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Back to the Berg (at last)



It seems like an age since I have been back in the Drakensberg with a photography group. It made this last trip seem like a homecoming as I and a group from African Impact made our way to Royal Natal and Cathedral Peak sections of the Drakensberg Mountains. Cold clear skies meant stable weather for once (winter is considered the most stable time of year in terms of weather - barring the odd blizzard of course). This meant for less clouds in the sky sadly, but it did mean for star trails (for once - we've been thwarted by overcast skies of late).

Monday, July 8, 2013

Who Moved My Cheese (Shortened and adapted from the book of the same name by Spencer Johnson.)


Imagine two little mice with tiny little cameras who make a living out of photographing cheese. Place these two mice in a labyrinth and let them find a stack of really good Gorgonzola. Now their job is to produce excellent and varied imagery of that cheese and have it published via Cheese Weekly for which they receive the generous income of....more cheese (maybe this time they’ll eat it). Every day the mice come back to the same spot in the labyrinth and find a new stack of interesting cheese, Stilton, Emmenthal, Cheddar, Wensleydale, you name it. Every day the mice photograph the cheese and send the resultant files to Cheese Weekly and receive their usual and generous salary of cheese.

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Of Elephants and Stars - Thanda Photography Workshop



It seems like an age since I have been at Thanda since Paul has been running the African Impact workshops there for the last two months. He'll be running next month's one there as well, so it was good to drop in and reacquaint myself with the people and reserve once more. To make things even more enjoyable I had a really good group of photographers this month and was also joined by my colleague Nick van der Wiel, who was seeing how the workshop runs in order to fill in when Paul or myself cannot run it. But on the week...

Monday, July 1, 2013

Making Things Move




I have recently been involved in a project photographing a cargo company where a number of vehicles have had to be photographed. Part of the brief was to show activity and action, basically that the company is an active company, in contrast to one which appears as slow and stagnant. The whole point is to show that goods to be moved will be done with efficiency and speed.