October Thanda Workshop

Spring has more than sprung in Kwazulu Natal! The green landscape has become so verdant that the hues of grass and leaf look more like something out of a cartoon than the palette of nature. If green weren't a calming colour we'd all go around with permanent headaches. So of course it means that this month's images look less like Africa and more like a set of pictures taken in the British Isles. I'll be heading up to Golden Gate in a few days time as well and am expecting much of the same across the province. By all accounts it seems to be that the entire coastline of South Africa has had more than it's usual share of bucketing rain. Of course it's not so fantastic for game drives, wet cameras and bogged down roads.

Thoughts on the Nikon D600 and Canon 6D

Photokina 2012 had a rather interesting theme that permeated the announcements. The theme, or at least that which I felt was the strongest was that of the sudden growth in Full Frame equipment. This swelling of FF equipment happened both in the upper end and middle to lower end of the market with announcements by Nikon, Canon, Leica and Sony. On top of real announcements there were whispers and rumors that rapidly became internet chatter as pundits and manufacturers mulled over the possibilty of mirrorless FF. Fujifilm were slow - I'd say purposely slow - to dispel the rumors that there X-mount can support a FF sensor. Finally they came out with the fact that it can't. Then there were Sony who have announced the high end NEX VG900, the first full frame video-camera. The kicker though is that it has a NEX mount. Does this mean we can expect a FF NEX stills camera at some stage. I'd say it's likely? Read on for my biased, partisan, completely thumb suck, but maybe educated reasoning.

For the Pleasure of it

As a professional commercial photographer I often find that it's actually quite hard to photograph for myself. The standard response when people hear that I make my living from a camera is, "wow, that's so cool, you get to take photos all the time". And it's true. It is cool! I am in the incredibly fortunate position to be able to do what I love on a daily basis. More than that, I really, really....really, love what I do. I'm also lucky enough that regardless of what I'm shooting, I tend to be content with a camera in my hand. So it might be a product shot of an aluminium pipe, or an architectural image of a haute couture hotel, or maybe a stylistic image of a model, or perhaps a field of sugar cane, or an industrial worker, or a corporate headshot...the list goes on. the thing is, it's what other people want me to shoot. Not what I want to shoot for my soul. That's where, I as a photographer, and anybody else who does this, have to be careful not to starve the soul.

Taking Over the Boardroom

A short while ago I was busy shooting a series of conceptual images for a radiology firm in Durban. Some readers might remember the 'Building the Shot' post where I photographed the company's drivers in front of their vehicles. Unlike the driver shoot I needed to try and do this in a single capture. The concept behind the image was to have a clean shot of a group of doctors looking relatively informal with monitors displaying scans and x-rays. The idea was to show the friendliness and approachability of the doctors (the irony of course is you hardly ever see the doctors) while also showing off the technology that is now used, rather than the old lightbox and x-ray setup.