Fleeting Glimpse

Canon EOS 7D
f4
1/6th Sec.
ISO 640
EF 24-105mm f4 L IS USM @ 24mm

For the last few days I have been hearing speculation about the end of the world, which is supposed to happen today… but it hasn’t yet. Apparently, but don’t quote me on this, it has been 7000 years since the great flood which changed life on Earth. This is the same flood which prompted Noah to build an ark and save a pair of all the animals in the world. Apart from unicorns, according to The Irish Rovers they were messing around and got left behind.

Personally I hope it doesn’t end today. There are too many things I still have to do. Going out for dinner tonight with my girlfriend to one of my favourite restaurants would be one of them, winning a noble prize, having one of my photographs on the front cover of National Geographic magazine, they would be others. But even still, I’m having too much fun just being alive and living for today.

So the provincial elections are over and the DA have retained their position as municipal rulers of Cape Town. It wasn’t a particularly tough race by the sounds of it. Lets just hope the good job they have been doing doesn’t stop. I didn’t vote as I am not a South African citizen but a lot of people I know did. It is nice to see a lot of young people were voting. After all, they are the future of the country.

I was driving over

Da Vaal Drive

with Joss last night on the way to Rondebosch when I glanced over my shoulder to look back at the city. I was amazed by the sheer beauty of what I was seeing and made Joss do a quick U-turn in order to find somewhere to stop so that I could take a couple of pictures. Luckily I did have my camera with me (it usually is with me) but I had left my tripod at home not really. I wasn’t sure that I was going to get a useable shot as I was shooting handheld in very low light. When I quickly glanced at the screen I was awed by the colours I was getting of the sky but feared that they might be a little blurry. To my surprise, when I got home and looked at the pictures on my computer, only a few were blurry. The majority of the photos had come out very sharp even though I was only shooting at shutter speeds of between 1/5^th and 1/20^th of a second. Although there is motion blur, which I what I wanted to achieve, the backgrounds are sharp and crisp. I don’t think I would have managed without the amazing image stabilizer on the lens that I am using. Very, very happy with it.

One nice thing about the shorter, cloudier winter days is that you get to drive home to the sight of a beautiful sunset. Its amazing there aren’t more accidents caused by people marvelling at the view! If the end of the world looks anything like the end of Africa then hey, bring it on.

P.S.

Will be back…

Canon EOS 7D
f4
1/80th sec.
ISO 320
EF 24-105mm f4 L IS USM @ 105mm

I went to butterfly world with Joss this morning. Really awesome place. This little guy was the size of my hand!!

Coal and Trains

Canon EOS 7D
f4
1/13th Sec.
ISO 160
EF 24-105 f4 L IS USM @ 24mm

The second term at AFDA began two weeks ago which explains and in my case, justifies my absence. The work has begun to build up resulting in many late nights in front of my computer, toiling away at essays in which most of the time I’m not entirely sure what I am actually writing about. It’s a horrible feeling knowing that you have explained what you have to in 5 lines but you need at least another 50 to adhere to the 5+ page criteria.

I went away last weekend to shoot the South African National Rally Championships with some friends of mine in conjunction with Rapid Motion productions. The rally was held in Witbank, a small town an hour and a half outside of Johannesburg which I’m guessing came into existence due to the large coal deposits in the area. I don’t think I’ve been somewhere quite as polluted as Witbank. There are signs along the roads in the valleys warning that your visibility may be impaired by smog!! I thought this was a little funny until I experienced it first hand.

The hotel we were staying in was quite a joke. I was sharing a room with a friend of mine, Sean. There was no hot water for the first two days that we were there but after continual moaning to the managers we were finally moved to another room on the other side of the hotel. Thinking that we had finally secured a room with hot water we were pretty happy with ourselves… this didn’t last long. Our new room had a broken toilet seat and a broken shower head. It was a ‘rain shower’ style head, but most of the raining it did ended up on the bathroom floor with the water then proceeding to flood out onto the carpet after it had covered the entirety of the floor in the bathroom. There were also pictures of mate antelope in our room. A very weird place indeed.

Filming for the two days was also a different sort of experience mainly due to the dust. The course took place over 11 stages and some of these stages wound their way through very sandy terrain. When I saw the first car barrelling down on me at over 120 kph, it was the car that caught my attention but rather the 20 foot high dust cloud that was being carried behind it. When it hit I literally could not see my hand in front of my face. This made filming pretty challenging as I had to keep cleaning my camera as well as trying to find different and interesting angles to shoot from. The rally went off with out a hitch apart from a small hitch which involved one of the spectators being hit by a car and very badly injured.

It was nice to get back to Cape Town after the three days in the north. I can’t begin to describe how appreciative I am about being able to live in a city where there is no smog continually hanging in the air. It only took three days in Witbank to remind me how much living by the sea means to me.

A week ago I went down to Simons Town with my sister and a friend, Bjorn, to take pictures of a steam train that operates on occasion on the line that runs from Cape Town to Simons Town. She had recently shot her 3^rd year experimental film on the train and needed to get a few shots of the train running along the line. We waited at Glen Cairn for nearly an hour for the train to come by. It was quite a sight when it finally appeared around the corner in a dramatic scene of billowing smoke and the sound of screeching metal. It flew past us along its coastal route on its way to Simons Town station where we caught up with it half an hour later.

I managed to get some interesting pictures of the inside train as it sat in the station waiting for its return trip to Cape Town. I think for me, trains are one of those fascinations I had as a child, so it was quite a nice to feel slightly like I did when I was very young and to see that there is still some of the child I once was left inside me.

Back when I’m free!

P.S.

Canon EOS 7D
f4
1/640th Sec.
ISO 160
EF 24-105mm f4 L IS USM @ 105mm

When i have managed to get some free time I have been going for short walks along the Sea Point promenade. Other than the much needed exercise it has been a good chance to test out and get to grips with my new lens. I have recently bought a 24-105 F4 L lens and am very happy with the results I have been getting from it. In this picture, a young girl stares down from the window of a small train in a childrens park.

Cold mornings and panoramics

Canon EOS 7D

f29

2 second exposure

ISO 160

EFS 18-135mm f3.5-5.6 IS @ 32mm

I’ve been in Knysna for the last couple of days and it is definitely feels as though winter has kicked in and is here to stay. The days are getting shorter and there is a biting cold during the nights. Since I have been here I have heard stories from people back in Cape Town of the freezing weather and snow on the mountains in the outlaying areas just inland of Cape Town.

I arrived four days ago, it has rained almost continuously. I found last winter to be quite mild in comparison to the Cape winters I have experienced in the previous years. Weeks went by without rain and although there was a chill in the air, the skies were blue and the sun was shining. Although on occasion, a large front would roll in over Table Bay and drench the streets of Cape Town for a few days. They never stuck around for long and after washing clean the streets of debris left by city goers, the sunny weather would quickly return. Everyone seemed to agree on the idea that a warmer winter was not such a bad thing at all. I don’t think we will have the same luck this year; it’s going to be a cold one, big-time.

One of the nice things about winter is that you don’t have to be awake at half past 4 or 5 in the morning to catch the sunrise. I woke up at ten past six and drove to the beach yesterday morning to try to get some long exposure shots of the water in the morning light and when I arrived there at 20 to seven, the sun hadn’t even begun to rise yet. Walking across the small car park with no shoes on reminded me of how cold it actually was and made me thankful that I had worn 3 jackets. The cold sharp stones of the loosely tarred floor bit into my feet making them sting until they became too numb to feel. The sand was freezing from the cold water and the previous night’s rain but the refreshing smell of the sea air and the sheer beauty of the beach I was standing on made it all worth it.

I got a few shots before it got too light and hurried back to the car for the comfort of the heater. My jeans were soaked from kneeling on the wet sand and I still couldn’t feel my feet. I didn’t get the fantastic pictures that I had been hoping for with pink and orange skies and huge thundering waves, but I did enjoy myself; and at the end of the day I suppose that is what photography is all about.

I thought I would put this other picture up... It’s another of my Photoshop attempts in which I have blended 3 pictures I took on top of lions head into one. Thought it looked quite nice. Nearly died climbing down in the dark though with only one small torch between 3 people. Haha.

P.S.

Looking forward to winter! And getting a new lens tomorrow!!!



Canon EOS 7D, 3 Photographs

f7.1

0.8 sec.

ISO 160

EFS 18-135mm f3.5-5.6 IS @ 18mm