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.