First Impression – What strikes the eye

The symmetrical arches with the fog and reflections, as well as the sun’s rays on the arches.  The sun coming up breaking through the fog, lighting up the arches.  The fog on the water suggests it is cold.  It seems that the bridge is quite old and has stood the test of time.

The Genre

This is definitely Architecture.

The Intended Use

This was for an exhibition, but can also be used in an editorial.  In an exhibition a print is influenced by the texture of the paper and the colour tone.  The black and white image suggests that the early morning colour was maybe too cold and the fog overwhelming the colour tone.  This influenced the mental shift to produce a black and white print.

The Immediate situation facing the photographer

This is an early morning shoot and the rising sun will influence the angle and the mood.  The sun will also burn away the fog and change the mood.  In a shot like this, one would use bracketing to include details in the highlights and the shadows.  There are also dark parts where the fog is just above the water and keeping the detail will also include shooting at a higher ISO.

Technical Details, if important

It seems that a higher ISO was used to shoot at lower light conditions and to include details in the shadows. This will also include a deeper depth of field.

Style or mannerism

The style works on timing and being in the right place at the right time.  This can also be attributed to scouting the place beforehand and gathering information on what time the sun rises, trains coming past etc.  The photographer might subconsciously be thinking in black and white when there are certain textures involved.

Is there sufficient information available?

This image almost looks like it was shot on film, due to the film grain and better overall contrast on the arches.  This enhances the texture in the image.

Success

I do think that there was a reasonable amount of success and that the intended artistic flair was achieved and the overall result is that of a balanced shot that uses mood to enhance the coldness and add a dreamy effect.

Fetching water for household use

Venda, Guyni Village in the Limpopo Province of South Africa they are still doing it the old fashion way, where woman still walk a few kilometres a week to fill 50 litre drums with fresh water from a central tap to provide households with water for basic cooking and cleaning.

Reverse caption

The straight lines of the make shift poles, the tap, the woman standing up straight the tree and the huts all add to the symmetrical effect of the image. The de-saturated colour, the muddy prints and the low hanging clouds add to the sombre mood and feel to the image.

Venda, August 2011

Fetching Water

It was unusually cold for this time of the year, Venda is hot and you find it difficult to walk without drinking gallons of water and wearing much sun block. I took my second year photography students to Venda, to experience a home stay visit with the local tribes. The students also needed to shoot social commentary projects, landscape and documentary style photography during this week. Freezing temperatures and howling winds and dust accompanied us.  Venda lies on the northern Borders of South Africa in Limpopo. We were about 30 km from the Zimbabwean border. We divided the students into 2 groups and assigned them a family to stay for a day.  They needed to work as part of the family, fetching firewood, water and cook. I was staying a day with each group to document their stay and to do some infrared photography.

Venda lies in a dry and harsh part of the country; the locals survive by keeping livestock such as goats and cows. The ground is too hard to carry any crops and the woman work all day and the men end to their livestock or work in the neighbouring towns.The second day I visited the second student group and the weather cleared slightly. They were staying in a hut and the woman of the house asked them through an interpreter to go and fetch water.  We gathered the 50 litter drums and walked about 2 kilometres. I was standing to the side to let the students help fill up the water drums. Looking around and it seems o that nothing has changed much through the years. Except that, there is a tap and not a well, dirt roads, one-shop and school miles away. All the villages have a chief and woman does all the work. We worked through an interpreter and the woman said, it is there work to look far the children and make sure there is food, firewood and water when the children and men get home in the evening.

There is no electricity, TV; cell phone reception is poor, although every adult has a cell phone. They keep busy with chores, then sit, and chat. I took the photo of the woman waiting patiently for the drums to fill up. She looks content, just another chore. It is such a cliché in Africa and still in South Africa that certain parts of the country still struggles with basic sanitation, electricity and no water taps at each house. They cook on open fires and no fridges or even gas stoves.Is this a sustainable community, will the new democracy help them in any other way, does the new government recognise the different chiefs? However, this is true for many different communities in different provinces in South Africa.  Corruption and lack of expertise has become such a big problem in the different municipalities that it is the poorer communities that suffer the most.

I felt humble in the presence of this community; they took us in and made us Part of their family. I hope by bringing students from the cities that they will take back with them, appreciation for what they have, such as warm water, sanitation and electricity. The other reasons I hope they will instil in their hearts are not exploiting people just for the sake of a photograph. Every person deserves respect and dignity, all over the world countries are struggling to provide basic amenities to the poor and to improve basic living conditions.

This photograph for me is a realisation of how lucky some of us are to have a home with all the amenities and that a stone throw from your front door, there are communities that still live in the dark ages.

  The suburb of Villieria also known as “The Moot”, area between two ridges, I photographed with a 10mm fish eye. I did this photo shoot on a Sunday as the road on the left is heavy congested on weekdays and just to the left over the ridge is the Presidents Official Home.

I am moving now towards my house to establish my dwelling and I did a time exposure shot of 30seconds with a fish eye. Post processing on all the abov eimages was not really neccasserry as I either used  a polariser or time exposure. I do the normal workflow processes  such as crop, contrast and levels.

What makes this area so interesting is the family orientated suburb.  In Pretoria we have outgrown the inner city circle and every where there is townhouses, golf estates etc to cater for the thousands of job seekers.  We are also prone to lots of crime, high jacking, armed robbery, house breakings and vagrants invading the neighbourhood.  So to go out and take photos of a bunch of strangers is not easy as some are illegal immigrants and they do not want to be identified.  Also the rule of privacy and not photographing children etc are also strictly adhere to.

The Moot is very family orientated as the sites on which the houses are built, are quite large and this allows for family gatherings, lots of kids and most people have a swimming pools and lots of nice gardens.  We either have kids or dogs or both. In my street alone there is not one house without a dog. 

This is also because of crime and most houses have electric fences or private security companies to assist in crime fighting.  The police are not the most reliable and we make use of community watch companies to help fight crime, but still we carry on like normal people and enjoy good family gatherings.  Thus this is the following series of photographs.  I am including a photo of my father as he passed away a few years ago, we did not live close by and when we got together it was always shared with good food and wine.

 The next photo symbolises the special bond between humans and dogs.  This dog came wandering into their dwelling on a stormy night and the two dogs they already have are not young, about 13 years.  This was like a calling, as my friend’s sister opened the door the next morning for the dog to come into the house there were three, instead of two, 3 months later one of the older male dogs died.  I decided to convert to black and white with a bit of a high pass filter to accentuate the dog and the background.

The neighbourhood is also well know for the elderly that still owns property or live with their children.  For me the concept went directly to a more conceptual way of showing the elderly.  I took photos of some of my friends mother’s, but decided to show a more unconventional way of old age . Post processing involved normal conversion to black and white and tight cropping and shooting of the concept.

When we move away from direct families we come to the neighbours.   South Africa has fairly big groups or bikers that ride for recreation on weekends.  Pretoria is no exception and my neighbour and his wife both belong to the Harley group.  They have done a breakfast ride with me on occasions. He is quite a character and loves the tattoos. This photo was done with a single flash from the left and some sun streaking in from the top left.  I converted to black and white and pushed up the contrast to create an industrial kind of look.

Pretoria and the whole of South Africa have a very high unemployment rate and a lot of unschooled people want a “peace” job.  This means any jobs such as gardening or domestic workers.  There is also a lot of begging on street corners and coming to your house to ask for money etc.  I photographed my domestic’s hands to show the gesture that is usually associated with this.My domestic can read and write and went to school.  She is putting her kids through school and I use her husband in my garden when he is available and wants some extra money.I have come along road with my domestic and the neighbourhood tends to keep the domestics and gardeners around for as long as possible. 

We do have people on certain street corners on weekends that will work for a day lone.  Te problem is that you do not know from where they are, if they are legal or just out to do a criminal act.  Most of the people my neighbours and I employ are loyal and we are bound by contracts and the law to pay certain benefits.  This helps to avoid exploitation and give them a living wage.I have a second photo that is more a conceptual way of showing job creation and remuneration.  The whole concept was in white and thus the final project was a black and white image.

Due to unemployment under the youth we also have quite a drug and alcohol abuse under today’s youth.  We have rehabilitation programs that run through the church and certain welfare organisations to try and counter this.  We also have a tendency that kids these days do not want to work or do hard labour jobs.  Some leave school early due to abuse or neglect. I shot this at night to emphasise the loneliness and desperation. This was done with the time exposure. 

Then finally as we have a lot of people moving in and out of the Moot during the day we have a train station that goes to the city or to some other suburbs.  This system is not a very safe or reliable system as cable theft plays a big role in trains not being on time.  The new Gautrain system that was implemented last year with the World Cup Soccer is very expensive and only runs in certain areas and to certain suburbs. I shot the train station over the weekend and there were not a lot of people around.  I used some filters and vignette effects to show a bit of decay and that it is not reliable. This is my story on my neighbourhood and what makes it work and how people in and around the community work together to create jobs and a better and safer environment.

Mixed media can be anything you want.  I am a photographer and therefor I combine my work with different techniques.  I do a lot of digital art work but I am also an alternative process artist and currently work with salt prints. My next blog will be about salt prints.

Photoshop is a wonderful tool for digital photographers and I when I first saw a hand printed infrared print I became hooked. The visible spectrum for the eye is between 380 – 730 nanometers (wavelengths) see fig a. The photographic spectrum includes ultraviolet, the visible spectrum and then near infrared. The visible spectrum includes colours such as violet, blue, green, yellow, orange and red.

Finding Infrared film in South Africa is impossible and I import my film from digtaltruth. (www.digitaltruth.com) I shoot with 120 mm and 35mm EFKE IR film and Rollei Infrared IR400 with a Hoya R72 filter. You can use the Rollei also as a normal black and white film. If you are a diehard film fundi, you will know that bracketing is the best way to go. I learned the hard way by playing around with different ISO’s, shutter speeds and apertures. I find with EFKE that shooting at an ISO 0f 25, shutter speeds of 2secs – 4secs and then bracket from f8 / f11/ and f16 gives the best results. The big drawback is that you have to load into the camera and developing tanks in total darkness. It needs to be warm and sunny, I usually shoot when it is at it warmest, but you can shoot at low sun levels.

Looking at a normal monochrome print taken in infrared and another in black and white you will see some reflect Infrared better than others. Living things are rich in Infrared, such as plants and leaves. You cannot always predict what an image will look like when using IR. Green leaves typically become very white, and the sky becomes very dark. Digital cameras have a special infrared-blocking filter in front of the light-sensitive CCD array. If you have an old digital camera that you do not use, you can have the IR filter removed and shoot permanently in IR. Note that your images will look red and you can convert them further in Photoshop or Lightroom. You can even have colour infrared photos. This is a wonderful way to explore your inner creativity and to give another dimension on your photos.