Picture a Week (PAW). Week 8. BBM (Bird, Boat and Moon)

Canon EOS 7D. Tamron 24-70mm at 70mm. f/13 @ 1/60th. ISO 100

Keeping Still at a Taxi Shooting

In South Africa, taxi ranks are not the safest or most liked places in our country. But they do have an ominous immanence about them. They do for me anyway. I spent about an hour in the company of this rank, concealed a story above the road on some sprawling shop balconies whose purpose I couldn't quite work out. A bar behind me played scratchy Bob Marley numbers with tinkling glass overtones. It was voyeuristic to be sure, but it felt safe. From up there it gave me time to think and to compose. Unfortunately I didn't think enough to turn off my lens's image stabilisation (or vibration control as it is called on a tamron lens) so the first twenty minutes were a right off. I hate it when I do this.
And how is that for a misleading blog title!

Canon EOS 7D. Tamron 24-70mm at 70mm. ISO 800. F/16 @8sec. 

Canon EOS 7D. Tamron 24-70mm at 35mm. ISO 200. F/13 @30sec. 

Canon EOS 7D. Tamron 24-70mm at 57mm. ISO 6400. F/10 @7sec. 

Canon EOS 7D. Tamron 24-70mm at 35mm. ISO 200. F/11 @30sec. 

Picture a Week (PAW): Wk3: Blew Moon

A full moon rising over the Atlantic Ocean found me in search of high ground to photograph its rotundness. I was late and battled boringly tall buildings and distracting overheads. I eventually decided to cut my loses and go with simplicity. This, I find, is a great approach when there is a bit of pressure (time/deadlines, whatever). I liked the result and used a tungsten white balance setting to bring in more blues. Keeping to an 'auto' white balance (AWB) would have introduced a yellow caste, a colour I wanted to keep for the moon.

Picture a Week (PAW): Wk4: Blew Moon. Canon EOS 7D. Tamron  70-200mm @ 200mm. ISO  200. F/11 @0,7sec. WB set to 'tungsten' Exp Comp -2.

Picture a Week (PAW): Week1: Moonlit whelk watch

Expecting a great sunset after a busy day, I headed towards Port Elizabeth's King's Beach hoping to capture the firmament. The clouds turned a little yellow, then faded to grey as the haze swallowed up light. I was disappointed but waited to see if something would come of the full moon. It was a busy beach scene which I captured with a few tripod mounted long exposures. But I kept being drawn to a woman, on her own, constantly combing a small area of the beach. I wanted to imbibe a sense of her solo activity so it was just a matter of timing to isolate her. A large ship in the far distance seemed interesting but in the end proved a distraction to the mystery of what the woman was doing. When she left I wandered over to her scene and could see nothing unusual. I guessed she must have been collecting whelks (Bullionidae) and tossing them into the ocean (where they belong?). I'm glad she went to the effort because otherwise she wouldn't have captured my attention and I wouldn't have captured this moonlit assisted shot.

WEEK 1: A woman gathers welks (Bullionidae) under a full moon. Kings Beach, Port Elizabeth.
Canon EOS 7D, Tamron 70-200mm @ 70mm. ISO 800, f2.8, 1/90th.