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): Wk2: In a Cityscape

I find it hard to resist a good clear evening. So it was that I headed into the Eastern Cape's city of Port Elizabeth to do a 'nights cape'. I spent most of the time photographing a Taxi rank just below me but loved the look of this promenade. I knew the low light and long exposure would render a colourful warm and inviting glow to the image and I liked that this would be at odds with reality which was cold, windy and stank of the excrement liberally planted all along the balcony on which I stood.

Picture a Week (PAW): Wk2: In a City Scape. Canon EOS 7D, Tamrom 24-70mm @24mm.  ISO 200. F/8 @30"

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. 

Run Time or Changing Pace

 

Things sometimes take time when it comes to journalistic magazine production. And over time things can change. Also over time, I have made a number of submissions to a particular mainstream runner’s magazine in South Africa. The submissions often take at least 4-8 months before being published and hitting the news stands. Most of my content consists of two images used as double page spreads, a map graphic, and about 500 words of text. It has always been like that for this particular feature and it is a formula that works well and one that the magazine has used for years. So no change there.

What has changed, apparently, is their payment for the submission. And not upwards you probably aren’t surprised to learn. The drop in price was significant, at 40%, and enough for me to query if the payment was per double page spread (never mind about text and graphics) and not for the ‘package’, as in the past. It wasn’t. I requested some kind of explanation, assuming that there was some logic, perhaps the payments were separated into text and graphics. That’s how it used to be some years ago, in the industry. Whilst I am not in favour of cost cutting when it affects me negatively, I do understand that sometimes it is necessary. But 40%? Really?

I didn’t receive any explanation for weeks despite a second follow up email. I knew they didn’t have a backlog of content as the turn around time was quite quick at 3 months. Also the tone of the emails after submission confirmed that my journalistic training was appreciated (very little, if any, editing of the main text, a graphic that only needed dropping onto the page and images sized to match the output). I knew that even a mediocre designer could layout these four pages of the magazine in less than ten minuets. So you can understand my interest in finding out why there was such a marked drop in payment.

You can also understand my surprise when I bought a copy of the magazine in question and saw my images, text and graphic in print. And here I was thinking that I was waiting for confirmation of payment, which would equate to my permission to publish. Seeing it in print therefore negated any option I might have had to not have the work published, or to seek a more lucrative publisher.

And so time will tell, as I am still waiting for a response from the publishers as to why the payment was dropped by 40% and why my content was published prior to reaching an agreement. And because I haven’t received a response, I am also waiting to receive payment!