Picture a Week (PAW). Week 28. Vice Chancellor of Rhodes University, Dr. Sizwe Mabizela

Vice Chancellor of Rhodes University, Dr. Sizwe Mabizela

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"