Picture a Week (PAW) Wk 5: Bianca Phillips. Master's in Philosophy student.

Picture a Week (PAW) Wk 5: Bianca Phillips. Master's in Philosophy student and recipient of the 2015 David Ryan Memorial  Scholarship for Philosophy. Canon EOS 7D. Tamron 24-70mm at 70mm. ISO 100. F/4 @ 125th sec. Fill light with Canon 340 EZ strobe at ¼ power.

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): Wk 4: Reflecting a Silent Synagogue

Two things always exert an existential pull upon me whenever I pass them by. In no particular order they are graveyards and places of worship. They both centre on souls and because of this I always feel a sense for the lost. This synagogue in Grahamstown is now used by a group of lawyers and notaries. I don't know when its worship stopped but a severed gravestone leant against the wall was for a woman buried in 1953, forty years after the place was consecrated. There was no other reflection of the past.

Picture a Week (PAW): Wk 4: Reflecting a Silent Synagogue. Canon EOS 7D. Tamron 24-70mm @ 24mm. ISO 400. F/6.7 @ 1/30th

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): 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. 

New for the blog: 2015 - Picture a Week (PAW)

Since 2010 I have been sure to be photographing at least every week. Sometimes this is easy, it happens as a matter of course. But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the photographic work that I do is just that - "photographic work that I do". I love photography, but I don't love all photography. A lot of my pictures a week (PAWs) emerge out of what I do for fun. Often, but not always, they emerge out of places where I have no clients to please, no deadlines to meet and no pressure to perform. It is important that I find these spaces and places for without them I run the risk of becoming an unenthusiastic, uninspired and uninspiring photographer. The possibility of this abhors me. So I make sure that I am shooting what I want at least every week and posting a picture. They are all on my website, but this year I've decided to add them to my blog too. Now in its sixth year, it has become a kind of visual diary for me. Like most photographers I remember the times, I remember the mood, I remember the circumstances and I remember my intentions. I hope you remember to come back and have a look at the progress.