Category: Photography

Learning Photography

This started as a comment on Joe’s blog post about one of the courses at the Cape Town School of Photography. I do not consider myself a good photographer by an stretch of the imagination, but I do have fun and right now I’m happy with that. One day when I live on a farm I’ll get past step 3.

I think the best way to learn is to:

  1. Learn the absolute basics of photography – Buy a book on photography… If the book pre-dates digital it’s a good thing!.
  2. Figure out how the basic photography concepts map to your camera.
  3. Take lots of pictures. Set yourself goals like “Today I’m going to take pictures of straight lines” etc.
  4. Repeat step number 3 for 6 months to a year.
  5. Consider going on an advanced course but it must be a *photography* course, not a DSLR course… Aspiring writers don’t go on MS Word courses, neither should you.
  6. Try and find people on websites like flickr whose stuff you really like and examine it in depth… figure out exactly what it is about a certain photograph that you like. Try remember that stuff next time you’re taking photographs.
  7. Start critiquing your photographs. A tiny bit of over exposure, slightly off composition etc. If you can, get other photographers to do the same for you… unfortunately you might not agree with what they have to say… everyone has their own style.
  8. Apply the critique and tighten up your technique.
  9. Ask yourself the question: Am I trying to be a photographer or take photographs that capture something, say something, do something?
  10. Do whatever it is that makes step 9 a reality.

Mostly pictures of our cat (and a few of the house)

I finally got around to downloading the pictures off my camera and discovered that most of them are pictures of the cat. I think this means I am officially a cat blogger.

More pictures

In other news, I was exploring an abandoned/demolished building and fell through the floor into the crawlspace (about 1.5m). Yes, laugh it up. I’m okay. My ankle is bit busted up and I have a nice cut on my leg that is starting to get emo.

This weekend was another relatively productive one. I ran cables RF+CAT6 through the walls so we no longer have cabling running down the passage and then fitted a cupboard thing in the bathroom. We were supposed to go for another bike ride but then I did the floor falling thing. We did have tea (well, chocolate milkshakes and scones and milktart) at Rhodes Memorial too.

We also finished watching the end of Season 1 of Californication. Excellent series… Probably the best television series I’ve ever watched. Can’t wait for Season 2.

Over and out.

Blog title goes here

So much going on, so little time to blog about it.

  • Going away this weekend… super stoked about that.
  • HPT is moving along slowly. A comrade set up a bazaar repository which we’re now using to share code. Probably going to sprint a large portion of it out next weekend. If you’re a python coder, know stuff about making facebook apps and are looking for something fun to do let me know.
  • Uploaded my sailing pics a few days ago…
  • Because everyone seems to think that other people care about the slides they used for a presentation, here are my slides on the talk I gave at the last GeekDinner called “Five ways to live like a Capetonian” [pdf]
  • If anyone knows any good way to repeatedly mount SMB or NFS shares in OSX (after reboot) please let me know.
  • My site will be moving to a new box in Europre soon… ZA bandwidth costs are a pain.
  • My friend rolled his had his landy rolled by someone else over the weekend but has yet to give me any more details other than a link to the pictures… Which means he’s probably pissed off with himself and doesn’t want to talk about it waiting to calm down before talking about it. Eish.
  • Started using Alarm Clock 2 to wake me up in the morning. It’s a neat little app because it can wake up your macbook and does the whole fade in the music thing. Funny how the commercial 50MB competitor doesn’t seem to allow me to set up a repeat alarm or specify which days of the week I want it to run on.
  • “Installed” a UPS on my friends office server a few days ago. Ubuntu detected it and Gnome Power Manager let me set what I wanted to happen when… without installing anything. Toit.
  • I tend to spend more time in my virtual Ubuntu on my macbook than I do in OSX. Attempted to install ubuntu natively over the weekend but it was such a ball-ache I stopped. Dear Lazy-Web, please make an Ubuntu distro tailored for MacBooks.

kthanksbye.

Why Jesus doesn't like art… or want Zimbabwe freed.

Graffiti is and always has been a part of society… go read up about it. We’re talking thousands of years… even before Jesus.

Now obviously my title is rather exaggerated and designed for the express purpose of increasing my readership, but the thing is, I really am starting to get pissed off at those “Jesus Saves” people walking around painting over what they deem inappropriate.

First there was the international graffiti competition held in Cape Town where some of worlds best contemporary artists painted f-ing amazing murals on walls that made you want to stop your car and take a deep breath. 2 days later the Jesus Saves people painted that incredible wall full of art work grey. Not white, grey.

I was willing to tolerate that since graffiti is supposedly against the law… never mind the fact that supposedly these guys got permission from the owner of the wall.

Then there was “FREE ZIM!“, a piece of artwork so poignant and powerful that it made me seek it out and photograph it. It said everything that needed to be said and was a constant, daily, reminder to thousands of Capetonians of exactly what had to happen in Zimbabwe. It was also beautiful, with stencilled birds taking flight reminding me of the phoenix to our north.

Then in the height of the xenophobic attacks against Zimbabweans (and other foreigners) the “Jesus Saves” crew painted over it in a dull grey that angers me intensely every time I drive past.

Which leaves me to say, like some graffiti artists mural’d on a nearby wall: “Jesus must hate art”.

ps. For the kids out there who are going to start screaming about tagging. I am not talking about tagging. I am talking about art. Tagging is the equivalent of taking a shit on the pavement and expecting people to think you’re cool for doing it.

For the record…

Me: which one have you got?
Him: Nikon S9
Me: why do you regret it?
Him: it takes bad pictures indoors. very bad. my vivitar did *much* better, and it was a cheaper camera.
Him: and it has an internal zoom lens, which makes me feel less manly.
Me: I just want to check, what was my advice regarding digital cameras?
Him: yes, I know, you were right
Him: this is the last time I’m trusting a blonde girl over a Jonathan. I SWEAR.

For the record, my advice regarding digital cameras is “Buy the most expensive Canon camera you can afford“.

Clever Unicorn Ad

UnicornsBeing a quasi advertising aficionado nerd person, I like clever ads. I snapped this pic with my cellphone earlier.

I’m also currently sitting in vida e caffe on my macbook via 3G.

Cliche much?

Getting my car waxed for the first time. The slick sales guy made me feel bad about how I treat my car and totally suckered me into a R350 wax.

Later, Suckers!