'A good traveller has no fixed plans.' Tao Te Chiang
‘Ah, but your land is beautiful’ is the third novel by Alan Paton, the South African author best known for ‘Cry, the Beloved Country.’ Telling tales of apartheid and resistance, the title is an ironic reflection on the perception so often and so blindly voiced by visitors to this country – ‘you live in such […]
My wife made me do it. Last year Rob entered a selection of her collages for the Joburg Fringe exhibit, and much to her delight one of her pieces, Rare, was accepted – you’ll find it here, in the 2020 catalogue. We went to see the show of course, and there it was, in pride […]
Interviewer: Brousse-le-Chateaux, by the river Tarn in Aveyron, is supposed to be one of the prettiest villages in France. You went there, with your wife and children and grandchildren, on a perfect August day, blue skies and sunshine, not a cloud in the sky – what does that mean for you, as a photographer? Do […]
Interviewer: Last time we spoke, you ducked out of answering questions about this image. Perhaps this time you’d oblige? (Click on images to enlarge) Me: Ok. Ambient light. Interviewer: Ambient light? Me: Yup. I don’t have a controlled light environment where I work, so the ambient light has a big effect on how I perceive […]
One of the best decisions we made on our trip to Spain was to head off the main road from Sevilla to Ronda, and take a detour through the Parque Natural de la Sierra de Grazalema. The ‘park’ is an area of wild beauty, rugged, steep, sheer, spectacular, dotted with isolated farmsteads and whitewashed pueblos […]
Between Sevilla and Ronda lies the Parque Natural Sierra de Grazalema, a rugged, mountainous country of dramatic views and towering skies, where pueblos blancos – the white villages – cling to the rock. This is Zahara de la Sierra, where we stopped for lunch.
Seville Cathedral stands on the site of a great mosque, built by the Almohads in the 12th century. It is the largest cathedral in Europe. Its bell-tower, La Giralda, was in its original incarnation a minaret, on top of which were erected a Christian belfry and Christian symbols. You climb La Giralda not by stairs […]
The world I was born into was analogue. That meant film: in my case, mostly Kodak Tri-X, or Ilford FP4. Tri-X for when you wanted to “push” the film speed, where the light was low, or where you wanted a contrasty, journalistic effect or – I shall come back to this in a moment – […]
Little Egret – Marievale. Marievale Bird Sanctuary, Gauteng. I left in the power lines and pylons deliberately, as well as traces of the reeds and the trees, as I wanted to give a sense of the complex environment – not stereotypical, picture-postcard countryside – in which these birds live. Nikon D500, 70-300mm. Processed in […]
