Following the light in photography and life
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…
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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…
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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.
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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…
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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 –…
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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…
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As this is the only time, so far as I recall, that I’ve seen a mother warthog suckling her infants, I share this image – not as a great picture, but simply as a record. Nikon D500, 70-300mm. Processed in Lightroom and Silver Efex Pro.
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Two little warthog piglets were playing a robust game of catch and head-butting when we came across them at the edge of the camp in Marakele, on our first afternoon there, at the end of a game drive on which we had seen virtually nothing. Needless to say we sat for a while and watched…
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To maintain my sanity, or at least the appearance thereof, from time to time I have to take a break from what another photo blogger calls the work that pays the bills, and process an image. Here, as a foretaste of an upcoming posting, is just one image, of a pair of zebra in the…
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Here are two final images from our visit a couple of weeks ago to Cape Town and the V&A Waterfront: a young girl climbing on a metal sculpture near to the Zeitz-Museum of Contemporary Art Africa. Rob thinks the girl is lost in the image; I think the image of the girl is subtle. Decide…
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