August St Lucia Workshop and update to Macro Workshop

Photographers, freelance ones that is, live in world of feast and famine. It just seems to work that way. One moment you are sitting wondering if you’ve done something wrong and questioning the motivations that made enter the heady, but extremely saturated world of professional photography. The next you are sitting in an airport and thanking your lucky stars the plane is delayed as it gives you some time to catch up on the admin side of the business. Feast or famine - Go figure.
I’ve just completed the usual St Lucia photography workshop with an extremely dynamic group of photographers. They were certainly a group of firsts. First time most of them came from roughly the same geographic region (save for our lonely American ). First time there were more men than women (to be fair 4:3 isn’t much of a majority though) and first time there was a majority of Nikon cameras. It was an excellent gruelling week with lots of shoots mixed in with plenty of theory. A good 5am-9pm kind of day.
As a kind of update, the micro workshop on macro and close-up photography has been moved to the 17th of September due to shoot commitments that have come up. There are still a few slots, so if anyone is interested make sure to email me to book a place.
On a different note entirely, thanks to last week’s photography group I had the opportunity to test the Nikkor 16-35 f4 AFS VR, 17-35 f2.8 AFS and 20-35 f2.8 AF lenses against each other. After my work commitments for the month are completed I’m hoping to get a brief comparison put up on the blog. Stay tuned if you are wondering which one to fork out for.
Thanks again to Catherine, Bob, Andrew, Emily, Sam, Tobie and Shauneen.

Wind and Fire

Winter in the Drakensberg means for dry grass slopes and plenty of smoke in the air. As a necessary conservation measure the National Parks Board has a routine burning pattern that seems to cycle through every two years and in some places every year. Of course dry grass also means there are plenty of natural fires. Add this to the vast areas that get burnt on a seasonal basis by both small and large scale commercial farmers and you have the recipe for a murky skyline of bluish haze. The peaks appear as ghostly outlines rather than the craggy and majestic monoliths that one is used to. 

Macro Photography workshop

I'll be running a small macro workshop on the Morning of Saturday 4th September at the Durban Botanical Gardens. Spaces are limited to 8 photographers, so be sure to contact me to make a booking if you are interested in taking part.

The workshop starts at 8:30 am where coffee and snacks will be available. A one-hour seminar covering macro and close-up photography will be followed by a hands-on shooting session. Various gadgets that I use for my macro photography, including nikon-fit macro lens, will be available for loan during the workshop. Follow-up critique on the images shot is also available to workshop-goers.

Chasing bugs - Late July St Lucia Workshop

Whenever there seems to be little else to truly inspire me, the bugs come out. One of the reasons why I shoot macro is simply the availability of subject matter. To be a great wildlife photographer one has to spend at inordinate amount of time in the bush following wildlife. Unless you already have a job that allows you this kind of access, full-time wildlife photographer is an extremely hard profession to follow, an most definitely an exorbitantly expensive one too. Macro, on the other hand, allows a photographic safari in miniature the moment you step out the door. Not that I wouldn't love to go an shoot exotic animals in far-flung corners of the world mind you. But until National Geographic comes beating a path to my door to hurl obscene amounts of equipment at me along with a return flight to 'insert dream photographic destination here', I'll just have to keep shooting the little critters.