Sirui K-30X Ball Head Review - The Middle Ground Master

In a relatively short period of time Sirui have entered the photographic equipment market and created something of a name for themselves. Unlike a lot of copycat Chinese firms, they create their own designs (although often inspired by some of the traditional European and American tripod companies, but not directly copied) and try and innovate in interesting ways. The result is a competent set of equipment that punches way above its price tag. There are quirks admittedly, but quirks exist in the long historied Italian and German tripod brands too. Sirui have definitely become a tripod and tripod head brand that is worth considering for prospective users. In particular they have become known for their high quality attached to a ‘reasonable price’.

Protec Voices

One of the things that I really love about the work I do is when I get involved in a photographic project. Sometimes it's for a client, sometimes it's personal. Over the years I have been involved in a few that have been meaningful to me. Protec Voices is one of those. To set the scene; Protec is a non-government, entirely donor funded education intervention scheme concentrating on the sciences. Essentially, what Protec does is identify young learners in disadvantaged schools who show promise, but because of their circumstances are unlikely to achieve their matriculation - let alone a university exemption - in order to study further. The problem, being donor funded, is that they rely wholly on said donors. Which is where I became involved.

On Originality

 There is no such thing as originality sadly. Every idea created is essentially a reworking or even a distillation of ideas that have come before. In fact, often what we see as the original is in reality a copy; sometimes even a direct facsimile of something that has come before. In the professional creative world this does raise some interesting dilemmas. For a start, how do we protect copyright when everything is essentially just a copy of something created before. In Kirby Ferguson’s entertaining and illuminating TED talk, ‘Embrace The Remix', he points out how everything in art is actually a remix or a reworking of something that has come before. He uses the example of Bob Dylan who now jealously guards his own ‘copyright’, yet almost every example of his most influential work is actually a remix of other artist’s work. To put it succinctly - by today’s standards - Bob Dylan is a plagiarist.