So here I am, busy being born again at 71 ......... following a passion that has been with me since I got my first Kodak Brownie 127 camera from my mother at the age of 10 (1956).
At 19 years of age when I went into the army I graduated to a fantastic little Olympus Pen EE-S fully automatic camera with which I took literally thousands of great slides over a period of about two years.
In 1968 I bought my first SLR - a Pentax Spotmatic just like the one that Sam Haskins was using, and am happy to say that I still have it today in full working order all these years later. During our seven years in the UK ('68/69 to '76), I taught myself developing and printing (Black & White), as I am sure a great many other people did, and today retain hundreds of negatives and contact sheets of pictures taken during that very happy period of our lives, a few of which I have had converted to Digital format purely for the sake of reminiscence, and which I call up from time to time just to remind myself what it was once like to be so young.
I now use a Nikon D750 FX with a variety of lenses and a D5100 DX that is a wonderful standby ....... they really do everything that I need them to do.
The point of this Blog is to provide a track record of sorts (though not necessarily in chronological order), of photographs that I have taken - and will continue to take - along with a brief summary of the circumstances in which they were taken ........... for posterity? ...... perhaps! .... but moreso as something that I can refer family, friends, acquaintances and strangers to as a record of who I am - where I came from - what made me (and still makes me), happy or sad ............. and in so doing perhaps provides each of them - and each of you - who deign to read these entries, with a moment's pleasure or a moment's introspection, and the encouragement to keep at it, whatever it is, because in Dylan's timeless words "........ he not busy being born is busy dying".
I have always tried to take 'good' pictures - more often than not giving time and thought to composition, exposure, storyline and balance, and would very much like to think that most of those that I have taken qualify as 'photographs' ......... if I may quote the very bright and equally talented Mr. Don Pinnock:
"The structured process of a photograph is an idea lensed through framing colours, light and a camera of a mental representation of a moment in time. Its power (and what makes a good photograph) is not that it captures the moment, though it does, but that it communicates the photographer's language of mind, his or her visual syntax. It's the communication through technology of an idea which nests within a small rectangular, two-dimensional scrap of a near-infinite world.
Photography is to snapshots what ballet is to skipping.
It's a language of the mind - even when taking a photograph of a baboon trying to figure out what I'm doing."
This excerpt is from Don's wonderful 'wanderings of a bemused naturalist'- WILD AS IT GETS. Do yourself a favour and get it now!
Nikon D750 - 1/160sec at f5.6 - Focal Length 150 - ISO 320
April 6 - 2016
This image probably best sums up what I mean by Spirit of Place, what I am hoping that my pictures will best express. Taken while we were filling up with diesel poured from plastic drums in Okangwati (South of Epupa Falls on our way to Van Zyl's Pass in Northern Namibia), it asks me, in Lawrence Durrell's words "I am watching you - are you watching yourself in me?" The Himba man conversing with the two young Himba maidens - the dog seeking shade from the makeshift food stall with rocks and an old tyre holding down the iron roof sheets - the piece of raw meat hanging from a post - the fire - the enamel basin full of 'vetkoek' - the oxide wall that matches the dye in the one girl's hair ............ all of these I feel attempted to capture the cross-over between age-old Himba tradition and the 21st Century. The confusion of their trying to fit into my world and my wonder at how I might fit into theirs.
So evocative. So lost in time. Recent pic?
ReplyDeleteTaken April 16, 2016
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