Africa Imagery – Photography in Africa

I’ve said it before, but it is worth repeating: If you don’t have a camera with you, you are not going to get many photographs!

I carry a little point and shoot camera around with me all the time and today it paid off. Pat and I were in the centre of Pietermaritzburg and we noticed a slight commotion opposite the city hall. We wandered over to have a look and who should get out of a car but Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Wow! It kind of made our day.

It seems that he is taking part in a documentary about some of the more interesting destinations in South Africa and he was in Pietermaritzburg to visit the Mahadma Gandhi statue close to the city hall. He was met by Mayor, Mike Tarr and Deputy Mayor Jabu Ngube. What a treat! And of course out came the camera and we got some very useful images. The quality of images from these little point and shoot cameras can be really awesome and it does pay to keep one with you.

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While we were in the Eastern Cape  recently we stopped off in Port Elizabeth to see if we could get some images of the Nelson Mandela Bay Soccer Stadium there. I had done some initial research using Google Earth and then quite a bit of pre-visualisation on the long drive down through the Free State and the Eastern Cape. As so often happens when you have done all the planning, is that the situation on the ground bears little resemblance to that you had in your head. Firstly, there was quite a bit of construction work happening, particularly with the road infrastructure around the stadium, and then the lovely view of the stadium across the lake was nothing like the image in my head!  We a bit of a recce but found nothing that came even close to the sort of thing that I had imagined. I did some images (the first couple in the gallery below) and as it was a little early in the day we headed off to find some lunch and see what was happening elsewhere. (Here’s a little tip on the side: When we are in a situation like this I log my position into my GPS (we’ve got a Garmin Nuvi 500) so that, after driving around a strange city, we can easily and quickly navigate our way back to the place we need to be).

We returned later when the light had improved and did a couple of more pix which also left me cold – the light was a little better but that was about it! Then I noticed in the distance, along the edge of the lake just below the stadium, some canoeists training. Wow! I grabbed some pix. But where were they coming from? Certainly not from anywhere near us.

We headed off in the car – they seemed to be from just to the south-west of the stadium in amongst some factories. The language in the car got steadily worse as we battled rush hour traffic and construction workers. Eventually we found the spot – the local canoe club – and spend an hour or so getting images more like the ones I had pre-visualised in the car. And the lesson/s: Well, pre-visualisation really does help in that I new that there was something more that I wanted. And of course the big thing is keep and open mind and don’t give up. Keep shooting until you really do have the pix you wanted.

Remember, if you wuld like to join us one one of our Photographic Safaris we have a number happening this year and our Image Library is growing by the day. We have been speaking to a number of photographers and we’ve got some very exciting portfolios comming on board soon. Whatch this space.

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I am a member of the Pix Magazine photography forum (have a look here: http://pixmag.ning.com) and from time to time members ask advice. Here’s a recent one and I’ve posted it here because I think that it could be useful to you. Here’s the question:  “Hi. I hope you are well. Roger can you please help me. I obviously must be doing something wrong on the aperture priority. I have noticed that when I try to blur the backgrounds of some of the photos it doesn’t always work. I adjust the aperture to minimum (3-5) the minimum that the camera allow”.

The depth of field is hugely influenced by your choice of lens (also by the aperture of course) and indirectly by your choice of camera. The reason I say by the camera is that if you are

This image was shot with Nikon's 200-400mm f4 lens at 400mm and at f4 resulting in a nice smooth background.

using a small sensor camera like the Nikon D300 or a Canon 7D then your “standard lens” (50mm on a full frame camera and somewhere around 35mm for the so called DX format cameras) is longer on my full frame D3x, for example, than on my wife’s D300. What this means is that in any given situation, you will be using a longer focal length lens with a full frame sensor than with a DX camera to achieve the same framing. And wide angle lenses, as we know, show more depth of field than telephoto lenses.

If you want out of focus backgrounds use the longest lens you can with the largest aperture you can and in your case it seems to f4.5. This aperture will limit things a little especially if the lens that you are using is fairly short. All those wonderful animal portraits with completely blown out backgrounds that you see are usually shot with lenses like the 300mm f2.8, 400mm f2.8 and the 600mm f4 – expensive glass to be sure.

There are 2 other things to consider:

The first is that the closer you are to your subject the shallower the depth of field – just try shooting macro. Number 2 is that the further the background is from your subject the more out of focus it will be. So the recipe for out of focus backgrounds is to use a long lens with a very large aperture (f2.8 or f4), get close to your subject (obviously within the limits of the lens that you are using) and make sure that the background is as far away as possible.

Hope this helps

I think it’s the most beautiful of the lot! The Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban, South Africa dominates the city skyline making almost ever photograph shot before its completion last year, obsolete. The graceful steel centre arch, based on the South African flag, is 106m high and a cable car designed to take visitors up to the highest point where they can take in wonderful  views of the city operates daily. The arch is 350m long and weighs 2600 tons. During the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ it will seat 70 000 people reverting to 54 000 thereafter.

We stayed at a very convenient B&B in Durban North called Annies Place (http://www.anniesplace.co.za/) just a few kilometres from the stadium. We did quite a few panoramic shots of the Durban Country Club with the stadium in the background and stitched these together in Photoshop CS4 after doing the necessary tweaks in Lightroom. What an amazing combination. In many instances these days I don’t even worry about using a panoramic head. I simply lock the focus, exposure and white balance and go click, click, click, allowing about 25% overlap and voila. Have a look at some of the images we did over the few days we were in Durban before the cloudy weather moved in again.

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While we are chatting things photography, we’ve a few more spots available on our Photographic Safari to Madikwe Game Reserve in May 2010. Have a look here for more details. These are amazing fun! http://www.africaimagery.com/workshops_madikwe.php

It’s strange how things happen sometimes… We’ve been needing to update our aerial photography of Durban for some time now as the construction of the The Moses Mabhida Stadium for the 2010 Soccer World Cup has made many images of Durban obsolete. The weather in Durban and surrounds over the past months has been dreadful for photography and it’s only now that autumn is approaching are we able to consider any major shoots in the area.

ABSA and The Moses Mabhida Stadiums. Durban. KwaZulu Natal. South Africa

I happened to get a call from friend and fellow photographer John Lamberti (It was he that did those delicious biscuits that were available in the supermarkets at one time) and after chatting for a while he said that he was doing some aerial photography of Durban the next morning and would I like to split the costs. Would I just…? He had chartered a Robbinson 44 from Starlight Aviation at Virginia Airport (what amazing people to deal with) and after a very early morning (we had to drive down from Howick) we found ourselves flying slowly over Durban. The city was looking beautiful in the early morning light and we spent just under an hour dodging airliners in their final approach to Durban Airport and other helicopters doing pretty much what we were doing. Anyway, 660 shots later we landed back at Virginia. Have a look at some of the images we did here: http://www.africaimagery.com/albums/durban_aerial_photographs/index.html

Aerial photography can be quite tricky especially when working from a helicopter as, contrary to what one might expect, they can shake rattle and roll a little which does not really make for sharp images. Here then are a few photo tips for those taking to the sky with a camera.

1. Set the ISO setting to as much as you can without  creating too much noise. I used ISO400 on my Nikon D3x and it handled this like a bomb!

2. Set your camera to aperture priority and dial in the largest aperture you can. For me (I had Nikon’s 24 – 70mm lens on the camera) it was f2.8 but go as fast as you can. This sets up the camera to give you the highest shutter speed possible under current lighting conditions.

3. Set the drive to continuous (High).

4. Set the focus mode to continous (servo) and the focus point selection to automatic.

5. Keep the camera inside the aircraft when you are shooting  – you do not want to create any additional vibration by having the lens in the air flow.

6. Do not brace the camera on the aircraft anywhere as this allows vibration to be transferred from the plane top the camera.

7. And finally, a polarising filter can help cut through the haze but remember you do loose 2 stops of light when you screw it on.

Good luck and happy landings.Aerial Photography

Anyway, Zama said he knew of a Sangoma (Diviner or Traditional Healer) just to the north of the HiP that would be willing to talk to us about dogs and so off we went. Now there are no street names in this part of rural Zululand. No street numbers. No nothing. So it took a bit of a while. A couple of stops along the way to check directions with a few locals, and we arrived at a small homestead where the Sangoma lived. What a gentleman! Helpful, courteous and knowledgeable, he provided a real insight into using various objects (both animal and plant) to treat patients. All too soon our time with him was up and it was off to continue our search for wild dogs so we could photograph them.

That was where Carla came in. There was actually a pack of about 16 that was quite close to where we were staying at Hilltop Camp. We’d got fairly close to them on the first morning using some telemetry equipment that Carla had. They were in very thick bush in a rather deep donga system and there was simply no way we could get close enough for photography. It was now 5 days later and we were no closer to getting pix of them and our time at HiP was fast running out. And then this morning after a long and completely uneventful drive in the area we rounded a corner and there they were – right in the road. I stopped about 50m from them, got off a few very quick shots and they up and offed into the very thick bush. And that was that! 5 days. About R1000-00 in fuel in the Game reserve and another R1500-00 to get here and home again and a few very early mornings. About 10 images and I’ll probably be able to use just 1. Oh, the joys of wildlife photography!

We also had a long chat to Brendan regarding his research, sitting under a huge marula tree in the iMfolozi section of the park. (The result of the sitting under a tree in the grass if a bunch of tick bites where you really don’t want tick bites!) He had some fascinating insights into the life of dogs which will certainly find their way into the book.

I have put up a small web page with some images we’ve got on this trip on it. Have a look here.

We’re off to do one of our photographic workshops after this and I’ll post the results next week. But if you’re interested in joining us on one of these please visit www.africaimagery.com to find out more.