Seen through my lens

Thanks to all who wished me well for my big move from South Africa to New Zealand. I am settling in nicely and happy to be here. I am looking forward to the opportunity to take some photos in this beautiful country.

I mentioned in my last post that sometimes we need a change of perspective to make something mundane interesting. On a similar note, sometimes I find that a partial view of an animal can make for a more interesting photo than one of the entire animal. That's what I was getting at in this photo of an African elephant cow. Somehow, a partial shot involves the viewer more, drawing on his or her imagination.

I don't know really - what do you think?

I am currently in the process of emigrating and for the next several months may either have intermittent or no access to the Internet.

As a result, I shall not be updating this blog for the remainder of this year. However, I shall certainly take it up again once I have a dependable connection, hopefully very early in the new year.

Please be patient until then. See you on the other side!

Courtesy of Digital Photography School, I recently watched an excellent tutorial on using Photoshop to add make-up to a subject. Have a look:

I spent the past week on leave (using all my leave up prior to resigning from my job today - anyone want to offer me work?). One of the things I did was drive out to Skeerpoort in South Africa's North West province.

I did not actually go to Skeerpoort intentionally. I got into my car and drove from Gauteng province to North West and wandered about the area aimlessly, looking for rural areas and hoping for something to photograph. I can recommend this kind of aimless wandering - you get to see things that you might not if you had gone somewhere intentionally. That way, you don't have any preconceptions.

In any case, I did find quite a number of things to photograph, and I'll post a few here over the next few weeks.

The subject of this photo speaks for itself. How did it come about? As I was driving, I noticed that there was a lot of barbed wire in the area, preventing livestock from vanishing from the farms I suppose. Suddenly the thought presented itself - why not take a photo? And here it is.

I used to put my photos on flickr until I discovered that, despite my activating the site's security options, some of my photos were appearing on commercial Web sites. I speedily deleted my flickr pro account and high-tailed it out of there with all my photos.

I don't recall exactly how, but I think it was through one of the social networking sites, I discovered an alternative site called Photrade, which offers more security, including watermarks. As an added bonus, you can sell your photos through the site (although I have yet to make a sale through the site) and also share in ad revenue (a few cents) when one of your photos is used in an advert and clicked on.

So far, I have been impressed. The staff are friendly and helpful (OK, it is in beta and there are probably not nearly as many users as there are on flickr, so let's hope it stays that way), the site is easy to use and the security features live up to the hype. Certainly there are the usual happy snaps that you wish people would not share, but there are also some quality shots by some highly competent photographers.

This weekend several new features were added that should please ex-flickrites no end: groups, events, and competitions. This takes Photrade to an entirely new level and means, I believe, flickr should be concerned.