Category: FAQ

06Mar

What do I do for a living?

Posted in Events, FAQ, General, Portfolio | Leave a comment

At a recent farewell to a dear mentor (Goodbye Dr. B. You were truly a leader of men.) in my early days in the Sandton Emergency Services, a lot of my old colleagues whom I’ve not seen in years asked me what I am doing now with myself! I left the service in ’97 after 8 years of some of the most tumultuous times in South Africa’s history and dangerous yet oddly rewarding work of my life. I always had my 35mm cameras at hand but they were not as easily taken into a township in the back of an Mfezi and D&P was pricey on my salary…so I have sadly very little in the way of photo’s of those days, some were destroyed in a flood a few years back.

So to get back to the point, when I said I do “event photography” I drew a bit of a blank stare from them. I admit they didn’t expect this considering I mostly post nature/scape/wildlife/birding shots on my Facebook Page. These are the subjects that draw more pleasure than a picture of bored conference attendees or staff right? However if done properly, professional event photography can also draw emotion and attention, and be a powerful tool or conveyor of ideas, product, promotions, launches, services and more. Here are a few samples of my work:

Contact me for tuition and tours as well as event photography!

Gear I use: Bodies: Nikon D-SLR’s / Lenses: Nikon, Sigma, Tokina, Vivitar
Filters: Hoya UV & Polarizing / Flash: Nikon Speed-lights / Bag: Lowe Pro
Tripods & Heads: Manfrotto / Grips, Triggers, Timers, Batteries: Phottix
Editing Plug-in: Topaz Labs Noise Reduction, HDR, B&W Conversion & more!

15Feb

Camera RAW Codec Pack(s)

Posted in DIY, FAQ, Gear, General, Software, Tips-Tricks | 1 Comment

Canon .CR2 RAW

Nikon .NEF RAW

So you have a Canon (CR2) but want to help a friend edit or Post Process their images but can’t open or view them because they are Nikon (NEF)?

When you install your DSLR software, the codec for your brand of camera is embedded into and used by the O/S so you can view thumbnails, open and edit with your manufacturers included software, however it can’t read a RAW file from another manufacturer if that codec is not installed.

You might have bought the camera 2nd hand and the packaging/software is amiss and downloading the original software is either daunting or it simply isn’t available.

Here’s a solution:

You can download the RAW Codec Pack from a number of online resources. Solutions are to get the codecs from your camera maker, O/S House or from a 3rd party, if you have failed at finding/downloading the software from the manufacturer. Please visit each site regularly as they are updated as new camera models are released. You could also join your local camera club, as there will be a diverse collection of cameras and someone might well be willing to copy his/her install CD for you. Once installed, most s/w self-updates to the latest version.

I’ve done some of the leg work for you; download them here > Codec links: (more…)

07Nov

Bird Photographers – Code of practice

Posted in FAQ, General, Humour, News, Photography 101, Tips-Tricks | 3 Comments

The yellow what-sit with stripy eye. Excuse the quality!

Actually any wildlife tog should have a mental code of practice…

I’m the first to admit that I am not the world’s biggest twitcher. I battle to identify many of the obscure lesser seen species, especially those darned LBJ’s (how many do we have?!) and Eagles perched in a tree 400m away or soaring in the sky… I don’t race around the countryside looking for that elusive species. I don’t make use of playback vocalisations to call them in. I go. I see what I see. I’m happy to be out there, no just so that I can tick it. I carry a few bibles with me and I always ask someone who knows better than I especially the bloke with the monster prime lens :) Mind you, I’ve spoken to some who couldn’t tell the difference between a Heron and a Hadeda but they had all the latest gear and best glass, bodies…and bank manager!

My friend David from Seokama can identify LBJ’s and others from their calls without even setting eye on them. The yellow what-sit pictured (L) was hastily photographed there out the car window before it took off.  Terribly handy to have Dave on my workshops with me :)

I do try to be as unobtrusive and non-invasive as possible. I often miss shots because of this. Or I’ll let someone else push his way into the hide before me to race off and grab the best seat…even though he and his entire family arrived after me…I know that, by them being the impatient kind & pushing me out of the way, if they don’t at least see 14 elephants at the hide followed by a Leopard and her cub with a kill in a tree, they’ll be outta there before I even set up my gear…aaah peace :)

The last time this happened to my wife and I (Lake Panic, KNP), she spotted 2x and I spotted 1x Bushbuck right next to the hide alley. We stood silently and let the noisy Homo Sapiens pass us, and then resumed watching the buck feeding… The previous time it was at a hide near Satara, and 2x Klipspringer were so close to the viewing window we could touch them, but half a dozen holiday makers came and went in 5 minutes without even spotting them. The rest of us were going to mention it to them but they never gave us a chance :)

/end Rant

Once in the hide, I did get some great shots of a croc eye abstract and a terrapin taking a piggy back ride on a hippo and the Klipspringers. The birds were a bit shy but we did see a few. A bad day in a hide beats a good day at the studio.

Here’s a few tips (saves me typing them) from BirdGuide.com and most of this is common sense, but even that’s not so common any more :(

Be patient and be thoughtful of nature first and others second. Your photo album will love you for it! So will the critters. So will I when we share a hide in Africa somewhere :) Take a plastic bag for your own rubbish. I’ve often cleaned up others rubbish and tossed it at the camp or the next stopover.

PS: So what bird IS that above? PPS: What tree IS it sitting in? :) I know, do you?

02Aug

DSLR Sensor Dust – How to deal with it.

Posted in DIY, FAQ, General, Photography 101, Tips-Tricks | 2 Comments

I recently noticed a few shots online that had the dreaded dust bunnies in them and this prompted today’s posting. Note this only applies to DSLR or Medium Format with interchangeable lenses and mirror mechanisms, not to your mirrorless Point and Shoot or Bridge Camera UNLESS they have interchangeable lenses where the sensor is visible and prone to contamination.

A few days after I bought my Tokina 12-24mm f/4.0 ATX Pro DX, I was at the coast. With the intention to do UWA scapes with the D80 (It’s ISO 100 and long exposure is superb on the CCD). The camera is seldom used and I also rarely remove the Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8 that’s on it. Less lens changes, less dust, or so the theory goes. Camera has done under 6000 images in 4 years.

So I get up at 4am and head off to the local lake district in Sedgefield for a few pre-dawn landscapes. Take a few shots, chimp at the screen. Everything looks awesome (LCD’s always make everything look awesome…)

Get back to the apartment and fire up the laptop, offload the images…enlarge…and there they are…”dust” bunnies.

King Fisher River Lagoon – Dust Bunnies – Click Image for full size – Blue circle is a “Hot” Pixel – more on that in another posting.

 

What a waste of time! No wait, I can clone them out in PP. But still, what a waste of time if I had just spent a bit more time on checking the SENSOR pre-shoot. I honestly thought that because I rarely remove the lens (more…)

27Jul

Outgoing SMTP getting you down?

Posted in FAQ, General | 6 Comments

As photographers we’re often on the road with a laptop and some form of Data Stick and e-mails refuse to go out right?

SMTP – POP Diagram

When sending mail, it’s best to use your ISP’s (Internet Service Provider) SMTP for sending emails. Your ISP should have supplied you with the SMTP server address on Sign-Up. Most of them don’t offer this information and you’re left in the dark. Whilst you could use your domains’ SMTP i.e. smtp.mydomainname.co.za, (note you must enter your username and password for that domain for authentication, especially if you are connected to a different ISP) this will eat away the monthly hosting bandwidth and it could also be physically outside of South Africa. Using a local SMTP is faster and doesn’t use up any bandwidth allocation on your domains’ hosting account. Note that you may have to change the SMTP in your email client, i.e. Outlook, Thunderbird etc. when you are roaming or using a hot-spot where the ISP will be different from yours. Note: Some hosts and ISP’s use a different PORT for their SMTP. Contact your supplier to obtain this info. Google is your friend if you can’t get a human being on the line!

Email Setup Guide to change your SMTP on your PC/Laptop/iPhone/iPad.
For specific mobile device set-up please contact your ISP or Carrier.

Below is a list of Popular South African ISP SMTP’s for your convenience:

(more…)