Posts Tagged Travel Photography
Painting with light
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on July 16th, 2010
I took this picture in the South Australian Riverland the other day. It is a technique called painting with light. I have been practicing it for a while. Basically you have to wait until after sunset so that it is dark enough, then take a torch or a flash and just start painting the subject. Exposures could take anything from a few minutes up to many hours!
It still needed a little bit of a touch up in Photoshop, so I thought I would share some of the steps here.
so this is the original image without any retouching
I selected the sky and adjusted the levels, contrast and a slight bit of extra saturation. Although if you shoot at this time with your back to the sunset, you would get a dark rich natural blue colour.
So this is the original picture with the sky adjusted
Next I selected the house and adjusted the same again. Contrast, levels and saturation. Also, there was a lot of reflection in the left window from my flash. I removed a bit of the reflections with a combination of the clone stamp tool and the healing brush tool.
The finished image
Hope you found it useful.
Cheers
Morne de Klerk - Photography Life
Road Trip
Posted by admin in Travel Photography on July 15th, 2010
On a recent road trip the weather turned from relatively nice winter weather into horrible winter weather. In the space of about 15 minutes we went from sunshine with patchy cloud into rainy misty weather. At first we were disappointed as this would mean no more photos. But we took advantage of the weather and got a really nice wintery shot of two gum trees. I have called it Big Brother as to me it looks like the bigger tree is sheltering the smaller one from the bad weather.
The two pictures were taken within about 20 km’s from each other. One in the Clare Valley and the other just outside on the way from the Riverland.
Cheers
Morne de Klerk - Photography Life
two gum trees in the Clare Valley in South Australia in misty winter conditions
A farm house stand deserted near the Clare Valley in South Australia
Kept in the dark
Posted by admin in General Photography Stuff, Travel Photography, sport photography on July 2nd, 2010
Toward the Light
Keturah and I drove to Callington for a Thursday training session at the football club. Footy, like rugby is a winter sport. Unfortunately, that means very early sunsets.
In summer time, in Adelaide, the sun goes down as late as 21:30, but on this freezing Adelaide Hills night, it was well dark at the start of training at about 18:30.
We always knew that this would be the case, we just hoped that the flood lights lighting the field would be powerful enough for us to shoot pictures.
Stretches
Shooting with a 1D Mark IV (for fast focus tracking) and a 5D Mark II (for 21 Megapixel quality and full frame sensor), both cameras we were able to shoot at about 8000 iso filmspeed. The quality looks ok. I guess we will find out when we try and print them really big.
The final result were some interesting pictures where the lights are mostly the feature of the picture. Also, the use of long shutter speeds to create movement is an advantage to create some different shots.
Cheers
Morne de Klerk - Photography Life
Drills under lights
Passing practice
SPOT the players
Smash Block
Posted by admin in Africa's Game, Travel Photography on December 11th, 2009
We had a really cultural day today. A few days ago we paid a lot of money for a personal driver to take us into SOWETO, the notorious South Western townships of Johannesburg. Today, we got a ‘tour’ of a genuine slum shantytown for free.
A street scene in Smash Block
We are staying with a children charity in the Limpopo Province in the North of South Africa in our search for more soccer photos. The world Cup is coming and everyone is well aware of that.
Ladies cook up a storm
Our host, a modern day Mother Theresa, welcomed us in accompanying her to the year-end function of at the township clinic’s support group. They are a group of residents from the local community that support elderly and sick people in their homes, people who are too sick or frail to make it to the clinic itself.
Picture in you minds-eye your local year-end function. Some have formal dinner, a few drinks at the pub, or just a get together of work mates. But I bet you envisage at least four walls and air-conditioning!
The scene was set in the shade of a big old tree next to the clinic. The clinic consisted of 3 transportable offices, these had power and plumbing, but the rest of the houses in this 30 000 strong community did not. A few donkeys walked past in the distance, one chased the other with a loud hee-haw, nobody seemed to care.
Ladies show off the food
It was hot, there were flies and only limited shade. The proceeding started almost like a church service. Everyone got up and sang gospel songs in Xhosa, clapping and swaying. Because the community was of mix backgrounds, there were two speakers. One spoke in Sotho and the other translated directly after into Xhosa. It looked a little like a stand-up routine, as every so often there would be a word that could not be directly translated, then the speakers and audience alike would burst out in laughter.
Lunch, Chicken stew with rice, coleslaw beetroot and gravy
After a few speeches and a whole lot more singing, it was time for lunch. The cooks had been slaving away since six in the morning, cooking in huge cast iron pots over an open fire. They had to start early because they only had 3 pots and lots of different dishes to cook. Any navy cook would have been proud. With the large amount they cooked and the military precision to which they served up food for 50 people. Lunch was chicken stew, rice, coleslaw, grated beetroot and a beautiful gravy that tied it all together. It was rustic, but very, very nice.
We had to pick up one of the community members from his home, a fair drive into this makeshift city. The local iron ore mines act as a magnet for people seeking to make their fortune. Many come here from neighbouring countries and squat here as a temporary residents. Waiting to find work. Because the community is so mixed, our host told us, there is no sense of community and crime is rife.
A man carts water on a donkey cart
As you drive among the shacks, mostly made from tin and corrugated iron, it is hard to believe that roughly 30 000 people live here, mostly on a temporary basis. Many houses share the same ‘long-drop’ toilet and there are four points in the area where one can collect water. At the water point you will be charged a nominal fee to fill up your containers, but you have to cart them home yourself. Also the local entrepreneur’s have started a water running service. They load water containers onto the back of donkey carts and shuttle backwards and forwards between water points and houses, for a fee of course.
a store in the cbd area
A good town also has a business district, you can buy chickens, mobile phone credit, get a hair cut from one of the many salons or get meat from the butchery in the main street, albeit with donkeys, dogs and cats wandering the streets right next to the shops.
All up, in SOWETO we had to pay for an experience that was still very limited and we did feel like tourists. Here, the people were friendly and forthcoming. They fed us lunch, the same as what they had, they sang African Gospel and we had a township experience that money can’t buy.
It was great.
Ooh and almost forgot to mention, we were there on the wrong day for soccer, but on the two soccer fields in this area known as Smash Block, there are 3 soccer teams. Amazing.
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