Firemonkeyphoto

The Wedding of Sarah and Terence0
neil posted in Travel on July 22nd, 2007

Sarah, who shared the Tanzanian adventure with us, just got married to Terence. They’re both doctors and profoundly cool people. The ceremony was beautiful and featured spontaneous laughter. The reception ceilidh was an introduction to Scottish dance for Malay and English contingents alike. The I was “roped” in to be ceremony videomonkey. Managed to sneak in a few stills but I really want to see the footage I shot too.

My best shots (much more!) are up in the gallery HERE.

Holgariffic0
neil posted in Photos, Neil on July 19th, 2007

The Holga. The camera famous for being broken. The cheap plastic lens with light leaks, extreme vignetting, blurry images, soft images in a tacky crappy black plastic body.

People LOVE it because it is so bad. The scary way that people love Penny Farthings, Reliant Robins and caliper brakes. It does’nt take photographs, it makes ART. As if art could be stamped out by a machine alone!

I stayed far far away until I saw images from John Stanmeyer at the VII London seminar. He used the Holga’s wierd effects to add atmosphere to a daylight spirit ceremony. This combined with sound recordings made at the time proved very effective. He even has two of the images in his online portfolio. Here.

After seeing a Strobist article on fitting a holga lens to a Canon (or Nikon) digital body, I decided to see what a Holga’d image I shot might look like. Overall I liked the effect though the constant aperture of f11 or f8 would bug me. Its faked and silly, but its FUN dammit. Thats one of the reasons I shoot pictures. For the shots in this gallery, its perfect. The steps I used can be found here. Going black and white all the time is dull for me in this polychromatic world. So I did’nt.

Two new galleries….0
neil posted in Photos, Neil on July 15th, 2007

Two more bits of my new portfolio website are up. The Circa clowns at the 2005 G8 and a day spent with an African Tingatinga artist in Paje. The front page for them is’nt up yet as there is a lot more to come so this is the only way of getting to them. Enjoy.

The CIRCA story is here.

The day with the Tingatinga artist is here.

Comments if you have them? Click on the number next to the title of this post.

The Mountain of God0
neil posted in Travel, Tanzania on July 14th, 2007

Our second meeting with the president of Tanzania happened on a main road near the airport. A more serious police roadblock stopped the traffic on the main road as the presidential motorcade turned onto it. The motorcade was composed of fourty seven SUVs of varying quality. Press, aid agencies and plenty of security. It took awhile but soon Enough we were heading to our Mt Kilimanjaro photo oppertunity.

Frenzied photo taking in the oppressive heat followed by lunch in the shadow of the truck. I spent awhile sitting at the roadside photgraphing the brilliantly painted busses that passed. One advertised the Hesbollah on its front windscreen. I did’nt make a picture of that one.

We pass some choice establishments after lunch. The Tanzanian enthusiasm for advertising made for some entertaining signage. “Magic Con Shop” “Golden Shower Hotel” “Las Vegas Grocery” “Maximum Miracle Centre” and the amusingly named “Kill-view pub”.

Our campsite is up a hill through a village of waving kids. It has the luxury of a tiny swimming pool and a Hawian-eqsue bar. The sun sets as Kathryn books our Zanzibar accomodation (against the wishes and advice of our fixer) and we chat to Boris.

Boris is from Zimbabwe and worked for the campsite. He was a cook, truck driver and fixer for twelve years. He calls Zimbabwe “Zim”. His mother still lives there. His father designated 2/3 of the family land as a cemetary just before the government would have taken possesion of it. He is happy and articulate but seems to be having trouble keeping the bar tabs in order. We pay up and think of the sun rising over the Indian ocean into the beach bungalows we just booked.

5 photographers walked into a gay bar…..2
neil posted in Travel on July 10th, 2007

No, its not the beginning of a joke. Its not even funny. These are normal people with everyday jobs and everyday lives. Indeed they could be you! They ordered drinks as you would expect and found a table in the back. Its what they did next that is a public nuisance and offence to common sense and decency.

They started to take photos. Not just any photos. Two people present are “strobists”. A strange photographic cult grown up around one man, David Hobby. He recently quit a full time job at a good newspaper to concentrate on his crazed cultists. Of the other photographers in this bar only one had the power to resist. This may be because he did’nt bring his camera.

The photos they take required the use of at least two flashes. The two strobists produce SB-800s and set them to “flash whore mode” or SU-4 which allows anyones on camera flash (anyone!!) to trigger the wretched things. There was then a lightning storm of which Thor would be proud. Four cameras, two external flashes and one incredibly overshot lemon.

They were’nt shooting fashion or journalism or current affairs. They were shooting a lemon. A lemon and some beer. Then a girl sucking on a straw in a glass with a lemon. It was a good thing that they chose this bar as it was empty on a friday night. If dangerous individuals like this were to reconstruct the storm that sank the Spanish armada in a bustling bar full of office workers then all hell would break loose.

The two non-strobists with cameras were quickly converted to the lemon lighting cause and showed considerable fervor. They eventually joined forces to create this photo. The combination of Canon’s focus flash and two excitable speedlights caused a retina burning effect like a cheap and violent disco strobe. The flashes crept around the table acording to arcane variables like aperture and flash power and distance-to-subject. They side lit, filled, backlit, isolated and diffused while good honest folk stayed far away and behaved with a stoicism not seen since the dark days of the blitz. This went on for a very long time and only ended when a nice man in a tight t-shirt persuaded them to move to their table in the rapidly closing restaurant above.

Thus ended the flickr Edinburgh Photographers friday night meetup. Its nice to meet people who understand.

Edinburgh photographers flickr group

Culprits:

Ultranalog

RozzieM

Zzathras77

An ode to the Glentress black route1
neil posted in bikes, Neil on July 7th, 2007

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA-

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA-

HAHAHAEHAHAHAHAHADROPOFFHAHAHAHAHA

Limited success at sailing0
neil posted in Travel on July 5th, 2007

George in addition to uber-webmonkeyage a girlfriend and mountainbiking also keeps up a sailing habit. His NHS prescription is a weekly race from port Edgar on a yacht called Bluestreak. They had been doing too well in the races and the “rolling handicap” system was eating their scores so they took on some saboteurs inexperienced crew to stop them competing effectively. Namely Kathryn and myself.

Our presence was’nt strictly neccessary as the engine steadfastly refused to start. There was’nt enough wind to sail out so we were stuck until it could be started. Over the water from the racing fleet came the ‘five minutes to start’ signal. With George and Ian tired from extensive start cord pulling, and Bob having slammed his hand into the boom, it fell to me to yank at the stubborn beast. Ian closed up the throttle and choke on a whim and I gave my best smooth strong pull. On the second yank the engine burst into life, coughed, spluttered and threatened to die. Ian dived on the engine and opened the throttle and kept it alive as we frantically cast off. Too late to race but we could still go for a sail. A sail with carbon fibre racing sails.

Only sailing requires wind. By the time we had the sails up we were beneath the road bridge and being taken out of the Forth by the tide. Without any meaningful wind and with a wall of rain on the horizon we restarted the engine (second attempt) and motored back to port and the race fleet.

Racing was a bit generous for what the fleet were doing. The race leaders had somehow made it as far as the upstream harbour wall before the wind died completely. The smart ones dropped anchor to sit out the lull. Hapless Jezebel reversed into the downstream harbour wall in a collision that was equal parts helpless and sickening. One boat found its own personal wind gust and overtook several opponents before being stranded. We turned for our birth as a signal announced that the race was cancelled.

Beer and pie time.

Testing…testing…0
neil posted in Photos, rants, Neil, Sports on July 4th, 2007

The prototype page is up here:

www.iseepeople.co.uk/firemonkey/sports/

The photos are nearly the final pick but will be tweakified.

If you see da bugs, please email me or leave a comment. Let me know what browser you are using.

Friends0
neil posted in rants, Neil on July 2nd, 2007

In a nameless bar near Arusha0
neil posted in Travel, Neil, Tanzania on July 2nd, 2007

“Its bad for all of us, Nikon getting out of the professional game” lamented the bartender. He’d spotted me shooting the crocodile skin on the roof of the bar with my battered Nikon. I ordered a beer (Killimanjaro) we talked shop. The D3 might have been announced any time, but shows and speculation gave up nothing. Canon had just showcased the killer 1D mk3 and things looked bleak.

The bartender was a dedicated Canon man and was just about to buy some nice fast Canon glass. He’d watched the prices of lenses spike post mk3 announcement and was waiting to see if they went down. His point was that without competition Canon could release when they liked and charge what they liked. The constant battle for supremacy had produced some great cameras along the way, driven innovation and reduced costs. I drank my beer and tried not to think about the cost of switching systems.

Next time we met we chatted about the game parks outside of the reserves. Hunters paid exhorbitant fees to kill wildlife there. It turns out that this is a good thing. The hunting companies “farm” the animals by killing those beyond breeding age. They also contribute to the local villages and schools. My dog-eared rough guide agreed with him: The local villages are assigned a quota of huntable animals. The villagers could either hunt the animals themselves or sell their share to hunters. This has led to better relations between villages and the nature reserves and a decrease in poaching.
This is’nt the blog I thought I’d write today, just an interesting aside from my Tanzanian diary. There is much more still to come.