Durban night

I took this photograph of Durban last night (26 August 11) from close to the shore. I've been dying to take this Photograph for ages :) now I have several of similar shots thanks to Ant and Dave!


Enjoy the weekend!

Floating in music

Took this photograph last week for my class project. I'm looking forward to taking even more photos and designing the final poster. In this one Calyn looks almost as if she's floating in music, drowning or something. Its a bit somber, and I love it, but will be taking more photographs until we come up with the best we can later this week.

Zimbabwean Poetry [Part 1]

Welcome back to my blog. (I hardly take photos of myself, the one above is my most recent on :) During last week I worked with a poet called Elsa Kamsoda, and her producer Tinashe Nguluve (Logunn). Together we made some poetry videos based on Tinashe's poems, perfomed by Elsa, and the filming and directing was done by me. tafadzwa Tarumbwa. Here is the video's link http://vimeo.com/26571696

In this image you can see Elsa Kamsoda the musician/ poet that I recently collaborated with in the making of two poem videos namely Dream on, and World. The poems were written by Tinashe Nguluve (Logunn) and perfomed by Elsa, the two then hired me to direct and film the "Black poetry Whispers" Album, and so far 2 poems have been filmed and edited. Arrangements are being made to showcase the work online.

I really enjoyed my holiday back home, and hope to resume all my pending animation and photography work. The good news is thanks to our hard work, Elsa, Logunn and I now have 2 videos to parade with in the marketing of the "Black poetry Whispers' Album" coming soon! Thank you for reading my blog, cheers!

Watch Elsa in action, in her video titled World:

http://vimeo.com/26571696

Shall we play... again. As promised I've finished the "Shall we play?" technical breakdown


Recently I uploaded this photograph, and promised to create a rough breakdown of how I got to my end result.



The image below shows a plan of the room I took the photograph in, firstly one needs to know that even though you only need one photo. You must learn to explore your subject and take dozens and dozens of shots. After that you are free to choose the best one.



The diagram above have two windows in it. Both of them  were open and letting in light when I photographed the Playboy product. The red X marks where I was standing. Window A was letting in the most sunlight evident in the shadow you will find on my first/ finished image above. The highlight on the Deo's side also shows that window B was also letting in light, causing that appealing shine.




Image B above shows the natural photograph that anyone could have come up with using basic photo skills. Its not exactly  flattering is it? Image C goes to show how much I hate using Flash light. Its (in my opinion) horribly exposed. Image A however have some contrast in it, just compare it to image B and see what Microsoft office picture manager can do. I have Photoshop but for some small jobs I just right click my images, go to "Open with" and select MS Office picture manager and work some quick magic. Like turning images into black and white quickly, or adjusting the photograph's contrast levels.



Using Microsoft office picture manager I achieved the results below. The image below shows the basic photograph which is not too bad. The second image shows a comparison between the edited and unedited photographs. Thanks to Microsoft office picture manager I achieved the results which can be seen in the third image below. The finally image you see was also refined in photoshop using its photomerge function. Good luck in similar projects you might one day do.

The charm bracelet

Good morning my friends and Blog readers. I've enjoyed taking some new photographs.

 Its been a while since I updated my blog, and I thought of starting with something I love: charm bracelets. As a photographer/ designer/ animator I'm intrigued on the amount of detail that goes into the charms. The heart charm on this particular bracelet reminds me of Kat von D's tattoo art. Check out her website.

 The contrast in this image is in my opinion great, her hand was in the sun and most of her charms are in a nice dark shade. The thing I love the most about being here in Durban is the beach, sun, and my friends and classes. Photography has become a new found skill to me, when this year started I fell in love with black and white photography. I enjoy this, and will upload some more photographs soon.

Thank you Anisah, I enjoyed our photo shoot. College has closed today which means this was possibly my last photo shoot at college this semester. I shall post more Blog updates during my 3 week holiday on design. Animation. Photography, and stuff.

From me, I hope you have an amazing day! Until my next post, take care guys. Don't forget to check out Kat von D's amazing tattoo gallery at www.katvond.net I love her style.

Yap.. We Can

I was in a Kombi on my way to church and patiently waited for the perfect snap of the baby who was in the seat in front of me. It's a photograph I think suits well with the assignment I was doing. I had to take photographs of any marginalized group, and I chose children. They're always marginalized/ overlooked because of their age. The photograph above is a class example of how conductors only count adults as passengers and wind up leaving out babies like this one. Are they not passengers too?

Nobody told me how hard it is to photograph children, you just can't keep them still. They're kids. It takes a lot of patience to get the snap you wanted, I had originally wanted to photograph my 'model' above on a swing. However she didn't FEEL LIKE IT. :D kids 'ey what can you do? The amazing thing about photographing kids is that you must keep your camera on, and be ALERT for unexpected yet beautiful moments.


I put in the caption "Yes we can" because of how we always assume children cant do certain things and if we give them the chance they might prove us wrong. Yes she can put on her own shoes!

Another "Yes we can" shot above. Yap we can... put on our own shoes if you let us once in a while. How else can we learn these things?

Capturing the above moment was HARD, I wasn't even expecting it. Debra (The kid) had just seen her dad drive into our yard and she dropped everything and put on this look on her face. Never switch off your camera when you're dealing with kids, otherwise you'll completely miss moments like this.

I shall soon be bouncing back to my first passion, Animation! I really enjoy the insight that I've got in learning photography and hope it shall come in handy when I resume my animation project(s). Thanks for visiting my Blog, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed updating it. Take care!

Zama - licious

 In order to improve on my photography skills I shall be practising in random shoots with some of my model friends. Zama did a great job in understanding the emotion I wanted. Thanks love, these are some great head shots.I shall also do another shoot soon with Tash from my "Addicted to Jeans" photo-shoot I posted earlier in this blog.

Beautiful

Come to me...  Took this one so that I can play around with the 'depth of field'. Which allows me to blur the hand and focus on the gorgeous Zama.

In the above photograph I just wanted to highlight how I personally don't like ugly horizontal lines on my photos. I prefer to slant my buildings/ furniture at an angle. The only time i would allow some straight/ horizontal subject can work for me is when I'm working on some cooperate work. It all just depends on what project you're working on.

After I had all the photos I wanted I took the one above after asking Zama to give me a random pose. I really enjoyed working on these pics with her. 

Thanks Zama, these are some great head shots.

The above picture was one of my first attempts at HDR photography. I took 5 pictures and layered them one on top of other in photoshop. I ended up using only 3 of the images to compose the hdr fill you can see on the right of the above picture. What I love about hdr is the way detail is enhanced in this case you can see how detailed the tree's reflection is on the rear window. I wish I had a better sky to work with to have more defined cloud detail. I shall keep working on my hdr skills, and those who want to learn about how to achieve hdr photography can visit http://www.stuckincustoms.com/hdr-photoshop/

For some inspiration on how amazing HDR photography is visit www.davehillphoto.com/