South Africa video blog: September 19, 2010 - part 2

I added music and commentary to this blog entry. I'll be using the same format for the rest of the series, so let me know what you think. Thanks!

In this video blog entry Nick took me to Green Market square. I talked to one of the vendors about their background and found the information to be very interesting. We also went up to Signal Hill to take photos of Cape Town from that vantage point.

South Africa video blog: September 19, 2010 - part 1

My first few days in South Africa were spent on getting organized for the field season and adjusting to the time zone. To help with the transition Nick Laidler offered to take me on a photo safari around the Cape Peninsula. We were to start before sunrise so that we could be in place in time for sunrise. Nick, however, overslept a bit and so we made it only as far as Zandvlei, which turned out to be a fantastic spot for photographing the sunrise.

Here's my first of three video blog entries from that day.



You can see some of my favorite pictures from the 2010 field season on my Flickr account. Click on the link to go to the album: 2010 South Africa

Reflections

Reflections, originally uploaded by andiwolfe.

I don't usually use f/22.0, but this image needed a really huge depth of field to capture the foreground and background with great clarity. The Canon EF 24-105 mm f/4.0 L is a good enough lens to get by with this f-stop. The photo was taken at Bass Lake, Indiana.

Steve and I were taking our time returning to Jasper-Pulaski wildlife refuge to see the sandhill cranes at sunset. We decided to take a stop at the lake to see if there were any interesting photo ops. The mirror reflections on the calm lake sure made it worth the stop.

Action shot for Lignum essentiate

Woodcarver, originally uploaded by SWolfeNI8W.

Steve likes to take B&W film photos of me working in my "studio." This one was of me putting the drill holes on my latest project.

Sunset at Jasper-Pulaski

Sunset at Jasper-Pulaski, originally uploaded by andiwolfe.

Columbus Audubon had a field trip to Jasper-Pulaski wildlife refuge in northwest Indiana this past weekend. Thousands of sandhill cranes gather here as a stop-over during their fall and spring migrations. It was so awesome to hear and see thousands of these magnificent birds in one place. Highlights included seeing/hearing the mass take-off after sunset and a couple of hours after sunrise. This is one of my favorite photos from the weekend.

Lignum Essentiate

Big leaf maple burl; 3.5 inches diameter X 3.25 inches tall.

The title of the piece reflects the inspiration for this carved surface. I was thinking of tracheids - one of the cell types for wood. These are elongated cells that are pointed on each end and the walls of the cell are dotted with pores to allow the water to percolate from cell-to-cell.













Another view of the vessel.

Back to analog - jalopy

Back to analogy - jalopy, originally uploaded by andiwolfe.

One of my first film photos in decades. Steve bought me an Canon EOS 620 that works with my current lenses. This image is from the first roll of film I shot to see how the camera works. It's so weird to go back to film again. I keep looking at the back of the camera to check my histograms and image. Weird, eh?

Shooting film does bring back the carefulness in framing a shot and the anticipation of of surprises to see what the film reveals. I used Tri-X 400 film, aperture priority with f 8.0.

Arum Lily

Arum Lily, originally uploaded by andiwolfe.

I'm slowly, but surely making some progress on processing the thousands of images from my field season in South Africa. Believe it or not, I'm still working on the first weekend's worth of photos when I did a photo safari with my friend Nick. This is one of the images from that day - an Arum Lily in bloom in The Company's Garden, which is in downtown Cape Town.