The Sky Really Has No Limit

Applying the Rule of Thirds. Seasoned lensmen will say never have the horizon centered in the frame. Always have a subject like a car of center with space "to move into". The portrait must be off center for the eyes to have space "to look into". Many do not apply the rules. Many bend them. Some push them to the limits. I simply shoot as I see it most times. 

I sat for about fifteen minutes looking at this spectacle through the viewfinder. I pointed the camera towards the ground placing to the horizon in the top third. Click click. 

From the same spot I pointed the lens skyward and pressed the shutter button. My initial reaction was "Mmm, it's ok". Maybe not to shabby. I got home and downloaded the pictures and than realized what I had accomplished in about thirty minutes on the beach. For me the picture was perfect. It needed no post editing and was just as I wanted it. 

What really "spoke" to me was the natural "blue vignette" in the sky above our beloved mountain. It seemed as if there was no end to this amazing blue sky. 

The saying goes "The Sky's the Limit" when one one achieves some sort milestone or success. Yet the "sky" is limitless and unending. 


Over the past few weeks I have been beating myself over the head trying to find reasons why things are just not working. The lights went on after "speaking" to some really talented and gifted, good people. This brought about a change in perspective. My dad always used to say, if you look at the ground when you walk you may just walk into a tree. Look up. See the sky above. Get direction. Change the way you do things. Get a different perspective. There is a brilliant blue sky above you filled with endless potential. 


  

What Does One Do To Get Noticed.

I once had a girlfriend. I was in high school and my sense of humour was in its development stages.  Anyway, she comes to school one day and I notice she had extracted all he front teeth. Problem was they were a beautiful set of teeth that did not need extracting. Well, at least I thought so. My comment at the time was the end to our little relationship. It went something like “damn, what some people do to attract attention”.

So here I am. Yes. Thats me. Yes, I know the picture's back to front.

 I’m all over the place. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, the works. My laptop even has a locater thingy that pops up ever so now and again. I’ve become half paranoid with the idea that aliens might be spying on me as I have my toast and coffee. I am NETWORKED. Well at least I think I am. I have “friends” or connections in all sorts of industries from media to social networking to motivational speakers the world over. Yet I feel like that skeleton sitting on the bench waiting for the world to change. Being on those networks and being connected has not meant anything to me at all. I am wracking my brain trying to find out what more I need to do attract attention. The “racist rant” thing seems to work quite well. That is simply not my style. Besides, it will be like doing the loaded gun Russian roulette exercise.  A nude selfie in the mirror on Facebook or Instagram will simply NOT have the desired effect. Seriously. Sending your Curriculum Vitae via email is like dropping a rock down one a deserted mine shaft and waiting for the splash. Phone calls are just never returned and the “we’ll call you” brigade rules. All the promises made makes Jacob Zuma look like a habitual deliverer. Therefore, what is it. What does one have to do to get the desired responses like a personalised mail or a call to say thanks but no thanks.

According to LinkedIn my profile is pretty damn good. It’s “all star”.  The blue circle indicates there is not much more I need to do to get right up there as far as I need to be to “attract attention”. I know there has been talk of content becoming too “facebookish”. I agree. After all, it’s a platform for professional discourse and interaction. Reality is I have had no interaction or constructive discourse, professional or otherwise. Maybe it’s just me. Wrong place. Wrong time. My age, looks, not professional enough. Who knows.

Personally, I think we, this human race, has become to socially networked. We’ve forgotten how to be human. Our lives have become meaningless without our smart phones and tech stuff. Yes, we need to keep up. We need to stay with the pace of change. Yet we also need to remain human. Human interaction has become a luxury. We don’t even want to shake hands any more.   

Now. Here is the challenge. If you have made your million by been profiled here or anywhere else, tell me. If, you are like that skeleton and me, still waiting, tell me. Maybe we can work this thing out together. Either way. I would love to network. Socially that is. I know we may never meet face to face.  

Show Compassion

I watched a YouTube video earlier today honouring the forty-nine victims of the Pulse nightclub massacre. One cannot but be moved as each one’s story is told in about thirty seconds. Earlier this week social media came alive with the news of the attack at the Attaturk Airport in Istanbul. Thirty-six more victims at the hands of someone who had a difference in belief and opinion. Somehow, somewhere someone was able to convince these young men to take up arms, strap high explosives to their bodies and enter a public space and wreak as much havoc as possible. They would pay the highest price a human can pay simply because they needed to make point. What that point is we may never know. Analyst will speculate for days and weeks. We will never know. They died making their point.  Along with that, they caused untold pain and misery to the families of the thirty six victims and to the two hundred odd people left injured. The kid that walked into the Pulse nightclub knew what he was doing. Someone somewhere had managed to get into his head and convince him being gay is wrong. He was married. He had a family. Yet to him, the only way he could get his point across was to buy a gun and walk into a crowded place and “make his point”. We will never really know what motivated him. Analyst will speculate for days. The digging up of the dirt will go on for as long as is necessary. Yet the pain and the agony he wreaked will live on forever. Forty-nine families will live with the pain of having lost loved ones.

Dirt collection day in our “neck of the woods” happens on Tuesdays. I often lay in bed at about five in the morning listening to the sound of the trollies been pushed down the road. At times, they irritate the living daylights out of me. The other morning I watched an oldish looking lady through my cosy little office window. I am not sure why, yet I went outside and my first in inclination was to shout at her and vent my irritation. Instead, I went out and said “more antie”. She looked at me with utter disbelief. Maybe she was expecting me to breath the wrath of frustration down on her.  The little boy with her screamed with wild excitement when he saw my tree climbing cat high in the tree above him. “Mamma kyk, die kat is innie boem”. Our exchange was brief. Why was she doing this. What was she looking for. What do they get for what they find. She found a single cold drink tin. She gets forty cents a kilo for a can. We all know what that can weighs. Yet she has to dig through what we discard in order to feed the five year old. She sleeps under the bridge of the very busy N7 highway that passes nearby.

Art Matthews penned the words Peace, Love More Tolerance. While he had his moment with our national anthem, I will always remember him for that song and the video they made with it. Our beloved Madiba even makes a little cameo appearance.  My point is this. It is so much easier to break something than to put it back together. The glass that is dropped on the floor, shatters into a million slivers.  It can’t be glued back together. Instead, the shards are swept up and binned. Relationships torn apart through infidelity, mistrust or some or other act of betrayal are often not restorable. The fact is, there are some things that simply cannot be fixed. That’s just life. We can, however, show compassion, a little understanding. We can even take a split second to look beyond the obvious. The song once said every face tells a story. Consider the bin picker that irritates us. The one who comes begging at the gate. The guy driving in that flashy sports car living in the house on the hill.  We all carry a story within us. A little compassion, a little understanding, a silent thought before that racist word is uttered or typed, will go a long way to change our world. I know all this may sound horribly simplistic. Yet that’s precisely it. It’s much simpler than we will ever know.   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq6xRZlCSoM

"You Can Tell From The Lines On Her Face.........."

I need to credit Phil Collins for writing that line. It is in fact from the song "Another Day In Paradise". The following line completes the thought. It says "You can see that she's being there".

I had infiltrated the media covering the last #ZumaMustFall march. It was Freedom Day. I am not REALLY media. Brandishing a camera does have it's advantages and allows one to get into places you would not normally have access to. Mine was a three fold mission. One was to be part of the voice shouting it's displeasure at the headless chicken. Two was to capture the moments and be a part of the media throng, and three was simply to feel the thrill and the andrenalin of been there. Ok, I was also there just to feel what it's like to be a press tog. 

I digress. A friend and I were chatting yesterday. The discussion evolved to the point where we were talking about the sacrifices our mothers and fathers had made to get us where we were. How they had fought a fight against the odds to attain our freedom as we know it. Then I remembered this picture. Truth be told, it was one of those "point and shoot" moments. I was stuck behind a guy holding a TV Camera on his shoulder. I barely had enough time to frame and shoot. All I did was capture about five or six frames. 

I have this thing in me about capturing faces. I think there was once a song about every face telling a story. This one told me a story. Standing and leading the march, holding up a banner screaming "Right To Know", she was there to express her feeling toward the headless chicken. I do not know her name. She is probably famous. Please forgive my ignorense. But her face told me how she had fought the battle to get us where we are. How she had along with many others faced the baracades manned by men with guns and shields hell bent on protecting a headless chicken against a "foe" carrying placards and singing Jesus songs. The face told me of a determination to protect the legacy of those who died in the streets in the fight for freedom. It told me of a determination to protect her children and her childrens children against the cancer of corruption that had infiltrated the chicken coup. 

We owe it to ones like these who still today find the strength to voice their displeasure and rise up show the world what they stand for. We cannot remain silent. At the end of the march the strains of "We Shall Overcome" rang out at the gates of parlaiment. It reminded me of the night when young people gathered in a church in Kuils River in 76 to voice there support for struggle. It's time to change the course of history.............again.      

Slow and Steady Will Get You There.

Seven am, Sunday morning. It's a rush to get done. Now why on earth would one be rushing at seven on a Sunday morning you may ask. Well it's pretty simple really. We go to church. As result of a bit of a "morning after the night before" things are are just a little off center. Anyway, I'm kinda half dressed with a few finishing touches still to be affected when I wonder outside into the beautiful Sunday sunshine with my coffee fix in hand. And there is "Slug" making his way across the garden path. 

My first thought. "My camera. I need to get my camera. I need to move fast or I will miss this moment". I almost drop my loaded coffee cup. I rush inside, zip out the camera, check the settings and "rush" outside like a man gone crazy. But....."Slug" has only moved an inch. He is really in no hurry to go anywhere. He is just lazilly moving at his own SLOOOOOWWW pace across the paving without a care in the world. And here I am, firing off seven frames per second thinking I am going to miss a moment. 

I must be honest. I felt a bit daft after all that "rushing". I came inside, drank my coffee, put my tie on, did all the finishing touches, went back outside camera in hand and "Slug" was just a little further than he was when I left him five minutes before. Eventually, after what seemed an eternity, I found "Slug" had made his way up the step. Again he paused long enough for me to "capture the moment" as reached his everest. 

Obviously, this got me thinking. We have this thing about chasing after stuff. Sometimes it's the most meaningless stuff that occupy our time and energy to such an extent, we lose complete focus of where we need to be. Like me, rushing to get things done because I need to get somewhere. And then along comes "Slug".

I have never really stopped to look at the beauty of the pattern on a snail shell. I have often picked them up and tossed them out of the garden. They are afterall a pain in the "you know what". Yet I have never really looked at the beauty of a snail, untill seven on that Sunday morning. We need to, at times, just........stop........look around and see whats around us. Sometimes there is really no reason to rush. Slow and steady will also get us there, whereever there is.    

Freelancing - My Perspective

I've always wanted to a journalist. My big brother was one. He worked for a small regional paper back in the day when shooting film was king and developing negatives in the dark was an art. I remember the day he took me to a cricket match on a dusty pitch in Somerset West. I had just entered high school and impressional as a blank page. Throughout high school this dream burnt, inexstinguishable, within. I wanted to be like him. Easter weekend in 78 everything changed. Michael was taken. It was devastating. Still, I went through the processes. Rhodes was where I was going. I was going to be a journo and write stories and take pictures like my brother. Life, had other ideas. I ended up at a teachers college, than a photographic studio with a man who taught me to take pictures and work a dark room like my brother did. 

Fast forward about thirty odd years. The two things my brother did, I still do. I play guitar and take pictures. I'm just not a journo. I'm to old for that stuff. 

Life just never stops changing the goal posts. After years of working for a boss, that horrible, big "R" word reared its head. Like the Big C, it hits you when you least expect it. Oh, sorry. I thought you knew what it was. RETRENCHMENT. Just like cancer, it happens to the best of us. That happened. But I am different see. This is not a trainsmash I thought. I have a camera. I will work from home. Run a business. I will FREELANCE. Thats it. Problem solved. MMMMmmmm.

It's been all of fourteen months. It's been a rude awakening. It's been life changing. It's been hard in the trenches. From here on I am expressing my experience of being a freelancer.

Freelancing is often born out of neccessity. It is born out of the fact that there is a need and the need can be fulfilled by using that "unique set of skills", be it photography, writing, design, music etc. The problem is attaching a value to that set of skills. Now if your name is Liam Neeson and you have that "unique set of skills" you would have no problem selling your skills or top dollars. However, if your name is Tom, Dick or Sally trying to sell your skills to a corporate world is a whole different tin of sardines. There is often a complete disrespect for you as a freelancer and for what you are offering. Therefor there is often little or no value placed on your "unique set of skills". You soon find out your skills are not so unique. Add to that, you are probably one of a hundred on the same corner of the block with that "unique" set of skills. It thus ends up coming down to what makes you different, an individual. 

The lesson in all this??. Be resilient. Don't give up. Find your niche. Develop that special little something in the way you do things. Try a different angle. Never stop  learning. Attach a VALUE to your skills. They're your's. In short, develop that "Unique Set Of Skills". Become Liam Neeson!

**The picture was shot during the #ZumaMustFall march on December 16, 2015. The march had "dispersed". The journo's and cameramen had all left. This group of about 200 ahd walked back to the gates of Parlaiment. These two guys decided to climb the statue and drape the banner. I was one two or three people with cameras in the group.                

"So This Is Christmas......"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb5hk7jDvvs

John Lennon composed this little song as a protest against the Vietnam war at the time. The full title includes the words "War is over". There are a number of different "versions" of the song on youtube. There is one depicting the most ghastly photographs of war and suffering taken by some of the most hardened war time photographers of the time. I decided to stick my head in the sand and post a much softer version with pictures of beautiful gardens and stuff. So much for the explanation.

It's wishful thinking to believe pain and suffering will stop. Even just for one day. It's even harder to imagine the warring factions will put down the guns and silence the rhetoric just for one day and "Give Peace A Chance". Believing that death and destruction will take a deserved break just for one day is the belief of a fool. So what is there to believe in. 

Expectation, Hope, Joy, Purity are what the four candles of Advent mean. We can live with the expectation that tomorrow will be better. We can live with the hope of a brighter future if we all put our hands to the plow and work together to make this world a better place for each other. We can share in other's victories and celebrate the joy that comes with overcoming obstacles. We can strive toward the purity of heart and mind, to live life never to have to look over your shoulder. 

Am I delusional. Maybe I am. Yet someone once said there is good in everyone. Sometimes we just have to scratch a little deeper to find the shiny bits. 

Look back, Look Inward and Look forward. May this Christmas be a GOOD ONE.