As the sun went down last night
Top Photo - no light painting
This photograph is just 5 blended photographs. The kitchen light is exactly as the room is lit - very yellow compared with the daylight and murky. The chairs are too dark, and the side of the cabinet to the right of the room was so dark that lifting the shadows has simply made the area noisy and murky.
Bottom photo - light painted
My assistant wondered around the room with the flash, lighting the spaces. 1. kitchen. 2. backs of the chairs. (various angles) 3. the side of the cabinet. 4. The ceiling above the dining area table. 5. The curtains. 6. The living room area. 7. The stairs. 8. The wall next to the stairs. . Then it was a case of blending in these lit areas, using layers, using luminosity masks and dodging and burning as necessary. Of course, there’s other differences, I’ve tidied up the walls, the paint work, the dust on the windows and mirrors, etc. The shoot was for a client who had recently taken over the management of the apartment for short term rentals, and this shot took about 20 minutes to shoot - excluding tweaking the interiors a little - it also took over 90 minutes to edit, but is the difference worth it?
Sunset over Gordons Bay, Cape Town, South Africa
Winters evening over False Bay, just south of Gordons Bay.
15 on Orange, Cape Town
A 30 second exposure photograph shot with a 10 stop Lee “Big Stopper” The filter was used to remove any movement of people and vehicles, but capture the essence of the hotel and summer skies
Weaver bird nest
After stripping away young shoots from several bushes, 3 male Weaver birds started building nests in a tree on the edge of the garden
Lounge and reception area from a recent shoot
As styling and lighting becomes more important to many of my clients, the camera needs to be more observant and more capable to capture the lightest and darkest areas of the photograph without losing detail. This photograph was particularly hard to shoot because the bare light bulbs were so bright and the shadows behind the dark chairs so dark. Even with blending to combine 3 photographs I was still left with an image that was too bright on the right. So with careful use of gradients applied in Lightroom , this was the final shot. It shows the space the client wanted and the vision of the design team realised.
The Architects home
Table Mountain
Long exposure shot of Table Mountain, South Africa
Not the classic image of Table Mountain, but when you’ve moody clouds and incoming waves, there is always the opportunity to experiment with a 65 second exposure.
Horse Power and Nuclear Power
Van Riebeekstrand Beach
Such a superb beach to take horses and photograph them.Ive been away too long
Moving house is not fun, especially when you go from suburbia to a smallholding with 6 horses in the country. Cats can’t cope for a couple of weeks, the dogs find all the horse pooh, gorge themselves and then leave it in nice piles in the house overnight.
However, work, the move and starting up a new home has meant too little time to be on here.
Too little time to see peoples creativity, to look at new ideas, to see familiar faces posting new photographs, thoughts, images, pictures etc.
I’ll be back as soon as possible.
Luxury interior in Camps Bay, South Africa
