Part of the "Ollos Que Non Ven" exhibition - a series of portraits of people affected by the Spanish preferred stock (preferentes) scandal.
see Ollos Que Non Ven

Part of the "Ollos Que Non Ven" exhibition - a series of portraits of people affected by the Spanish preferred stock (preferentes) scandal.
see Ollos Que Non Ven

Part of the "Ollos Que Non Ven" exhibition - a series of portraits of people affected by the Spanish preferred stock (preferentes) scandal.
see Ollos Que Non Ven

Some of the first available images of a (very) temporary street exhibition this month. Perhaps "ephemeral" would be a better description, as very few are up for more than 2 or 3 days.

There's something great about that though. There's a sense of freedom in creating something that you know for "almost" certain will be destroyed. You no longer have the fear of damaging anything, or even of getting it wrong - you can simply do it again next time. Which, of course, doesn't necessarily mean that you don't do it right. If anything that audacity gives you a heightened sense of creative freedom, which in turn brings out the best in you.

To be continued... ;)

The original photo was just me playing around with a bit of geometry (can you work out what it is?) but as I was looking for the best places to crop the photo, I started noticing the people on a few of the balconies.
So I cut them out of the photo to stand alone, forever looking overboard.

I remember reading somewhere that the quality of a photographer is judged by how much they throw away. I was doomed.
So over the years, I've been honing my discipline with regards to deleting photos. However, in one of these culling sessions I came across a photo that should have ceased to exist years ago. Fortunately it didn't and after playing around with it for a while I came up with an image I'm now pretty fond of.
What a great lesson not only in why there's sometimes a good reason for holding on to things, but also in portraiture.
When taking photos for a mountain bike challenge, one rider came off his bike in front of me. With no way to assess the damage, he asked me to take a photo of him so he could look at himself on the camera. The rest is history...

Praying Mantises (or is it "Mantii") aren't uncommon in Swaziland and this one only caught my eye because it was relatively large and I because I needed a subject to try and my new Kodak point and shoot (which also happened to be my first ever camera). It wasn't until about 3 snaps into the photo session that I realised the mantis had something in its mouth.

I submitted this photo to the (then) BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition in the Animal Portraits category I think. Needless to say, I had absolutely no idea how to properly prepare an image for a competition and I think that, instead of reducing the file size slightly, I converted all my images into small thumbnails. Anyway, this shot actually reached the semi-finals.

Would it have made the finals had it been taken with a better camera? Who knows? All I know is that it was about a metre from my front door.

Executioner's Rock, Swaziland. Taken back in 2007 before I knew how to screw a lens on and off.

My first foray into food photography has been very pleasant. Not only do I get to consume the food afterwards (no toxic lacquers for presentation used here) but it has also made me realise that one of the key ingredients to good food photography is extremely simple, yet too often overlooked...

.. good food.

A mobile phone. A new place. A postcard. Or two.

Prompted by the sudden loss of Etran Finatawa founding member, Bagui Bouga, I thought I'd dust off some photos of the band in 2009.
To this day, people still talk about that concert and the video I took on the night doesn't stop shaking because there was no way of standing still.

Prompted by my colleagues, I managed to catch this girl with her incredible eyes moments before we were completely surrounded by excited children and she disappeared into the crowd

So this is where it gets really fun.
I recently spent the weekend working at the Bushfire festival in Swaziland as part of a larger installation organised by Yebo ArtReach. As part of Creative Beans we set up a section called "Out the Box" - an area where people could express themselves through dressing up.
We included the much-seen photobooth idea but with a twist.
The results were spectacular and the portraits below really don't do justice to the creative explosion that was going on inside that box.
It's worth bearing in mind that the subjects all only had about 3 or 4 minutes from start to finish.
True release

Quazi Design is a small company based in Swaziland that make paper jewellery. And it's almost as simple as that - almost everything is made from recycled magazines.
I loved the fact that fashion magazines (although not exclusively) were themselves being transformed into fashion items.

I'm working on a promotional video for them (soon to be released).

more info: www.quazidesign.com

So this is pretty much my first go at the latest fashion in digital/web-based photography - the moving GIF. GIF files are just image files that move, or rather, a serious of image files that run continuously. You'll most probably have seen them used to show humorous clips from films that repeat themselves over and over again.
Well, someone had the great idea of using this file format to produce moving pictures. What's great about them, and what differentiates them from video, is that you isolate an area of the image that you want to show as movement, whilst everything else remains as a still photo. This allows you to draw the viewer's eye to elements of the photo, something that you would normally do through composition, lighting or focus, for example. 

The principle is quite simple but in practice it doesn't always come out as smoothly as you'd like. One of the most important factor is a steady camera, so make sure you use a tripod. The effect works best when you choose a movement that is, by nature, repetitive (e.g. swinging, flapping, dripping) because then the final result won't look unnatural. Some things simply don't work well, others do. It's all about trial and error.
More to come...