Tuesday 31 March 2009

(Click on picture to see larger version)

This is a little church about 9 miles outside Hartford City that is on the main state road. It is always immaculate and I have taken photos of it before but never with the graveyard included so when Lisa and I went on our safari the other day I made a point of stopping and getting a few reasonable pictures. I think it is very quaint.

We had our new Photo Club meeting last night and it has been great to get toknow a bnch of people in the community who also enjoy taking photos and want to get better and understand more. Most of them have compact digital camera but we are covering copyright, composition, lighting, inside flash and that sort of stuff. The group is made up of mainly women who are in my age group or a bit younger and older except for one of our members who is a 12 year old girl that has an exceptional eye for a great picture.

In response to some of my comments received :

Liz, I was born in Bulawayo Zimbabwe and when I moved to SA I lived in Benoni and Sandton, both suburbs of Johannesburg. We used to go to East London (a coastal town on the east coast of SA) every second year from when I was a small child travelling there by train from Zimbabwe. It was always such an adventure. I have had brief visits to Durban, Port Elizabeth and Pretoria but most of my time was spent in Johannesburg.

Kym, I belong to a group of photographers and artists "The Equine Arts Protection League" and we all look out for each other's work. The main abuse has been the Chinese paintings brought in and sold dirt cheap, I think Walmart sells these a lot and am willing to bet that some of them have not been released to copy and sell. The other place for lots of abuse is e-Bay. We find a multitude of products that people make using our photos, it is a pain to police and an ongoing project. If we can prove infringement eBay will shut the seller down immediately. People seem to think that just because a picture is on the internet it is theirs to do what they like with despite the copyright notices on them. This is so far from the truth. Every single photograph you see is owned by the person who pushed the shutter, unless they give the rights away, even your family shots of the yearly barbeque. It does not have to display a copyright symbol because it is automatically protected. It makes it very hard for those of us who are making a living from our photography to compete against people who just give their work away for the thrill of seeing it and their name in print and most of the publications and magazines see it as a way to get free photos by preying on the unsuspecting social photographer. Always remember you paid a lot of money for your equipment, it should pay for itself. This is a very long and complicated subject but I will leave it there, just think twice next time you are tempted to save a photo you like on the internet and make it your screensaver or print it to frame it in your home or make a piece of jewellery, that is illegal. Even if you are only copying it as a painting or drawing it is still illegal it is not yours to copy. A lot of artists think that because they make their own artwork from a photo they have lifted off the web it is okay and then the artwork they make becomes theirs, this is not true. You have to get the permission of the photographer to copy or use their work for any reason.

Donna I hope things look up, I am hoping that they will become collectors items like trading cards. It is an inexpensive way of enjoying photographs made by others legally without spending a fortune and can be built up as a collection.

Abraham, unfortunately having to watermark your images spoils them for the viewer but it has become necessary. I still have to work it into my workflow, as you see today's pic isnt watermarket!!!! but it does have my copyright statement on it.

Okay that is my speach for the day LOL. Please visit my Etsy shop if you havent already, the link is in my last blog entry.

Miserable rainy cold and overcast here so I am staying close to home but have to go to town quickly.

((((Hugs)))))

Lori

xx

South Africa - My Second Home - Part One

You will all have to forgive me for jumping from one continent and one country to the other but I have so many disks and am just grabbing pictures as I find them. Once again these are very old scans from slide film so the quality is not that great.

In 1985 I moved to The Republic Of South Africa after my first marriage ended in divorce. I had a two year old daughter at the time and the unrest in Zimbabwe helped me make this decision.

I packed my clothes, my daughter and her clothes and left my place of birth with 500 Rand in my pocket which is the currency of South Africa. I can't remember what the equivalent in US Dollars was at the time but it was not a lot of money (Maybe half a month's salary even less), but those were the rules of the government at the time.

If you wanted to take a car or furniture with you, your car had to be more than 20 years old, your furniture more than 5 years old (you had to provide sales receipts to prove it or get the furniture evaluated) and you could take only R500 with you .... period. Everything else had to stay. I am not going to get into politics but it was hard.

They had stopped people taking out insurance and retirement annuities before leaving which was one way that people were getting their money out with them. In a nutshell they cottoned on to everything and did everything in their power to make sure you left with as little as possible.
At the time Petrol (called Gas here in USA) was very short and we were rationed, only allowed so many gallons a month to get to work and back, had to apply for our "ration" and when the flow got worse we used to park our cars in a queue outside a service station on a Friday night so that we could be there first thing on Monday morning when the delivery arrived to get 10 litres (a bit more than 2 gallons) and when it ran out everyone else got nothing so it was first come first served until the following shipment which was normally a week later.

Also it was not the fuel like we get here, they had mixed Ethanol into the petrol which presented its own problems, my little old car used to get too hot for it and it would start evaporating before it got to the carburettor and my engine would cut out until it had cooled down enough to make another spurt for the border LOL.

To make matters worse, I had just got up a nice speed and was chugging along when an eagle that had landed in the middle of the road to eat some roadkill (sounds like a comedy!) wouldnt move until the last minute to get out of my way and it slammed into my windshield shattering it!! Fortunately it remained intact so I didnt have a big hole in place of the windshield but it made for very difficult driving.

I started off my South African adventure with a 2 year old daughter, a car that was falling apart and no money. I was very fortunate that my brother put us up for a short time in Johannesburg and then I moved in with some old Zimbabwean friends who had moved a little while before, to house sit for them and to help get back on my feet and find a job.


The first picture is of one of my favorite animals, the giraffe, this was a young one. The second one is of a lion that lived in a lion park near where I later lived in Johannesburg and the last one is of another favorite of mine the Zebra and foal which was taken in a small game park just on the outskirts of Johannesburg outside a town/city called Krugersdorp (same park as the shot of the giraffe). We would often make a day trip to this little game reserve and on one occasion stayed overnight in their guest lodge which was wonderful and attracted a lot of tourists.

To be continued .....

Zimbabwe - My Birthplace - Part 1

(Click on pictures to view larger)

I am finding that while sifting through some of the CDs I brought from England with me I am finding photos that are bringing back memories so I guess I will post as I find things and in the end it should all come together to form my life story LOL.

These older photographs are scans of negatives and slides and were done about 7 - 10 years ago when the equipment we had wasnt as good as it is today.

I was born in a country called Southern Rhodesia, which became Rhodesia after their independence from the British Empire in 1965 (it had been a British colony until then), and then Zimbabwe which is the name it is known by now.

The photographs today are of one of the more common modes of transport by the black african people out in the rural areas. They used donkeys and were pretty ingenious when it came to making harnesses and wagons for them out of whatever they could find. Here is a very happy bunch trotting down the roadside.

I took this photo on one of my many road trips from Bulawayo which is the city of my birth to Johannesburg in South Africa.

If you look at the map that comes up when you click here or on Zimbabwe you will see a map of Africa and Zimbabwe, and Bulawayo is in the southwestern part of the country. The second picture is of some of the amazing rock formations in the Matobo National Park which is just outside Bulawayo. We used to spend a lot of time in this area while I was growing up. There were game parks/reserves where you could view all sorts of wildlife while you drove around the reserves which were protected areas.

It has many picnic sites where people used to go and have the equivalent of a BBQ except we used wood and a steel grate perched on rocks over the coals to cook our steaks, sausages (boerewors), corn on the cob and baked potatoes to name a few of the items. We called it a Braaivleis (this is the afrikaans word for roasted meat - afrikaans is one of the languages spoken in South Africa). Some people had portable Braais so they didnt have to rough it with the rack and rocks LOL.

There were many small dams where you could fish for Bream and large mouth and black Bass and a fish that we called Barbel which is similar to the catfish here in the USA. The unique feature of this whole area was the granite outcrops, huge granite domes and rocks which do balancing acts as the soil has eroded away over the centuries. We used to spend hours climbing up these natural formations.

Cecil John Rhodes, the man that Rhodesia was named after is buried on top of one of these huge domes which is called "World's View" or "View of the World" because you can see forever from the top of it and it was one of his favorite places to be. It has to be one of the most peaceful places on earth, I always used to make a trip there when I went to visit my daughter.

To be continued .....

I have so many memories flooding in that I am having a struggle to decide what to write LOL, so I hope that you all find this journey interesting.

Mike thanks for the help with the HTML, I will crack this thing if it is the last thing I do LOL. Abraham I asked Larry about the pitch forks, the three prong is used for hay, and the five prong is known as a manure fork because the prongs are closer (But I use a basket type of plastic fork to pick the stables which sifts the sawdust through and leaves the poop in the basket to be discarded), not too sure what the significance of the four prong is other than maybe for a general garden fork or digging work?

CG and Photogchic, my daughter's grandfather on her father's side was actually born in Alnwick, which is a small town near the Scottish border if I remember correctly on the east coast of England.

Well now that I have taken that trip down memory lane I hope the links all work. I will be back tomorrow ((((Hugs))))

Lori
xx

21 November 2007

This has been a very trying year for me on a whole lot of levels and I am going through a phase of my lost childhood and family possessions, birthright and I have been feeling a bit like a nomad. Growing up in a warzone has had its effect on me and this past week it has been at the forefront of my mind. I am still struggling with the animal abuse problems and now this so I am sorry I havent been very good company. I will try to elaborate at a later time so that some of you may try to understand where I am coming from.

Today's pictures were taken yesterday when I put the 4 mares that have been down the road, in with the horses that have been here. It is always quite a stressful ordeal because when you get a routine in place for the horses it is good to stick to it as they are herd animals and have their pecking order and like to keep it with as little disruption, it also makes it far easier to handle so many horses for one person. I put Cat and Piglette (the B&W and the Black mares) in the field with the three yearling fillies. The fillies really need to get used to sharing with other horses because they have only been the three of them and before that their other 4 siblings. It went really well, Cat and Piglette ran up and down full tilt and because they remembered the field knew where the boundaries and fences are already, just needed a refresher. I put Wiggle and BB in the other field with Dosie, Girl Sonny, Cayenne and Lori. That also went really well and they settled down quickly.

Wiggle loves to roll, and as can be seen, that was one of the first things she did, after finding the muddiest spot of course LOL. Above she and Girl Sonny are feeling each other out and doing their squealing thing.
The picture below has 10 of the 11 horses out in the 2 fields in the picture. The ony one missing was Dosie who was off to the left finding things to nibble on and not too phased by all of the goings on.
Taxes had his first day out in the new enclosure yesterday. He stuck close to the barn and we didnt leave him out on his own for this first time but he did discover the electric tape so knows that it is there now and treats it with respect. I will supervise his first few excursions while he is learning where everything is, then I will be able to leave him out unsupervised.

I didnt take photos of the mares when I put them out and they were running or Taxes because I am normally more worried that there wont be a wreck than a photo op.

It has been raining all day, we have had an inch so far but has been really warm, upper 50s but tomorrow we are expecting a drop into the 30s yuk, so it has been a dull grey wet day all day. The horses are all in their new pens and stables and seem to be content and dry.

I need to go and feed the last round to all the horses right now so am going to publish this, may add to it later. Mike mentioned Victoria Falls Hotel which is in Zimbabwe and I thought I might elaborate on that beautiful place. I have a few photos that my daughter took but will have to find them.

(((((Hugs)))))) to you all.

Lori
xx