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 .....

7 December 2007 (1st post)

Wow another day almost over. It is my Brother's birthday tomorrow 8th. I have not seen him or my Dad for such a long time and know I am really slack with keeping in touch with them. They are both in South Africa, brother in Johannesburg and Dad in Cape Town. So if either of you are reading this I love you lots. Today I got the hell in with Gee's owner (the thoroghbred mare I board). She is bouncing off the walls because she has nowhere to exercise now that I am using the bottom of the barn for stalls. I have been nagging at him to come over earlier before dark so we can try her out in the new field I have just fenced, partially for her benefit and he just never does so this morning I thought to heck with it I am just going to have to take a chance and I turned her out and kept a close watch. I did it before I had put any of the horses out so she just really wanted to stay close to the barn but she made a few excursions. These are some of the shots. We will repeat the process tomorrow, it went very well.


(click on pictures to enlarge)

I normally dont leave halters on my horses but I did as a precaution this morning because if she had gone through a fence or something stupid I would have been in big trouble if I didnt have something to get a hold of her with. I will do this for the next few excursions and when she knows the boundaries I will start taking it off. They kind of spoil the pictures but I still love them. I love this mare she has such a great attitude for a race horse and considering she has spent the past two years with virtually no out time she does really well.

I am going to end this post off for now and do a second one which will feature our Brat baby, the infamous Taxes. He also got his little bit of time out today and I snapped a few shots of him too.

Lori