In Bloom

Bensusan Museum of Photography

Situated on the top floor of the Museum Africa in Newtown, lies the Bensusan Museum of Photography which displays the history of this field and the evolution from black and white to colour photography. This part of the museum houses a wide range of cameras: from 19^th century studio cameras and Daguerreotypes to 35mm film cameras and the later 21^st century digital cameras.

Started by Dr. Arthur Bensusan, who donated his collection of antique cameras, photographs and books in 1968, the museum also houses a photography library and a collection of photographs which illustrate the vast historical, cultural and political landscape of the country.

It is definitely worth a visit for those interested in the history and evolution of the camera and a good way of passing time or spending a Saturday morning.

Tambourines are cool

I think tambourines are good to have around when needing an 'easy' and portable percussion. Couple one of those noisy buggers with a stringed and a wind instrument and you’ve got the making of a one man band.

I started this blog with the intent of documenting and sharing my photo-taking learning experiences. So, here’s a little snippet into a little corner of mine, using some of my favourite things, like the guitar again. 

This is the workstation together with a diagram of the light set-up which excluded the use of a back and a fill light:

Workstation

light setup

The folders and box files came in handy and served not only as good black backdrop but absorbed the light instead of dispersing it. Mind you, these pics were taking just a little after 2pm on a very sunny day. Most of the reading I’ve been doing has been placing great emphasis on the importance of natural light, after all the sun is a great tool and produces the best light. However, I couldn’t achieve the effect I wanted until I closed the curtain and made use of artificial light.

So, here they are:

I decided to do very little imaging editing, in fact the only thing I did with these pics was to crop them. What do you think?