Wow, it’s been a lifetime since my last post, and please remember to vote for my image, and so much has happened in the time frame.

• First off the real work job, aka the non photographic job, has picked up speed massively. Not a bad thing all things considered, but it does mean I sometimes need to work later than planned which does impact on my photographic explorations.
• Secondly I’ve done my first commercial shoot, thanks to Paul David and Laura Gerber from Twincare International and their Matis brand. It was an exciting and fun evening and I’ll blog about it in the next couple of nights.
• Thirdly I’ve registered hentismith.com which will be for my commercial photographic interactions, while photoslave will remain for my personal photographic expressions. Expect a website to appear magically in the next couple of days, weeks, months (all dependant of course)
• Fourthly Telkom has seen fit to ignore my faulty telephone line and ADSL connection for 10 days now and staying up to date on social networks and updating websites using your phone is really not as easy as most people think, myself included.
• Lastly I’ve passwd the 200 photos mark in my 365 day challange and still going strong as you can see from the images below.

It’s really become more about a black and white photographic challange than a self portrait or even a photo a day challange. So much so, that I’ve bought Ilford XP2S film for my Eos 500 and actually loaded it. Sadly this is where the “no play” bit kicks in. I’d love to go out and play with my film camera, but being film means more planning and thinking before shooting and time is just way to limited right now. I also have a couple of explorative shoots that I’d love to get to grip swith, but finding the time to plan and arrange everything is also eluding me. I’m still getting my 365 photos done, so it’s not all bad, but could definately do with more free time to persue some play without impacting my personal life at home.

We’ll see how the next couple of days go. I’ll continue to post my daily images when I post them to flickr to this blog, but might skip a couple of days as I have been when time pressures catches up with me.

For a more detailed description of each photo, please have a look at my Flickr Stream

Henti

Well it’s hard to believe but it’s been another year again in the Randburg Sun Photo of the week competition.

My photo of the S.A.L.T In Sutherland was selected as the winning photo for one of the weeks and it’s now time to vote for the favourite of the year.

To vote for my picture, the same picture as used in this post, please SMS “Photo28″ to 32690

You also stand a chance of winning a weekend away to Askari Game Lodge and Spa, Umbhaba Lodge or The Fairway Hotel and Golf Resort. All you have to do is vote :)

To view all the images eligible for voting please visit the Randburg 2011 Photo of the Week Voting page

My image is the 4^th image in the “Digital Enhancements” section

Henti

Day 187 of 365.
Day 37 of B&W.

So I was planning on doing all this in the morning and get to bed, but we had a network failure and I’m on standby so the phone went off every 20 seconds with a new notification SMS. So here I sat baby sitting all the servers and calming them down while finding out what went wrong.

All sorted now, and now I’m wide awake .. so here you go :)

Bron bought some faerie wings with Halloween but I can’t remember if she used it for the parties or not. It was still here so I had to use it. I had planned a different look but It didn’t work out so I tried something different and I think it worked pretty well.

When I opened the image I saw the light source (a LED battery light) made some weird flares on the image, but I think it kinda adds to the image in the end.

What do you think?

ODC : Self Portrait
Hereios : Faeries

Day 186 of 365.
Day 36 of B&W.

Most people that know me, know I have a Japanese fetish. I’m addicted to the language, culture, art, cars, bikes, pretty much anything from there. I’m fascinated with their ability to take anything, however mundane, and turn it into an art form.

Folding paper, Origami. Flower arrangement, Ikebana. Hand Writing, Calligraphy. To name a few examples.

Recently I discovered some high contrast black and white preset and I loved the look of them and searched some and discovered they are styled after a Japanese photographer, Daidō Moriyama.

My Black and White photography is already getting slightly insane, but now I have a Japanese photographer to go gaga over as well.

I can’t wait to have my own darkroom to experiment more with film and black and white photography

Henti

Day 185 of 365.

Day 35 of B&W

I was showing a friend Lightroom and how to use it, and we started talking about shooting people an dhow I’m pretty much avoiding shooting models because i’m too scared of having to deal with the situation and managing a shoot where I’m in control rather than just being a photographic observer not involved, just capturing.

She finally turned to me and said “Man up!”

I really have to get out of my hermit stage and take control of managing shoots rather than just observing and capturing.

I think I need to do more planning and setup some small shoots with people I know and trust to build up confidence. It’s not going to happen by itself.

Henti

Day 184 of 365.
Day 34 of B&W.

We woke up this morning to a house without water. The water provider had a problem and the whole area was without pressure in the water system.

This meant nice cold showers for Bronwen and I this morning, which is never fun. So when we had water this evening we decided to shower tonight. We got notification that the water supply will be interrupted from the 7th till the 14th in our area while they do maintenance in the reservoir and really didn’t want a repeat performance tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow is going to be a long day as it is and starting it without a nice hot shower is going to make the day seem even longer.

It’s going to be a fun few days with the kids and bathing and adults and showering.

What would we do without water.

Henti

One of her school friends had her birthday party today and the theme was “princess”, so it was a perfect chance to try out one of dress-up dresses her aunt dropped of a couple of weeks ago. Sadly she broke her crown a couple of weeks ago, so she had no crown to go with the dress.

Everybody loved her dress and she had a fantastic time (we did bring play clothing) and she even rode on a pony. I also chatted to the other mommies about the photos I’ve taken in the past and spent some time tonight setting up my proof gallery.

It was a wonderful day watching my daughter become a real princess and seeing her experience new things in life.

Henti

We had to go past a major shopping center today so I checked to see if the have film processing labs there, and they did. I took my 6 rolls of superia film that I had in my Chinese knock-off holga (Yes, the irony…) while in the western cape of South Africa last year.

The six rolls were booked in and will be ready tomorrow, but I also saw some Ilford B&W film, and I bought a EOS 500 film camera a good couple of months ago, but I’ve never used it, so I figured it’s about time I start doing just that. I’ve been dreaming about shooting B&W in film for a while now.

Well that’s not entirely true. Shooting B&W film is just the start. I would LOVE to put a B&W film processing lab in the “man cave” and develop my own images, and I really hope I have the dedication to actually get there.

That way I can shoot with my Digital camera, and my black and white camera to create a nice mixture of old and new and give people a real unique experience and product.

Only time will tell… but for now I have my first roll of Ilford XP2S 400 film in my camera

Henti

One of my work colleagues has taken a leave of absence while recovering from fatigue and exhaustion from working too much and too hard.

When he returns to work, he’ll be moving into a architectural and advisory role for our team and away from support and maintenance. This is a great thing for our team he’s a magician when it comes to solving complex technical problems. I think he’ll love his new role.

This in turn has moved me into the most senior technical position in my team and as such my responsibilities has increased as well. This is not a bad thing as I’m loving the new challenges, but Bron is very concerned about me burning out as well. At the moment I’m trying to get two separate businesses off the ground as well which is just adding to the “burning both end of the candle” problem.

This weekend I’m going to rework my strategy going forward to ensure I work hard, but also play hard. As the saying goes,

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”

Henti

It’s an Afrikaans expression literally translated as “through the leaves”

It  roughly means “confused” or “spaced out” and it’s how i’m feeling right now. Huge changes at work and because of that I have to make huge changes at home. I need to leave work at work and stop bringing it home unless I’m on standby.

I hope this will mean more time for my family and kids as well as more photos of my family and kids. I feel kinda crappy that I’ve not taken many pics of them lately. Work has just been hectic and it kicked up a gear in the beginning of the year and has now kicked into highest gear.

I also really want to start getting the business side of my photography going. So that’s just going to add to the pressure of sharing my time everywhere, but I’m excited about the challenge.

Henti