What happened to my photography?

One of my favourite photos from the last couple of months - One of my best friends from high school, Gina Levin, getting married.

There have been a couple of issues over the last few months that have led to my photography taking a backstep.

First and foremost, I got a job. No longer are my days spent wandering around the house, staring at spaces and trying to picture how I would photograph them. These days, I awaken at 7:15, put on my face and clothes, drink a cup of coffee and then am off to work. My lunch hour tends to be spent either at the bank or the doctor or somewhere that is not the office or home, and I tend to be running around like a headless chicken. By the time I get home, it is either 5pm or just after, and the sun is already starting to set. By the time I get my camera out to capture a sunset or two, it has disappeared over the horizon, and it is too late. The little photography that I have been doing has been at night, and even then there hasn’t been much of it, as during my evenings I am not doing very much of excitement. This all boils down to one simple explanation: I have no life.

Another issue that I have had, aside from my lack of a life, is that one of my lenses has started hating me. My 28-80mm, the lens that I bought with my Canon 550D body, has stopped auto-focussing. Well, not stopped completely. Every now and then it will decide to co-operate, but only for a minute or two before it throws a little temper-tantrum and refuses to work. I can hear the camera making every effort to get it to work, but to no avail. So, I have sent the lens through to PE to try and have it fixed.

I have also been trying to build my site – an issue in itself. There has been a problem over the last few months involving servers moving to Johannesburg which has meant that I haven’t been able edit anything on the site or get it properly up and running yet.

I have not been totally useless, however. I have taken a couple of pics here and there – some at Gina (Levin) Smookler’s wedding, some at the fest grounds as I walked around and some general photography whenever the need strikes. I did have a bit of an issue while trying to do photography at the fest grounds. I got shouted at by one of the stall owners for trying to take a photo of some lariats that were hanging on a branch. Having walked around all day asking if I could take photos and constantly being reassured by the stall owners that there was no issue, I had stopped asking and had just started taking photos. There is nothing wrong with it really – the stalls are not private property and it is perfectly legal to photograph them without consent. Sure, it is more polite to ask, but that did not justify the outraged response from the stall owner who insisted that I delete the photograph immediately. I obliged, not wanting to get into a fight about it, but the issue shook me and I was thoroughly displeased. If I had ever considered paying for the overpriced lariat, the thought certainly no longer crossed my mind any longer. It was not a difficult design, and it was one that I could still easily replicate with the right beads. This means that there was no excuse for him to be as outraged as he was – if he thought that I was photographing the products to replicate them, photography wouldn’t be necessary.

In any case, I thought that I would offer an explanation for where I have been photography-wise over the last few months. However, I would like to get back to the photography and would love to find people who are interested in being photographed to build my portfolio. So if you aren’t camera-shy and would like to have a photo-shoot done free of charge, give me a shout and we will try to arrange something.