So for those who came and got free prints you really scored and for those who didn’t you really missed out, however. I still also have a limited supply of sale stock, normal price R150+ each but if you still want to get I am letting them go for R100.00 each for the normal panoramic prints and R120 for the Storm Front. Some are in tubes and others in plastic sleeves.

All of these Litho Prints are available in limited quantities (20-40 depending on the print) and are all 1m wide with black border and gold key line.

If you are interested, drop me an Email and we can look at a discount if you take 4 or more…

While packing I realised I have a lot of Litho printed panoramic posters in tubes, unfortunately with some dust on the outside, but some are marked, some aren’t and I really don’t have space to take all these to my new studio so….

ON Sunday the 29th from 12pm – 3pm and Monday the 30th from 10am to 3pm I will be giving this stock away on a first come first basis. AS I said, some of the tubes are marked others aren’t so there is no guarantee that any particular print will be available.

Some of these are included with the exception of the large Storm Front print. Litho Prints

The only condition is that you need to come collect them, no shipping or postage, between the hours above and they will be limited to two prints per person.

The Address is:
Snap Studios
4th Floor
Hills Building
Buchanan Square
160 Sir Lowry Road
Woodstock

Map

My number is on my website in case you get lost.

As some of you may already know, at the end of this month, I will be starting a new chapter in my photographic career by moving into my own studio which is smaller but won’t be shared with anyone else as the lease where I am currently has reached an end.

Its both an exciting and at the same time daunting change but it means that a lot of my stock of litho panoramic prints will not be able to come with me as I will not have storage space. Plans have been made on how to sell these but i have also decided to have a crazy end of lease sale of certain of my inkjet prints.

The sale will run till Close of business on the  20th April 2012 and will apply to the following images

So what’s the special, you may ask, well Giclee prints of these images at 1m normally sell for between R1800 and R2500  however for the duration of the special I will be offering these prints on heavyweight Matt media, for just R450.00 each. All of the panoramic images will be printed with an image area of 1m wide with the exception of the Stadium pic which is only 80cm wide.

Of course there are a few terms and conditions attached:

• All orders need to be placed and paid for by close of business on Friday 20th April 2012
• Prints will be ready for collection 3 days after receipt of payment.
• The quoted price does not include deliver but this can be organised at an additional cost.
• This special only applies to 1m prints of the listed images on the specified media.

If you are interested, please Email Me or call me on 083 259-3100 for more info and please let your friends know about this.

Thanks

Robert

]]> http://www.panascape.co.za/wppana/index.php/2012/04/13/end-of-lease-print-sale/feed/ 0 http://www.panascape.co.za/wppana/index.php/2012/03/19/posters-for-phoebe/ http://www.panascape.co.za/wppana/index.php/2012/03/19/posters-for-phoebe/#comments Mon, 19 Mar 2012 11:08:04 +0000 admin http://www.panascape.co.za/wppana/?p=1220

For those of you who don’t know yet, Gauteng model, Myla Radicchia, has a dog called Phoebe and Phoebe needs a very expensive back operation.

Myla could have taken the easy route which would have been to just decided it’s too expensive and had Phoebe put down but Myla is, like so many of us, an animal lover and she is determined to find the money to pay for Phoebe’s operation.

She put a call out on Twitter and asked if anyone had ideas and we came up with a plan called Posters for Phoebe, where a number of extremely talented South Africa photographers have agreed to band together and each shoot some images of Myla that can be turned into posters which will be sold to raise the money required for Phoebe’s operation.

Myla was down in Cape Town this weekend, shooting the first of the series with me and well judging from the results, I don’t think there is going to be much problem raising the money for Phoebe. The final section from the set above will be printed around 1m wide.

Now it’s over to my fellow photographers, in Gauteng, to shoot the next images.

Follow Myla on Twitter to see how the project is progressing

I on my end, must just say a huge thank you to Peter Badenhorst and his team at Photohire in Cape Town for loaning us their hire Nikon D3x and some Profoto Lighting as well as the Granddaddy Hotel for helping with accommodating Myla while she was down here. Last but by no means least, a huge thank you to Sandrine Dupouy, for loaning us her mini Lizette.

Panoramic photography has been around for a long time and I have written a few articles on it but with the advent of new cameras, including cell phones with panoramic modes, it’s becoming more accessible to the masses and unfortunately that mean a lot of BS from people who have no clue what’s really going on.

Essentially with the Advent of Virtual Tours, what we are trying to do is capture a full 360° x 180° spheres that allow the user to move around and view the scene as if they were there.

Recently cheap options like these (image above courtesy of softpedia.com) have exploded onto the market and many photographers are running around telling people that they have a unique new state of the art camera system. What they actually have is a very low end solution that has been around internationally for some time, comes in many forms and varieties and is based on the way we used to shoot panoramas in the dark ages. The method that was used was to take a mirror ball and shoot the image reflected and then unwrap it, which is pretty much what these systems do.

The biggest and most annoying problem is that some of the owners of these cameras are making claims that they have the first system capable of shooting 360° images which is untrue for two reasons.

Firstly many of us have been shooting high resolution stitched panoramic images that cover and area of 360° x 180° for a number of years and secondly the mirror camera don’t shoot a full 360° x 180° degrees. Most only shoot 360° x 110° – 130° which is not ideal for spherical imaging.

In fairness, the cameras do have a few good points in that they are small, compact, they are relatively cheap and can capture the image in a single shot. They also however have some not so good points namely that they are very low resolution (compared to panoramas produced by the robotic and panoramic heads, they can only capture a vertical view of up to 130° and they are pretty useless for full spherical photography.

So now that we have moved out of the amateur arena, let’s look at what the pros generally opt for.

Well as far as one shot solutions go, the same company that makes one of the Toys has also just released a very high end solution that consists of a body with 3 fisheye lenses and 3 x 10mp sensors. Like the mirror option it can capture a 360° in a single shot but unlike the cheaper option which is only 8mp, the Girocam captures the image at 30mp. It’s still not a perfect solution as its limited to a vertical view of 150° but it’s getting far closer to what is needed and in most cases can produce a more than useable image.

Right so the one shot solutions have a huge advantage in that they easily eliminate the problem of people or objects moving due to only needing a single shot to compete the image but even at 30mp the one shot cameras don’t always produce images that are large enough for all needs.

This is where the manual and robotic precision panoramic heads enter the equations and this genre is currently dominated by 360prescion for manual solutions and by Gigapan Systems for the robotic alternative.

Both companies produce a range of products that work on the same principal, being that exposures are taken in rows and columns buy revolving and tilting through the lenses entrance pupil. The focal length of the lens determines how many rows and columns will be needed and the final results are then stitched together using software like PTGUI.

The upside of these systems is that they can produce absolutely massive images but the down side is that they require multiple images to be shot and moving objects can become a headache that requires a lot of post-production to correct.

Which would I recommend, well for real estate and very low end work, the mirror systems should suffice? For higher end interior and VR work, I would look at the new Girocam and for landscapes and high end panoramic imaging I would go for the manual or Robotic panoramic heads although the actual heads are actually easier to use despite what may think.

LInks:

http://www.360precision.com

http://gigapan.org/cms/create-make

http://www.girocam.com/

As many Cape Town photographers, will or should know the city is clamping down on public photo-shoots, requiring that photographers apply for permits to be allowed to shoot with models in public spaces, regardless of the nature of the shoot.

While I understand why the city wants to have control, the current system has a number of flaws, especially when it comes to non-commercial shoots with just a model and a photographer or a small team.

With the current process, we have to apply online, which I have no issue with in principal, however we can only apply during normal working hours, we need to specify a location and we need to wait up to 48 hours for the application to be approved.

This is an unacceptable and unworkable situation as many of our test and smaller shoots are last-minute and often require last-minute location changes.

There are only two options that I can see be workable.

1)      The first choice would be that small shoots with 4 or fewer people and minimal gear are exempt for requiring a permit to shoot but will need to comply with the following:

1. The City will publish a daily list of all “authorised” shoots which will have preference over small shoots with no permits.
2. These shoots will be listed as “no access”, “restricted access” or “ask permission” from the permit holder and all small shoots will need to comply with the conditions.

2)      This probably will not suit the city due to the requirement that the photographers need to have Public Liability insurance so the second option is that the city must provide a 7 day per week permit approval process, free of charge, with a minimal turnaround time, say not exceeding 12 hours. This option still restricts the freedom to change locations at the last-minute but I am sure we can learn to live with it.

If the issue is solely one of indemnity then why doesn’t the city start a certification process whereby photographers have to signup once a year for a city photo permit that give them Public Liability insurance through the city, indemnifies the city and will cost far less for the city to administer than the permit process they currently have in place?

Given that the City does not want to engage in debate with us over this I would suggest that we as Cape Town photographers organise a mass protest on one of the beaches and continue with these until the city adopts a workable system…

Update 30^th January 2012

This raising of this issue has received a lot of support from the Cape Town Photographic community during the last 24 hours discussions have raised the following points:

• Given the number of small and test shoots that happen during the week, the film office is going to be swamped if all small shoots are to be permitted and will not be able to cope with the load.
• Many of Cape town’s occupants use public spaces for activities like:
  • Cycling
  • Roller blading
  • Beach Cricket
  • Skate Boarding
  • Running
  • Playing with Frisbees
  • Flying Kites
  • Surfing
  • Kite surfing

Some of these activities pose a risk to the public but the participants are not required to register and produce proof of Public Liability insurance, so it is prejudicial to photographers to expect them to have to.

Update 2nd February 2012

I just spoke to the manager of the film office at the City of Cape Town and while the City has been consulting with professional bodies, like SAAP, these are production companies who do not represent or necessarily understand the needs of individual photographers. The City will not engage us individually so we need to form a association so that our voices are heard. In this light, I hereby launch the Cape Town professional Photographers Association.

Please email me on Email CTPPA and include the following:

That you wish to join the CTPPA and for it to appoint representatives to represent you by engaging with the City towards finding a workable solution to the film permit issue.

Please let everyone know about this as we need to start talking to the City now due to the fact that it could take months to change City policy.

This week something very disturbing occurred on twitter and it’s something as a South African male that I find very concerning.

I was going to post this to my private blog but I really felt it was important enough to go out publicly here on my website.

It all began with a very controversial and IMO misguided project called the Jugcam which was started by @followthebounce on twitter. The whole idea of this project was to look for and photograph girls with “Great Boobs” at cricket matches and then post the pics on twitter.

It was never intended that permission would be gotten from the girls, just that the pics would be posted and this would be fine. I do believe that @followthebounce has decided to get permission in future but…

Unsurprisingly, a lot of girls on twitter got really offended by the Jugcam and demanded it be stopped and it ended up with girls against guys with the girls taking a lot of abuse for their standpoint. Yes the whole issue is a complex one and there is a lot from both sides that needs to be considered here but right down underneath it all there was a very fundamental problem that arose and that is that it seems that a lot of of SA’s male population do not believe that woman have a right to complain when it comes to things like jugcam and should just shut up.

That’s quite a statement for me to be making but it’s clearly there in 140 character tweets and I know that many guys out there now regard me as public enemy number 1 but guys think about this, the girls said NO and what did most of you do? You didn’t listen to the NO, you didn’t take time to try understand why they were upset (and let’s face it, girls can be very complex but they also have feelings and opinions) in fact all many of you stared to do was hurl abuse at them, insult them and then do what many SA men seem so good at doing, beat them into submission, albeit in this case verbally and in packs. Yes some of the girls also started slinging mud but that was unavoidable seeing how some of them were being treated.

Some of the girls were called “over reactionary feminists” or “Feminazi’s” some far worse.

Some of the guys said things like how were we supposed to know its wrong or that girls would get upset but when the girls voiced this, many of those same guys just got pissed off.

Seriously guys, yes this article is going to piss many of you off but at the end of the day you have to go back and think about one word, NO.

It seems from this last week that we as South Africans have a huge problem with the word NO. SA girls for the most part are ignored when they use it and a lot of SA guys see it not as something that must be listed to, but rather as an opportunity to show their dominance and to just bully the girls into submission. There is a word for that and it’s not dominant, it’s called abusive!

OK as a guy what did you do last time your girlfriend said NO when it came to something. Be honest here because this is important and if you lie, it’s only yourself you are lying to.  Did you sit back and accept the NO, try understand why she was saying NO, or did you do your best to coerce or bully her into changing the NO to a yes? There is no one listening to your answer but you and you can try lie to yourself but then you will still know the truth deep down.

Guys, girls are so much more than just a set of legs with breasts attached and a great sex toy. Some of the guys reading this have already figured this out but I am sorry to say that it looks like many of you still need to discover the wonders of a female partner who you can appreciate for her mind as well as her body.

It’s quite simple and a lot of what’s currently happening to women in SA starts with us guys learning the meaning of NO and learning to respect it.

Just think what would happen if all of us SA men started to respect the women around us and started to respect NO. Think of how many less abused women there would be in SA and how many fewer girls there would be who were being bullied into having sex.

The Jugcam debacle was a perfect example where you as guys could have said, OK, we don’t know what the big deal is but we will respect that the girls don’t like it but unfortunately that didn’t happen.

Guys seriously whether you like it or not you need to work on being one of those guys that when they are asked, do you listen to your girlfriend and respect her wishes can without hesitation say YES.

As for the girls, you need to learn to stand up and make sure that NO means NO and that guys around you understand that you have a right to  an opinion and a right to voice it without being shot down for voicing it.

I am offering the first 3 Pinups from my new collection for sale. Two of them are unlimited prints and for the the third, even though its not a limited editon, I am only going to sell 10 of them, beyond that you will need to be on a very special list of recipients.

So here they are:

Drag Race

Printed on an HP Z3200 Archival Inkjet using HP Super Heavy Weight Pro Media.

Image sixe 90cm x 58cm

Availability – Unrestricted

R650.00

Kinky Kitty

Printed on an HP Z3200 Archival Inkjet using HP Super Heavy Weight Pro Media.

Image sixe 90cm x 62cm

Availability - Unlimited but only 10 being mae available for general purchase.

R650.00

Retro Pepsi

Printed on an HP Z3200 Archival Inkjet using HP Super Heavy Weight Pro Media.

Image sixe 90cm x 66cm

Availability - Unrestricted

R650.00

The above prices do not include transport or delivery.Email for enquires or orders

This shoot really came about because I wanted to do something cool as a sort of tribute to David Hobby aka Strobist and also I wanted to do something different for one of the shoots that would be featured on my soon to be released lighting DVD.

The image seems to be causing quite a stir and also I am getting lots of people asking how it was done so I thought I would share some of the behind the scenes in this post, the full behind the scenes with video footage etc will be on the DVD.

So it all begins like any good shoot with a plan.

When I plan a shoot I spend time really thinking through every aspect of it including things like wardrobe, set, lighting, props etc.

So let’s run through the checklist.

Costume

The costume was going to be the centre piece of the shoot and would actually double up for two shoots that I was going to do, Speedlight Girl and a mildly Fetish style pinup.

I found some references online and then handed them to Simone from Eden Wear to work her magic. I must say she exceeded expectations

As for props, all we really needed was a Tomb Raider style belt holding Speedlight pouches so not much to worry about here.

Set

The set is often something that gets overlooked, left till the end or composited in later but nothing beats having a proper background and not having to deep etch, especially if your model has light hair. Most people really don’t realise how easy it is to create a believable set and to fool a camera.

When I am designing a set I always begin with the background and I have built up quite a library of sites where I can purchase images that are licensed for use in this manner. For this shoot I decided on a moody balcony scene. Now it’s not a train smash if the background is a little pixelated when you blow it up to the size you need for the shoot because we can just blur it a little so we don’t see pixilation and let Depth of Field take care of the rest for us.

OK so we have the background but in real life scenes are not just a background, they include foreground and  more often than not, an image we uses doesn’t include a usable foreground for the model to stand on. This is where we get sneaky and remember that a camera cannot see 3D and we can use this to our advantage buy using something that has an illusion of texture.

If we look at the background image it looks like the ground is a rough concrete texture and the first thing that comes to mind for me is fabric. Yes you read correctly fabric and remember it doesn’t have to have actual texture, it just needs to fool the camera into believing it has texture.

As you can see from the following image, we have the background hung and the fabric stretched out on the floor. There is a little bit if a colour difference, a bump at the transition and a sudden change in texture but that will be easy to fix in post. The most important thing is that it looks believable.

Lighting

The final piece of the puzzle is lighting. I find that most people tend to come totally unstuck at this stage because really they panic and try over complicating everything. Again I start by going to actual locations or the web and looking at references, in this case comics and illustrations.

I pretty much decided on a 55cm beauty dish as my key light and where as I would normally start here, in this case I worked a little differently. I was using a paper print, not a translight for this shoot so I needed to light my background. At the same time I wanted rim lights to highlight my model which means I would have needed 4 lights unless I got clever.

By clever I mean using the same light to act as a rim light and a background light. A few people said it wouldn’t work because the rim light would need to be too powerful and would blow out the background and I theory they are right except that I was thinking inverse square law

So what do we know about inverse square law well its means that every time I double the distance between my lights and an object I get ¼ the power I have before. I this case I wanted my clip on the model to be around f/8 and the light on the background to be about f/5.6. This means all I needed to do was ensure that the distance from my light to the centre of the background was 50% great that the distance from the light to the model and because I wanted even lighting on the background, that the lights were approximately 45° to the background.

This is really where you want to use a light meter and low and behold, by adjusting the light so that I got f/8 on the model the background was pretty much f5.6. The lighting I used here was a mono light with a 2m strip box but no grid as I want the light to spill onto the background. So now that I had the basic set-up it was time to work from the front backwards.

Don’t try work with all your lights at the start, but rather turn on one light at a time so that you can see how your lighting is changing.

So starting from the front and working backwards. The front and in this case key light was an Elincrhom Quarda pack with a 55cm beauty dish. It was located above and in front of the model on a boom and adjusted to produce f/8. I could have used all Speedlight’s for this but continually fighting with Speedlights to get enough power really does distract you from just getting down to the job of lighting.

I knew before I even started that I would need bottom fill but I was only going to worry about that once I had moved onto the next set of lights which were the rim and background lights.

If you compare the two images, you can see how much extra light there now is on the face and that’s what I wanted to see before deciding on where and how high to place my fill lights.

So the fills, SB-900’s with bounce umbrellas at ¼ power were placed in front of the model, low down and at about 30° from the camera, still leaving good definition on the face but opening up the shadows under the nose, eyes and chin.

The final shot

So here we have the final shot out of camera.

I opted not to shoot with the Speedlight on to ensure I didn’t have to worry about flare and chose to rather add the light beams in later. A little bit of contrast, smoothing, and touching up the background and we have the final image. The important thing to notice is that most of the ground work for this was done in camera as IMO you can do a lot in Photoshop but great images already have most of what’s needed out of camera.

If you want to see more in-depth behind the scenes look out for my DVD “Its All About Light” that should be out mid January 2012

Well those who have tasted my biltong seem to be coming back for more, which is a good and a bad sign. It’s a good sign because as I suspected, they agree is better that the shop bought stuff but it’s a bad thing because it’s still reasonably expensive to make and I am not geared up for production and I don’t have the time to make it in bulk or sell it.

To this end I thought I would share my recipe so you can all start making your own. All you need is a Mellerware Biltong King that you can get from the likes of Yuppichef.

As far as the choice of meat goes, I feel rump is by far the best cut. You don’t need A grade rump, B grade will do because the marinating process will also tenderise it so its saves some money.

The rump should be cut into strip gutting with the grain. The thickness of the strips depends on whether you want fat or not. If you opt for lean biltong, cut the meat into strips about 1- 1.5cm . This will take around 2-3 days to dry.

If you like fatty biltong, cut the meat around 2cm thick so that there is extra drying time required which gives the fat time to cure properly, probably 3-4 days.

Making the biltong is really easy this makes around 4-6kg’s.

• Take about 100g coriander seeds and toast them.
• Take half ¾ of the seeds and crush them and grind the rest to a medium grind
• Mix the coriander with 280 grams of non iodated salt, 75g brown sugar, 30g bicarbonate of soda, tsp black pepper, ½ tsp white pepper, ½ tsp ground garlic flakes, ½ tsp ground mixed herbs
• Once all the dry ingredients are well mixed, place half of each in two larger freezer bags.
• Place the meat in the bags one piece at a time and ensure each piece is well coated.
• Mix 1 cup of apple cider vinegar with 3 table spoons of Worcestershire sauce, I use Holbrooks.
• Add 1/2 cup of good apple cider vinegar to each bag and wait till the mix stops foaming.
• I like to seal my bags so that I can rub the mix around regularly.
• Leave to marinate for 24 hours.
• After 24 hours remove the meat from the bags and wash in a mix of 50% apple cider vinegar and 50% boiling water that you have allowed to cool down.
• Pat the meat dry with paper kitchen towels and hang it up to dry in your biltong maker.

Make sure that fly’s do not come into contact with the meat at any stage… If you find your biltong is a little too salty, you can add less salt next time.

Once you have made the biltong, you can always freeze it in the unlikely event you don’t eat it fast enough