Reversive(c).

I am blogging to cure the fever. Well, I'm actually just stuck waiting for my sister to come home with the flu pills she took with her to work. I need them. I'm getting a tad ill, O.o... This all seems funny to me, as I predicted something of this sort would occur.

You see, I have had a most exuberant weekend because a few things, namely: Shooting for Rifflandia and assisting on an engagement shoot, meeting some extraordinary personalities and doing so many things that my sleeping pattern is now disrupted. As for Rifflandia, I will do a detailed post on the subject as I enjoyed it tonnes, BUT, I do not yet have a copy of Adobe's, "Lightroom 3." So I don't want to upload some pictures before they have been sorted, scrutinized and edited. Oh, back to my "Seeingness," I saw a downturn in all of this, as this is the nature of the universe. You can never be so high without a little low. We'll see how this flu develops.

Coming to you from this fever of mine is something of reversive (c), inversive and subversive nature. Let me elaborate.

Reversive: Osawa f/4.5 80-200mm lens. (at 80mm wide open) I held this lens towards the lens attached to my Canon 50D - in a reversive manner, of course.

Inversive: Inverse to the Osawa was my Canon 50mm f/1.4 (at 50mm ((DUH)) wide open).

Subversive: (I'll get to that later).

So maybe it's the fever - or sleep deprivation, or an amalgamation of various other factors including the before said contributors - but I found this really interesting. Although not super-sharp, and under sub-par light, this is a picture I took:

I like what the Osawa lens has done to this, vignetting wise, and MACRO wise. I could get in even closer with my Vivitar 28-90mm f2.8-3.5, but I don't feel like posting something that cool just yet. I want to get some better lighting and a little more structure to the shot. As this picture was shot, I was holding the lenses together with one hand, the other on the shutter, and moving the camera body towards and away from the subject - talk about manual focusing. For lighting, my iPod was on the flashlight app balancing with one end jabbed between the two last rows of keys on the keyboard, and a polaroid picture acting as a flimsy "pillar" holding up the iPod and angling it towards the fn key.

This was a fun shot.

(A) All (p) this (p) time (l) this (e) blog may (i) have (M) been (a) for (c) something (P) other (r) than (d) showing (u) you (c) this (t) picture. (P) This (l) post (a) was (c) destined (e) to (m) happen (e) and (n) cure (t) my fever.

(c) Copyright Brian Van Wyk - Please see: Section F43 (Words which kick more ass than a dictionary can understand)

Weather Proofing.

Not much to say here, but that my shoes are not weather proof to rain; however, my camera seems to be. It never rained much today at the Site C rally - about a dam which the BC government wants to build on Peace River (to power 500 homes in california) - but then again, does it ever rain much in Victoria? Unfortunately not. I've found a couple of instances where the rain has been just hard enough to pitter-patter on the window - and I could only hear it if everyone in the house was completely quiet.

Where are the rolling thunderstorms?! Apparently this never happens here. I miss lazing under a corrugated roof listening to the torrential bursts of atomic cumulonimbus clouds above... and falling asleep. Feel the movement of air particles from lightning strikes 25 kilometres away - measured by seconds in delay.

As for static discharge?

I need a little electricity.

Not a picture of David Suzuki. He didn't pitch. O.o

Long time Since.

It has been a long time since, for many things. Other than these things, which I don't really need to go into, it's been a long time since my last blog post. It has only really been a month and 5 days or so, but it feels like that amount of time was really much longer, despite days going faster than normal lately. Much has happened in life since Logan's Pub. Much good, much bad - can we ever have everything?

It's raining outside and I'm in a bit of a thoughtful mood. Wow, I can be cryptic sometimes. In fact, that's what the majority of my comments are. Crypticism... Is that a word? No. My iPod tells me it is Cryptical.

You make of it what you make of it. Quick updates: I have started buying my gear that I need to head into photography as a career. I ferried over to vancouver to pick up a sweet second hand deal on a 50D. Looks like I'm a Canon freak now. Hey, they offered me the better package at the time I needed it - well, a Mr Tai did, from Vancouver.

I'm currently shooting as much as I can, when I can. There are still many steps ahead of me before I step into photography as a full time career, but I will take them as I can, when I can. Soon I may start a new blog dedicated entirely to photography.

I found this bird in a parking lot. I had just turned my camera on with a memory card for the first time. Next time I go looking for birds, it will be in parking lots. Birds here seem to have the coolest attitude.

FIrst Gig

Last night/this morning was a first for many things. My first Canadian Pub experience was also my first band gig. And by this, I don't.... actually I do mean to mislead you (all in the name of suspense, right?)

I don't have much time between now - at the library - and my bus to work, but here is last night/this morning's story.

If you're wondering, which you probably are, it was my first band photography gig. A few nights ago a friend called me up to photograph his band. Fortunately, I could move around my work schedule and fit the Gig in, despite not having all the best gear/preparation for the gig.

I paid a visit to Camera Traders to pick up what I could get the day before and I stumbled across a flash with a sensor. While not as great as a wireless flash may have been, it was really fun getting members of my family and co-workers zapped by it unexpectedly. In the end, the flash did not work out. Strobe work is extremely complex, and near impossible to master in an environment you don't get to play around in before the band starts. So, of course, I abandoned the flash, turned my ISO up to 800 (O.o) - which my K-x handles exceedingly well - and captured what I could with the terrible lighting in Logan's Pub.

I now understand why the vast majority of band photo's are in black and white; at least I think this is because of all the conflicting colours of light. With what equipment I had and the conditions I was in, I was quite pleased with a number of exposures I had taken.

As well as shooting, I did a bit of networking... I really need to design a business card, it would have been handy last night. Perhaps there is prospect of more gigs in the future for me. It all depends on if the other bands like what they will see once I am finished the editing process.

On the stage last night were Staves, the T.O.C, Chris Neal and West Coast Daze. On the dance floor was me, grooving and shooting; a bit unexpected to some of my friends who envision me on the stage more than on the dance floor or behind a camera. Hey, I can still play guitar; perhaps one day I will need someone to take photo's of me on stage.

On a side note: the, "I'm a photographer," phrase works quite well at bars.

[=



In this photo: Devon Delarge: Homie and Member of "West Coast Daze".

What a splendid moment...

Recent fires up-island have smogged up the air and made for some really cool shots of the sun - If I had gotten there sometime before this shot, I would have had some. This was the last of the sun I could capture before it faded, not behind the horizon, but into the thick smog.

I was not alone; it seems the deck where I took the picture for my post: "Quack!", was quite a popular place for photographers who were also trying to shoot the sun. So the only thing I can say about this picture is that the red casts a slight ominous layer on the lake.

Now, if you look closely, you and see what looks like popler, from trees, or cotton. I thought it was some product of group of trees somewhere alongside the lake. Here is a better picture:

So after a brief chat with some photographers, I stumbled upon something quite interesting; this dock usually has something interesting to capture. In this case, it was a bear:

Still, at this moment, the only significance to anything I had placed on this bear was the randomnity of it. I took some pictures, smiled, and pointed the "Drowning Bear" to the others on the deck. One then said, "Yeah, there's bear shit everywhere."

Not as in "shit" shit, but the insides and organs, so to say, of a bear. The red sun over this lake, with two murdered bears (One drowned, one gutted and strewn across the lake) made it a very pleasant experience for me; I was highly satisfied, even after missing my chance to shoot the sun).

On my return the next day, to try my luck with the sun again, the victims were removed, as were any traces of them. All that I found on the deck was caution tape:



O.o

Pow Wow...

Everytime I say "Pow Wow," a certain Bon Jovi song pops into my head. So I only have a few pictures remaining which I took, IN EXISTENCE. Some awesome ethereal being made me save a few on my camera, which is not the same awesome ethereal being that made my Dad delete everything off of the computer. Accident, of course... I should be more careful with where I store my photo's; all 18 000 of them.



So picture A is a picture of a chief called, wait for it, "White Lightning." Yeah, it's pretty hardcore. I took a photo of him and didn't realise I was close enough to be included in the ceremony, let alone to get struck.



16 Chiefs gathered to join in on traditional dance and ... traditions, obviously. While members of one tribe sang, others struck their drums in synchronisity, the dancers did their thing in a circle, rotating, round and round. There were a number of interesting things one could watch out for, including a man in a motorized wheelchair who persisted to join in regardless of the feathers and traditional dress he was lacking. However, What caught my eye most was this thing:

It's a GIANT ICE-CREAM MAN!


That is all, as I myself don't know what it was doing there. Regardless, White Lightning did not seem to be lactose intolerant, which sucked of course, because there was not going to be epic battle for me to shoot.

On a side note -{HA! CATCHY, maybe not}- I saw another Ice Cream man down at VEMF.

As far as my life is going at the moment: Awesome. Things seem to be falling in place. My cellphone seemed to have fallen out of my pocket last night too. I was in a park, and when I came back in the morning - because you can do that in Canada - I found it covered in dew and water. It works, but there is water in the screen. As well as this, I spent my time between 06:30 and 08:00 picking up garbage and drying wet benches (I swear, the Gardeners think that watering the wooden benches will make them grow). The grass was really thick in the Mediteranean Gardens - which no one goes to - and I got my shoe's soaked. I don't think the crazy hole at the bottom of my shoe helped either.

Today was also my first day working at the gate, handling a lot of people's cash, a lot of the time. Actually, all the time, and always walking, and squeaking and walking, and squeaking... faster and faster and squeakier and squeakier. I got the job done, though.

Another job I need to get done is organising my photo's. I have too many, and too many people want some uploaded/surrendered to them. Tomorrow I will be doing all of this. Because it is the new month, I have another 100 mb's on flickr, so my slideshow I posted earlier will GROW.

Also, a toast to serendipity.

o.O

Brian Needs an Adventure.

I need an adventure, but perhaps you have figured that out already. The reason I say that is because I need a fresh picture to update you with. I was going to go on an adventure today; however, due to my overuse of my Pentax lately, coupled with my forgetfulness, I forgot to charge the battery. It is charging, as we speak.

So here is a picture of a long past adventure:



This was a beach adventure with some South African friends we met here. Pebble beach is arguably one of the better beaches I have been to here. No fine white sand - as is the norm on this island - but big pebbles. Lot's of them. They give great colour and texture when the light is right and the water hits them. In fact, I got some sweet exposures that day, including one of my favourites:


I was once a functioning pipe, but I'm not too sure what it's function was. It did lead into the ocean, but WHO WOULD WANT OCEAN WATER? Perhaps, this is where water was originally pumped into the ocean; this is highly probable, considering the archaic look of the thing.

Actually, a more probable hypothesis is that it may have once pumped water out of the ocean. Considering its decrepit state, and the fact that there is a colossal hole in it - as colossal as holes get in pipes - this would explain the rising sea levels we are experiencing lately. Forget melting ice-bergs, those theories are outdated; only mad men would believe in such radical arguments.

I may be... I am correct in my hypothesis, but for the life of me, I still cannot figure out why anyone would want vast amounts of NaCL water. Anyone out there got any ideas?

On a side note - (!!!! BRAINWAVE !!!! - I will get back to this later#$%@) - I am sitting here between two Macbook Pro's. Gah, one serves a graphic designer and the other a writer. I'd like to comment on the most persausive attribute to the Macbook's of late by making a simple observation.

I have been here for the past 2.5 hours. Both Mac's have been here for as long, or if not longer. The difference between me and them: They don't have a robust power cord weaving through chairs and floorspace to the nearest outlet. Their batteries must be self-sufficient or something. Maybe they do actually last 10 hours.

#$%@ - I FOUND A NAME FOR MY BLOG!
I think it suits the fact that my blogs have an atmosphere of randomnity to them. (RANDOMNITY IS A WORD - I SWEAR THE DICTIONARY IS WRONG!)

Hamba Kahle :)