Mine-Sniffing Rats

I wanted to show the mine-detecting rat that Mr. Easterby was incredibly fascinated by which is part of my borders project. I spent a couple of days away sleeping among scorpions and snakes–seriously–at the APOPO camp in Mpilane, Gaza province about three hours outside of Maputo. It was fascinating. I also had some time with a mine victim in his village, Donga.

Overdoing it

I've been putting far too much time dealing with my before and after pictures. I've hiked a trash-strewn hillside dodging human feces, gone to a private luxury home's owner to see the view from their balcony (it was blocked by trees), gone through a chain of command at a private park to photograph from their hillside land and finally sweet talked my way past two doormen to the twentieth floor of a building that has a fair view of the coastal strip of road I'm covering.

I've contacted a long line of people searching for the copyright owners of the historical photograph and now am being put on hold by the bank who owns the rights. I've been researching copyright law and examining "fair use." Nevertheless, one of the photographs that I made today is probably about as good as I'll get to duplicating it because there is simply too many trees and shrubbery including in front of the landmark that I wanted to show. It's not ideal, but I'm happy with what I've gotten. It's times like this when I will probably look back and wonder why the heck I spent so much time and effort on this picture which might not even make an edit.

As for my borders project, my Brazilian nuns have pushed my meeting date with them back several times and did it again this evening. I'm set to meet them again on Thursday. My minefield contacts from HALO Trust have both moved rather abruptly. One has gone to Cambodia and the other to another Mozambican region to set up a new office. So, I'm on hold to meet the replacement who won't be here for two weeks I believe. If it wasn't a minefield, I'd just bypass them and go alone, but that could mean trouble. Next week, however, I'll be going away for a few days to visit with rats who locate landmines in Chokwe, Mozambique.

LCC Promo Video

Post Graduate Studies at LCC
I've been looking around for venues for our collective work in the borders project. Some places I was thinking that could work well as vehicles to show work or to divert back to our portal are the obvious: Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, Twitter, Flickr. It would be nice to create podcasts of multimedia projects as some universities have done (see iTunes University). Once we get a name settled, I would like to set up some pages or accounts in these places. Anyhow, I ran into this video and do believe that is our very own Paul Lowe making a cameo in this promo for post-graduate studies at LCC.

Borders Update

My note to John Easterby:

"...If you recall, I had struggled with narrowing my subjects down for the borders project. The last time we met, I talked to you about starting the de-mining in Southern Mozambique project. It's been slow going and I haven't actually taken a photograph yet--sort of a hazard of being at the mercy of HALO Trust. However, I am finally scheduled to go out with a team, and the last week of this month, I will go near the center of the country to go out with a group called Apopo who uses rats to locate mines.

Now again to rack you memory, you might remember how one of my initial ideas was about going to a border town about an hour and a half away called Ressano Garcia that reminded me a bit of a small town Mexican border crossing. I had been looking for an actual story there rather than simply going to the town and doing a general profile. I never really stopped that effort and found something. There is a group of Brazilian nuns there running a children's home to help kids that are typically trafficked or abandoned at the border.

I'm really excited about this one and am scheduled to meet the nuns next Tuesday to see if they'd be receptive to me photographing there. I will keep you informed.

I guess I still haven't entirely solved my initial problem of having too many ideas. I still plan on doing some that I mentioned before in the future for myself particularly the border of Mozambique and Zimbabwe, and the former mountain retreat town of Namaacha that borders Swaziland where a pilgrimage to the Virgin Mary happens every May. For now, I'm staying focused on the demining and the Brazilian nuns of Ressano Garcia. I know I'm sort of throwing a lot of darts at one target, but to some degree they haven't completely solidified yet. But with than in mind, I'm still working very hard on my coastal erosion project which I plan on making my final project..."

Technogeekiness

Both shot w/ Canon G10 point-and-shoot

For the first time I used my little Canon G10 to do more serious photographs. Also, I've started shooting in RAW. I know that I'm probably the last person who was still shooting jpegs which is sort of a holdover from my newspaper years. We didn't need huge files for news print and were encouraged to shoot jpegs and had to be technically sharp, treating their delicate exposures the same way we had treated chrome, even slightly underexposing, a habit that probably won't be broken. Another reason is that I bought a bunch of new stuff: an iMac, PhotoShop CS4, and Lightroom which can actually handle RAW files.

I've never been a techno sort of person. However, I had the good fortune for years working with a number of colleagues who were and loved every new gadget, software or newer, faster camera or lens about. As a staffer, I took what I was given which was typically pretty great equipment. However I would've probably taken anything. I prefer small gear. In my last film camera days, I used to favor my personal Nikon 8008s over my company issued F4's. I remember buying a personal F5 and hardly ever using it, choosing instead my FM2 (which I still have but never use (too sentimental)). In all truth, I love the size of the G10 and if it had a few more of the SLR capabilities, it would be the perfect camera for me.

Recently, I've been listening to a number of photo podcasts mostly to learn about Lightroom and CS4 (my previous version was Photoshop 7.0). The podcasts are of varying quality, some with sort of loudmouthed techie guys that have wedding and portrait businesses (there's nothing wrong with that) and love stuff. They manipulate their images and do all kinds of things with Photoshop I would never dream of doing. They buy every new gizmo that comes out and can't wait for the next big item. They are typically like children on Christmas when they get any "insider" news from Adobe, Apple, Nikon or Canon about the next new thing.

To some degree, we need these guys just as I needed those wonderful techies that I used to work with. They're being played by companies to get excited and create a buzz about the next new thing that nobody's supposed to know about. Still, as much as I hate to admit it, the fascination I have with my new stuff and the list of things that I plan on buying makes me a bit of a "nerd" as my sister recently put it. The fact that my wife falls asleep when I talk to her about Lightroom is a realization of this.

Even so, the thing that I dislike about photography is all of the "stuff." I don't like lugging around big gear or having mounds of files to archive. For years when I was single and moved around the U.S. from newspaper to newspaper, I was a minimalist and typically took whatever my car could carry and would give away the rest. The movers from Florida to New York were surprised and pleased with just how little they had to do to move me. To some degree at newspapers, I loved the fact that I could just shoot, file my negs, put photos in Merlin or give them to the librarian to archive and move on.

I'm not sure who it was from our group not long ago who passed on an article about Sam Abell and how he would shoot with nothing if he could. I couldn't agree more. One of the reasons I love Cartier-Bresson is because he never diverted from his fabulous little Leica and a few basic lenses. I wrote some time ago about how I went about selecting my gear when I left the Times. The two folks who gave me the most advice were Tyler Hicks and Vince Laforet. Vince was all about getting two Mark V's and a bunch of big lenses, etc., while Tyler told me to get a couple of 20D's and some small lenses and talked about friends who were using point-and-shoot cameras for magazine assignments. I'm no Tyler Hicks, Sam Abell or HCB, but as much as my purchasing actions and camera lust contradict my words, for me less is more.