craniac’s place

Expressions of Cape Town was a photographic exhibition organised by a group of Capetonian Flickr members. Each of us was able to submit up to thirty photographs, which were judged by a panel of five professional photographers. The best five photographs from each photographer, or fewer if five were not deemed worthy, were printed and placed on boards (one per participant) that were displayed on easels in the Clock Tower shopping centre in Cape Towns V&A Waterfront. It ran frm 12 to 21 October 2007.

There is a bad fire raging on the slopes of Helderberg above Somerset West. I took this shot from my front garden in Strand, approximately six kilometres away from the mountain.

People have been asking how I did this and I should probably have explained when I first posted it, so I’m editing the post now to add a description.

In order to achieve an effect like this one simply needs to use a zoom lens and make a long exposure, zooming out during the time the shutter is open. In this case I used a five second exposure and zoomed in tightly on the green spire. After tripping the shutter I counted four seconds and then zoomed out during the last second. As the lights below were much brighter than the spire, the result is that there is little or no visible light from the spire captured while zooming, leaving the top of the frame nice and dark and getting light trails below.

Rhodes Monument is a popular Cape Town spot for wedding photographs so it is quite busy on weekend afternoons.

I went for a photowalk in the Bo Kaap neighbourhood of Cape Town yesterday. Besides the normal scenes of brightly coloured old houses, there are many opportunities for abstract shots like this.

A few weekends ago a group of Cape Town Flickrites had a meet-up at Muratie Wine Estate. Part of the old cellar building is used as a gallery and I took this shot there, using the archway as a frame.

This photograph is dedicated to Coyote100, a friend who lost the fight with cystic fibrosis this morning. Dave, I’ll miss you man.

Is the concept of the global village simply a myth? Looking at certain US based web sites one might think so; do the designers of these sites not realise that more potential internet users exist outside the US than within?

A little while ago I was catching up on one of my Flickr photo feeds when I came across a reference to a competition with a Leica M7 as first prize. I’d love to earn one of those so of course I visited the link. Turns out it is a promo for uber.com, a new photography site, apparently started by Chris Weeks, a photographer whose work I am familiar with from Flickr.

Having been through this kind of thing once or twice I immediately checked the rules to see if I was eligible and found that I wasn’t, as they say “Leica M7 Sweepstakes (the “Sweepstakes”) is open only to legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are at least sixteen (16) years old at the time of entry.” I don’t really have a problem with this as there are physical prizes involved, and with the cost of foreign shipping and other, possibly legal factors to consider, it is not unusual for web sites to restrict competition eligibility to the country of origin. Being a sucker for photographic web sites I decided to join anyway so clicked the link and got the registration form, which has a Zip Code field. Most of the world outside the US has postal codes, not zip codes, but web sites typically accept them along with US zip codes. Not this site though; when I submitted I got back a message saying “Please enter a valid US zip code”, and this is why I’m writing this post.

What is the deal with sites like this? Are the owners or designers ignorant and not realise they are excluding most of the world’s population? Do they deliberately exclude those outside the US for some reason? In which case why not go that little bit further and analyse visitor’s IP addresses so that they can block us from accessing the site completely, perhaps with a nice polite(?) “FOREIGNERS NOT WELCOME” message. I prefer to think that it is not malicious and in the case of uber.com, I still want to join, so thanks to Aaron Spelling for giving us Beverley Hills 90210, which not only provided us with entertainment but also provides foreigners with easy access to a US zip code that can be used to circumvent silly blocks like these.

Chris, if you should happen to read this post, I don’t really live in Beverley Hills, but in Cape Town, South Africa, where foreigners are welcome.