28 October 2012
Safari Story: The Comfort of the Herd
03/11/12 20:11 Filed in: Safari Story
We had just started our afternoon game drive in the Masai Mara when we spotted a herd of zebras. They were grazing on an open plain close to the river. Everything seemed completely normal until we got closer and had a better look. We noticed a young zebra lying on the ground and its mother anxiously watching it. It was soon clear that the young zebra was dead. Its neck had a bite mark, we thought maybe from a leopard, but it was strange that it was still lying there. Maybe the leopard got disturbed. The mother was looking at us as if she was asking for help. It was heartbreaking. She tried to make her youngster to get up and follow her and when the little zebra did not move she came back and tried again. It was terrible to watch her pain and not being able to do anything to comfort her.
After a while the herd started moving of the plain towards the river. It looked like they wanted to cross before it got dark. The zebra mother was still standing next to her youngster, still confused and anxious. Then something very beautiful happened. The herd had to pass her and the little one when moving towards the river and every group of the herd that passed stopped for a while and stood with her watching the little zebra. They shared a moment with her, probably also wondering why she was standing there and not coming. Nonetheless the herd comforted the zebra mother and with the final group she was eventually able to move on as well. And we did too, silent and impressed by the care of nature.
Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com
How Photography Accelerates Business
02/11/12 13:00 Filed in: B2B
Imagine a normal day at the office. Hundreds of emails, meetings, phone calls and deadlines. Studies showed that in the age before emails one could work undisturbed for about 23 minutes, and now? All happens fast, yet time consuming and decision delaying. It’s a miracle that any business is done despite all constant disturbances. Then take even a big organization. There are examples that Microsoft needed longer to put together the team for a certain project than to build the building where the project team was supposed to be located. This is just killing for productivity and growth.
Businesses need to be agile and innovative. That requires short chains of decision and instant access to information. The digital world allows instant access to information, yet an even faster and more efficient tool is still not used, photography. All information at hand any time and anywhere and not Internet needed. This is what photography can offer businesses. It is THE innovative tool of the future and companies who learn to use it will be ahead of anybody else. No matter what field of business and what internal department, photography is the instant insight information based decision tool for managers and industry leaders. With a click on the shutter it reveals all needed information and shows at the same time the solution. It can’t be easier than that. Use it!
Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com
Photography before Photoshop: How Image Manipulation was Always There
01/11/12 08:33 Filed in: Photography & Art
Photoshop is the tool that makes the sky bluer, the model slimmer, the skin flawless and that puts things in the picture that weren’t there before. But image manipulation is not new. It existed before Photoshop was invented.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is hosting an exhibition devoted to manipulated photography before the digital age. The exhibition is called Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop and runs from 11th October 2012 – 27th January 2013. It shows fantastic examples of image manipulation from before digital tools and can make one laugh when seeing the beginnings of this nowadays-advanced tool.
The companion book is available on amazon and probably a nice Christmas gift for the photography lover.
Happy creative faking!
Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com
Retro and Stunning: The Lomography Belair
31/10/12 11:23 Filed in: Technology & Gadgets
We seem to be in love with retro!
Well, another beautiful new retro camera has entered our lives, producing stunning retro looking images, the Lomography Belair in three great looks.
The Lomography Belair X 6-12 is the world’s first portable medium camera that shoots auto-exposed photographs.
“The Belair can expose in three different aspect ratios: standard 6×9, square 6×6, and panoramic 6×12. It comes with an interchangeable lens system that has two lenses in the lineup: a 90mm normal lens and a 58mm wide-angle.
Features include zone focusing, support for films with ISO from 50 to 1600, a standard hot-shoe mount, a max shutter speed of 1/125s, Bulb mode, and double exposure shooting.” (via PetaPixel)
The design shown on the picture above is already sold out, but find more information on their website and rather pre-order your favorite Belair before they are all sold out.
Happy retro snapping!
Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com
How to Use Photo Apps in an Intuitive Way
30/10/12 11:38 Filed in: Photography & Art
How many photo apps do you have on your iPhone and how do you use them?
Lets look at Instagram, Hipstamatic, 645 Pro and Polamatic. From the technical-practical point of view I must say that the process of finalizing an image in Instagram takes to long for my taste and in Hipstamatic the preparation process of choosing a film, lens and flash is rather complicated. Both technical aspects are somehow disturbing for the intuitional and creative workflow. Yet the filters are a highly intuitive tool, expressing how the photographer experiences the moment.
645 Pro
Hipstamatic
By observing myself in using the different photo apps I realized that the choice of the app depends on the subject and how I see and experience it. Already the choice of the app is intuitive, connected to the feel and look of the photographic subject. Imagine you are walking through a big garden with different sections. One part is forest like with huge trees, another one is with ponds and water features and again another one is a rose garden. For the forest like and open sections I tend to use 645 Pro with the different ratio options. Only occasionally when some objects in the garden asked for attention I changed to Instagram. The rose garden became an entirely Hipsatmatic experience, giving it the old English rose garden feeling. I did not use the Polamatic app, although it is a great tool to create images with descriptions in the old Polaroid style. Probably it’s the right tool when one needs additional words to say something.
Anyway, when using Instagram and Hipstamatic I preferred to choose one setting for all shots, because otherwise I couldn’t just shoot away and let the seeing of subjects flow. At least Hipstamatic lets you shoot away once you choose your settings. Instagram asks processing decision once you took the image and I find this disturbing, which makes it not an easy to shoot away tool.
So, how to use the apps the intuitive way and how to make the right choices? First of all know your apps and what they can do for you. Be familiar with their workflows and know what which setting means for your photographs. Then tune it to the place where you are and understand how you feel about it. Then choose the app that can translate your feeling the best way. And now shoot away.
Happy intuitive app snapping!
Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com
Design Duo Steve Jobs and Philippe Starck: The Yacht
29/10/12 16:12 Filed in: Insights & Opinion | Technology & Gadgets
What happens when great creative minds like Steve Jobs and Philippe Starck are collaborating? A product of a different kind comes out and in this case Steve Jobs’s private yacht.
Yesterday on 28th October 2012 the yacht was unveiled at the Dutch shipyard Koninklijke De Vries in Aalsmeer. A masterpiece of minimalistic design and 70 – 80 meters of craftsmanship with the name Venus.
Read the complete article on Mashable and watch the video on the Dutch site OneMoreThing.
It will be interesting to learn what technology was built into the yacht and what new products might come out of it for all of us. The Apple TV?
Enjoy the piece of art!
Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com
Travel Memories 2008: On Safari in Africa - Day 9
28/10/12 09:35 Filed in: Travel & Inspiration
This was the morning I wanted to focus only on nature and photography. No signal-search, no phone calls, not even talking about the unsolved issues, just going to the airstrip at the end of the morning game drive to fetch the tents.
It was a lovely morning. We crossed the river and cruised through Buffalo Springs National Reserve, which is connected to Samburu. This area is a bit elevated comparing to Samburu and opens wonderful views on it. The landscape is magical and breathtaking. We saw also plenty of oryx with small ones, Grevi’s zebra and lovely bird sightings. Before we crossed back to the other side of the river we checked at the airstrip for the tents, but they hadn’t arrived yet. We would try again in the afternoon.
Back on the other side we finally found elephant. They were indeed walking along the river, back after the rain from the mountains. We tried to follow and got stuck. Fortunately other vehicles were around and tried to help, but they were mini vans and not strong enough to pull out a Landcruiser. It was digging. Suddenly a vehicles came back shouting at us that there was a lion coming. Ok, back into the vehicle and wait, although we couldn’t see any lion and with all the vehicles around we didn’t really feel in danger. The lion sighting we didn’t see brought also another Landcruiser to the scene and we were out of the dip in fife minutes. About forty meters further around a bush a lioness was lying in the shade. Maybe she was disturbed on her path and waiting that the vehicle was pulled out and gone, so she could continue or she was just enjoying the shade.
We carried on to follow the elephants and were just in time to watch them crossing the river. It was an awesome sighting and a great closure of a good morning.
Back in camp I used the time before we would have lunch to upload and process my photos. I did this in the vehicle, because it was the most comfortable place to do it, but this morning I forgot to close the car-door. Imagine a Landcruiser with two seats in the front and after a bar two seats in the back. I was sitting on a seat in the back with my laptop on the seat next to me. While I was sitting there looking at the screen I felt a presence, turned to the left and saw a baboon sitting next to me on the bar, checking out the front of the car. His back was probably about 30 cm away from me. My hand wanted to waive him away like an insect, but my mind told me it’s a baboon. The next thought was to jump out of the car, but that would have meant to come between the baboon and the door and what if he panics. So this wasn’t an option either. Next thought was to give him space, space to escape and that was what I did. He didn’t even look at me, just relaxed turned around and jumped out. All that happened within about 2 seconds and I’m still amazed how much a person can think and decide in such a short period of time and how long two seconds can be. I was a bit shaken, because he gave me a fright and also happy that I finally did the right thing by giving him space. Alex had watched the whole thing and went after the baboon to give him a fright back, which of course didn’t work. The baboons there knew us and just waited for a chance to check out what’s on the dashboard.
We took off for the afternoon game drive early to go to the airstrip first. The tents weren’t there and there wouldn’t be another flight that day. We decided to phone the office. They told us that they didn’t know where to send the tents and couldn’t reach us all day, so it was our fault that the tents hadn’t arrived. We were speechless. They had sent flysheets earlier to the very same airstrip and now they didn’t know where we were. Senseless to say that this was the limit, but yet I wanted to focus on the game drive and to photograph. I would make a decision later and we continued with the drive.
At dinner I told Paul and Alex that I will pay and stay at Lewa for two nights and want them to go back to Nairobi to fix the vehicle, the tents and all the other things on the list. After that, they could pick me up at Lewa and we would continue our trip. Everything needed to be reset. Now even the cigarette lighter wasn’t working anymore and that meant no power at all.
Meanwhile also the nearby Samburu Lodge didn’t have power anymore. Their generator had exploded the night before and the rangers had to help extinguishing the fire.
Also this evening Alex’s mind was filled with stories. He told us that ones in the Mara at the very same campsite we stayed he was invited by a Masai to watch a football match on tv in the Masai shopping centre Talek. The guy came to walk him over and while they were walking in the dark at one point the Masai told Alex to walk more on the left. He did and after a while the Masai said, there was a lion. Alex started shaking and the first thing he did was buying a torch for the way back. He said, he couldn’t focus on the match. He was only thinking about the way back to the camp and that he had to pass the lion again. On the way back he was shining with his torch wildly and holding on to the Masai guy, afraid that he would run of if there was any danger and Masai can run fast and he would be left behind. He got back to the camp safely and the Masai said, just look in their eyes, they can’t have that. Mmm, I don’t wanna try and on my way to the toilet that night I was shining very carefully on the bushes along the path.
Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com