The Cape Town Ministrel Carnival happens in Cape Town on the 2nd of January. The tradition has become a tourist attraction and Cape Town Ministrel Troupes are often hired to entertain tourist groups in Cape Town.

The Cape Town Ministrel Carnival happens in Cape Town on the 2nd of January. The tradition has become a tourist attraction and Cape Town Ministrel Troupes are often hired to entertain tourist groups in Cape Town.

Change is good and necessary. Over the last three years, I developed the brand of Jurgen’s Photography. There were lots of lessons, I had to learn running my own business as photographer. Lessons are not always easy to learn. Some take a while to implement.

One of the things, I had to do, was to define my speciality. In the beginning, my speciality ranged from weddings, via children photography up to high profile corporate events, mixed with some architectural photography in between. Really now!

Last week, I finally made an appointment with Anneleigh from Brand Forge to work on my branding strategy. These were one of the most valuable hours, I spent on business development. It was intense, to define, where I see myself different to other photographers in the field.

A lot of things became clearer. I needed to move all online presence relating to my business to my jurgensphotography.com domain. It was a long overdue move. You can find my work related blog at: www.jurgensphotography.com/blog I look forward to see you there in the future. This blog continues, but will focus more on some fun aspects of photography. I doubled my commitment to blog with this change.

My specialities are now clearly defined.

1. Corporate Photography
2. Editorial Photography
3. Travel Photography

Over the last few months, these were the areas, focused on most and completed some very interesting assignments in all of them. Have a look at my main page www.jurgensphotography.com to see some examples.

Last weekend, our rotary club inducted the new president. Even though, I was not the official photographer for the event, I had of course my camera with me and decided to try a different approach to event photography. I made a few decisions. 1) No flash 2) Be confident to use ISO 3200 and focus on the 50mm/ 1.4, though at the beginning (first 3 images in the slideshow) I still used the 70-200/2.8. I enjoyed process and working with one fixed lens, forced me to move around and find new and interesting angles.

I processed the images in Aperture and Silverefex Pro.

How important is your photo equipment to produce better pictures? My answer is that a good photographer can produce good pictures with any camera. The photograph is not made by the camera, but by your view of the world. The camera is only the last part of that expression of creativity. You might have seen the fashion shoot with an iPhone camera. If you haven’t, follow the link and have some fun, watching it.

There is one thing about that shoot, I took note of and it is the consistent use of a tripod. I recently, upgraded my tripod to a lighter and more versatile version. I used to carry about 4.5 kg around. The new tripod is half the weight. The tripod goes with me almost everywhere, I go with my camera. You might argue that a tripod in the age of modern DSLRs is outdated.

There are at least three reasons for me that this is not true:

1. Focus on composition,

2. Images only possible with tripods,

3. Movie functions of new cameras

Let’s have a look at these points in detail.

Focus on Composition

Portrait in combination with long exposure

Since I am carrying my tripod around a lot these days, I use it also more. I noted, the tripod slows me down. That is a good thing! HA! How can that be a good thing? It helps with me with composing the image. How often did you find elements in the images, you didn’t see, when you took the shoot? It happened to me.

There is another element to that. When you photograph portraits, you can put the camera on the tripod and instead of hiding behind the camera, you interact with the person in front of you and relax him or her.

I use that in conjunction with a cable release and make myself even more independent from the camera.

Images only possible with tripods

From the fan walk on 6 July

Last night, I photographed people at the fan walk in Cape Town. It was at night and I was fascinated by the movement of the masses of people. In one particular situation, the complete crowd was moving with the exception of a police officer. It would have been impossible to hold that shot in my hand.

Another example for this, is the portrait of the two gentlemen in front of the soccer stadium. You can properly compose the background and even run a longer exposure in combination with a portrait lit by flash in the foreground. Added advantage, you don’t have to worry about losing control over what happens in the background while focusing on the people in front.

Movie function on new DSLRs

That is almost a no brainer for me. When it comes to moving pictures, the camera has to be on a solid base. There are exceptions to the rule, but for best quality and sharpness, you want to use a tripod.

I photograph for a living and invested in a solid Gitzo tripod that is as sturdy and as flexible as a tripod can be. You don’t have to go for that price class, when you photograph for a hobby and not use a tripod every day. Get a good and solid one and one that is not too heavy and you will discover that something can be liberating even though it might look like a burden to carry around.

One more thought: The use of a tripod is not dependent on  the size of your camera. I use the tripod with my DSLR and my Panasonic LC2.

Cape Town at full moon.

Please click image for larger view. The image print is available for sale. Please email jurgen@jurgen-photo.com for more information.

I have been fascinated by a particular view for the last week. One of Cape Town’s highways has a beautiful view over the harbor. Whenever I returned from town this week, I stopped to take pictures from a particular point.  Today, I experimented a with HDR photography. HDR stands for high dynamic range, which means that the image is a composite of several images all exposed with different exposures. This allows a wider light range than with a normal photo. The effect can be surreal. Let me know, what you think.

Please click on the image for a larger view.

Morning light

I went for a run today along Rhodes Memorial. The light was just amazing. The light was that great that I decided to photograph some landscapes after the run.

My favorite shot of the day is this shot. I hope you like it as much as I do. Please click on the image for a larger view.

Winter Sunshine in Cape Town

My first digital camera was a Panasonic DMC LC-1, the twin to the Leica Digilux 2. When I bought, I loved the simplicity and classic setup of the camera. Aperture is changed on the lens and shutter speed on camera top with a mechanical dial. Interesting features of the camera are the slightly bigger sensor than in many compact cameras (and still smaller than a APS or full size sensor) and the Leica lens (28-90mm) with a widest aperture of 2.0 and the super silent shutter.

There are a couple of  things, which are not exciting: slow autofocus, electronic viewfinder, slow raw processing, high noise at 400! ASA.

Other than that it is a lovely camera. For some reason, I got curious about using it again for some snapshots. So I went ahead and used for some portraits of our cat Ginger, some landscapes/ nature shots and a product shoot.

I included the closeup of my keyboard as an example for the ability to shoot at slow shutter speeds handheld. The sunglasses were shot in a studio setup, I used for other product shots. All images were shot at 100 ISO and in JPEG. The cat portrait is unedited, the other images received some post editing. Nothing that I wouldn’t do with any other camera.

Looking at the images, I am surprised about the quality of the images and the slight pixelation in the out of focus areas of the images remind me of film. It has been an interesting experience after working for my clients exclusively with my Nikon cameras.

As a result, I will work on a portrait project, where will exclusively work with this camera. Watch the space.

Please click on the thumbnails to start the slideshow.