Unboxing the Canon EOS 200D Rebel SL2 Kit with EF-S 18-55mm

Weekend Bush Break in the Madikwe Game Reeserve

After our wedding Jane and I decided that we would have a mini honeymoon and we decided to go to Tuningi Safari Lodge in the Madikwe Game Reserve.

Our real Honeymoon will be in Septmber next year but we both have been working hard and we needed to get away to spend a little time together and to relax.

Tuningi Safari lodge was fantastic and the staff were out of this world but naturally the real entertainment was in the bush. I managed to get a couple of good photos that you will also find on https://500px.com/judgebugi and if you are interested you will be able to pay to use some of the pictures from the weekend away.

 

A photojournalists dilemma - James Oatway

Over the weekend were a series of photos taken by photographer James Oatway that have become controversial due to the nature of the photographs and what the photographer did whilst the incident took place. It has South Africa divided as to what the photographer should have done in the situation that he was in and what is the correct thing to do when you are faced with something like this.

The photographer took photos of an incident where a foreigner in South African soil, Emmanuel Sithole, was being stabbed in a xenophobic attack. James took the photos but he did not intervene until the man was left wounded on the ground. Only once the attackers had left the victim James went to Emmanuel, helped him to his car and took him to hospital where he died due to his injuries.

This has caused outrage in South Africa and many other places in the world. Some people say that James should have stopped taking photos and helped the man, others are saying that all that he was interested was in the fame that the photos would bring, another group are saying that he would not have been able to help the man and he could have been killed himself and the final group say that his pictures will do more to stop Xenophobia in South Africa than stopping one incident.

I do not believe that there is right answer to the issue. All sides have valid arguments and the Emmanuel and his family would  have preferred it is James had saved his life. We do not know that if James had intervened that he would have saved Emmanuel’s life. By the looks of the photos taken I do not believe that he would have. The attackers were very focused in Emmanuel and, in my opinion, looked like they might have turned on James if he had even attempted to stop them. I do not have any proof that they would have attacked James so it is totally my opinion.

It so happens that the police have used the pictures to catch four of the murderers so James’s pictures have been extremely helpful. This would not have happened if James had not taken the photos.

With regards to the awareness that has come from the photos, the fact that the pictures have been all over the news and there has been a controversy about the pictures, has made the whole world aware of what is going on in South Africa. It is important that people know that this has happened and that more of these incidents are happening. It was world pressure that stopped apartheid and it will be world pressure that will get South African’s to stop being so apathetic about the situation and do something to stop xenophobic attacks.

There have been incidents recently in the United States where someone took video footage of the deaths of Eric Harris, Eric Gardiner and Walter Scott. There was more chance of the people recording these incidents of stopping them and surviving the incident than what James had gone through.

However, even though the incidents were terrible and it has come out that they could all be police brutality crimes, the person that recorded the incidents have been made heroes and not been interrogated by the public because they did not stop the incidents. Why does the case with James have to be different? I do not know, maybe because there is a different agenda with regards to the crimes. The American ones are showing severe brutality between police and black men that has been going on for years and needs to be exposed and the South African one is one where we would like to pretend that it did not exist and instead of facing the reality of the situation we are looking at blaming someone who has documented a terrible crime.

In the last couple of years, South Africa, has been reminded of the terrible political situation in the country in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s through the book and movie Bang Bang Club. There is an incident where Kevin Carter took photos of a poor kid in a Sudan refugee camp that was so starved that he had collapsed on the ground and there was a vulture that was stalking him. Kevin won the first Pulitzer award for photography for South Africa with that picture. The result of his instant fame was that the general public got up in arms, much like in this case, and Kevin committed suicide shortly afterwards. I would hate James to go through similar pressure that Kevin went through.

There are many pictures in South African history like Kevin picture for example the picture of Hector Pieterson being carried by Mbuyisa Makhubo after being shot by South African police. This picture is one of the many pictures that woke up with world to the problems in South Africa and in the end brought apartheid to it's knees. I hope that this picture will do something similar and stop these murders and attacks.

I wish that there was an easy answer what James should have done. There are many photographers that face situations like this on a daily basis. To understand it better I would suggest reading the book the “Bang Bang Club” and getting to understand what these photographer go through. The put their lives on the line to get us the stories and we expect them to tell us what is happening. I don’t believe that we should crucify them for telling us what we need to know even though it is so brutal that we would rather not know what is going on.

I was not at the incident and I do not know the photographer and I have not spoken to him so everything in this article is all heresay. 

KFC Mini-Cricket Provincial festival 6 September

The KFC Mini-Cricket festival on the 6th September was a fantastic event for the kids. There were over 1600 kids there and they all played two games during the day but for me as the photographer it was not as good.

I betrayed a basic rule of any business not only photography and more specifically my public relations job and that is that you have to get to the event early. There was an accident on route and I was 10 minutes late for the event.

Media had already arrived when I got to the event so that made taking pictures difficult because I had to deal with media queries.

The next problem that I had was part three of the brief and that was that I needed to take pictures of the kids interacting with a professional cricketer. The local cricket union decided that they could not send a professional player to the event.

Eventually I had time to take only a couple of photographs and I had to deal with what I had taken. Luckily for me the local media liked the photos enough to use them.

KFC Mini-Cricket Brief Pretoria 6 September 2014

My assignment for the weekend is the KFC Mini-Cricket Provincial festival in TUT university in Pretoria, South Africa. The brief is very simple.

I need to take action photographs of as many kids as possible either bowling or batting. I need to get the names of the kids and the schools that they play for. The media insist on getting the names and schools of the players because the communities that read the papers like the more personal touch of knowing who they are looking at.

The next part of the brief is to take photos of all the branding. This has nothing to do with newspapers but is used for reporting purposes for our client and activation agency.

Part three of the brief is to take picture of the professional cricketers that will be at the event. Get the person to interact with the kids. It is very important to show him interacting part of the client’s focus is to show kids being active and then showing them getting active with their heroes.

The weather should be good with the expected maximum being 28 degrees Celsius. I need to watch out for the glare coming from the fields, I do not have a filter so I will have to make the relevant adjustment’s myself. Luckily the tournament is in the morning so the light and colours should not be too sharp.

Below are some pictures from the previous year’s festivals. I need to do something similar or better. I have an extra year’s worth of experience so I should have learnt something. 

Photos of the cricket test match between South Africa and India Day 1