More than ten years ago, Piet Botha walked into my studio, cleanly shaven, with a guitar case... "Hein there is an old station down the road and I need you to come down and take some shots of me". I refused. This was for his new CD "'n suitcase vol winter". We had the digital explosion in the graphic world and I immediately did the shoot in the studio and started cutting and pasting in Photo Shop. The station was Matjiesfontein and the mountains in the background, Helshoogte, near Stellenbosch, taken about ten years earlier on Velvia film when I was still chief photographer for SATOUR. The album and cover is now history.

Less than ten days ago, Piet Botha walked into my studio "Hein you must design me a road sign on computer and place it on one of your stock photos of a highway". I refused. We now are post-digital operators and want to work from well orchestrated images shot for the project at hand. The first step was to print and make the sign. Big Print was asked to print a 800mm x 800mm sign on reflective vinyl, the vinyl was stuck on chromadeck, holes were punched into it (the SA bullet hole thing you know), a stand and pole was welded and we were ready. The Students at Visual Skills School were given the opportunity to join in the shoot which we are currently editing as seen here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Take one

Sun from behind, mostly 10-22mm zoom Canon D400, D20, & D40. Not the flagship units at all, the button pusher is what counts, a CD cover printed at 350 DPI is less than ten megs and thus less than a quarter of the megs produced by these cameras. The shots were straight forward, no reflectors fill-in etc. sun from behind and magic last light soft shadows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Take two

Shooting into the sun mostly with the Canon 70-200mm F2.8 and 100mm F2. The pop-up flash was used on the

 

wider shots, cameras were set on AV. We used strong Maglite torches to light the sign on the longer exposures. The retro reflective material the sign was printed on does not need very strong lighting to reflect, in fact, some of the photos had the sign totally over-exposed and this is one of the few situations in photography where technical exposure planning can let you down, bracketing was in the order of the day.