Tag Archives: wildkenya

Blown away

How long has it been since you were blown away by something: a view, a picture, an act of cheer genius by somebody, … It doesn’t happen too often, does it? When thinking of photography, these days everybody is a photographer with a platform to show his or her work. This means you come across a lot of shots, yet only every so often do you come across some work that literally blows you away, because it’s different, because somebody clearly had a vision and has put a lot of work into shaping that vision. In the recent past, to me that has been the work of Mate Bence, check it out here and decide for yourself.

More often than not, you have to prepare and do some effort in looking for things that can blow you away, such as the volcano which Sietske and myself climbed and which has gotten some air in the press last week (Burning love, man proposes to his girlfriend 11000 ft up an active volcano). Very often though you don’t have to go far to be blown away, yet you have to create the opportunity to make it happen, something that is highly unlikely to happen by getting stuck behind your computer. You have to go out there and be ready when the moment presents itself, either because you created it or out of simple luck (every so often it happens you are in the right place at the right time without having planned for it, yet even then, you went out, so you definitely had your part in allowing luck to get to you)! To bring this point home, please find this shot by my mother in law, she went out, always has her eyes open and always carries a camera and this shot is a result of that, I love the color and the pose.

Canon Powershot G7, 1/800, f/4
To end with, I also want to share these two shots, a sky that blew me away during a work visit, and boy, was I happy I carried my camera.
Canon 7D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM
Canon 7D, Canon EF 24-105mm L IS USM @ 24 mm, 1/80, f/11, ISO 200
All this being said, I guess the point I wanted to make is the following: be ready to blown away, create the opportunity and when it presents itself, let it happen. By doing so, chances become much higher that you’ll move from a happy snap shooter who gets the occasional shot towards somebody who creates work that blows people of their feet.
All the best,
Guy

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Dear all,

It has been some time, yet most of you will know I have a good reason for that: Ronja Maj Dekelver joined us on 11/06/2012, and she was born an ace in advanced parent sleep deprivation techniques 😉

Canon 5D, Canon EF 50 mm f/1.8, f/1.8, 1/400, ISO 320

As for the blog, three weeks ago Stephen Earle provided a great guest blog, which I presume you enjoyed as much as I did. Once again a big thank you Stephen for this great contribution to Pics from the Wild and I hope it also got some extra traffic your way. In my own last post, I talked about connecting and in this blog post, I want to go one step further, since once you are connected, it is in my opinion all about sharing and about taking that mantra a step further than focusing on sharing your own work only.

In that context, I want to say a few words about Google+, which I started exploring a few weeks ago (for those of you on G+, the link to my profile is taken up in the sidebar). What I like about it is that in a short timespan, people took the effort to check out my site and to share some of my shots, in FB f.e. that doesn’t happen too often, I guess the difference lies in the fact that G+ is geared to photographers for photographers. It is also worth noting that you easily reach more people through G+, where I am in 1 month part of more circles than I have followers on FB in the timespan of 1 year! There’s one downside to G+ and that is the fact it takes some time to get your head around sharing meaningfully (there they can learn a thing or 2 from the likes of FaceBook, …). It is well worth cracking the nut though.

All that being said, a great way of sharing in G+ are the themes that are being created/curated. In that context, I have created a theme called Wild Kenya and I welcome those of you with shots portraying the beauty of Kenya (people, wildlife, landscapes, …) to contribute. Mike Gaudar was the first one to contribute and I am sure more great shots are to follow. Just check out the quality of the contributions here, I absolutely love it, so A BIG THANKS to the contributors: Albatros Travel Africa, Barnita’s Photography, Andy Bitterer, Diego Cattaneo, Mike Gaudaur, Robyn Gianni, Russell Johnson, Nicolas Lotsos, Wayne Marinovich, Maggy Meyer, Winston Mitchell, Sandy Schepis, Nicole Sharpe, Gerry van der Walt and myself.

The first G+ Wild Kenya contribution, with a big thanks to Mike Gaudaur

Then, to allow others to share my work, I added a G+ button to all my posts and pages on this site, allowing people to share things they like on their Google+ site without leaving Pics from the Wild.

Here’s one of my recent shots, since of course, besides creating exposure for others it is key you contribute to the community yourself, otherwise people will loose interest!

Canon 7D, Canon 300 mm f/4 L IS USM, 1/1000, f/8, ISO 800

Finally, you may also have noticed that I added a link to my instagram account to the sidebar of the site. Another great way of sharing, much in line with our modern day visual orientation and hence suiting photographers to share bits and pieces of their life and work through the medium they know best. On top of that there are also interesting small competitions going on that can help you big time in getting your work out there: #spectacular_works being one of them, where I got my rhino reflection shot selected amongst the many entries.

I’ll keep it at that for now and look forward to your thoughts.

Warm regards,

Guy