Author: Tom (Admin)
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A Day in Lüderitz – Two Different Soundtracks
Recently my daughter and I took a trip to the small, somewhat odd Namibian coastal town of Lüderitz. I say it’s odd because we arrived on a Saturday afternoon, after driving a long, winding road which seemed unable to keep the sand dunes at bay – at several points the dunes were slowly making their…
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One Day on Earth: the 12/12/12 trailer is here!
On 10/10/10 and 11/11/11, filmmakers all around the world collaborated to create a film that captured life on earth on those specific days. The trilogy is going to be completed on 12/12/12 and the best news is that you can take part! First, take a look at the trailer, then I’ll explain what needs to…
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A cardboard bicycle?? Yeah, but is it lighter than carbon fiber?
There’s a story making the rounds about a guy who has invented a bicycle nearly entirely made of cardboard. In short, they told him it couldn’t be done, and he went and proved them wrong – the best kind of story. Apparently they think it can be marketed for 20 bucks, which will make a…
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Photographing the Ghost Town of Kolmanskop
Just outside the small, quaint port town of Luderitz, Namibia is a popular tourist destination known as Kolmanskop. This former diamond mining town, where once diamonds could be collected from the surface sand as they lay glinting in the moonlight, has been abandoned and is now gradually being taken over by the sand, which gets…
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Easy Panoramic Photos – Southern Namibia Horizons
I’ve posted before about how you can take panoramic photos these days without one of those fancy panoramic cameras. Given the resolution of cameras these days, you can just take a slice from an ordinary photo of the horizon or something equally appropriate for panoramic photos, make sure it’s lined up straight, and crop. One…
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Toshiba Qosmio X875 Touchpad Issues
So I just received a brand new Toshiba Qosmio X875 series video editing DREAM laptop, with 16 GB of RAM, 1.75 TB of hard drive space (on two drives) and a 3D capable, 17.3 inch screen. The thing weighs a ton, but for just under 2 grand, you’re not going to be throwing this in…
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Lions and Impalas
At Goas watering hole, around the center of the driveable part of Etosha National Park, we stumbled upon a pride of lions – it must have been seven. But the really strange thing was the impalas and the way they behaved in the presence of the lions. Rather than just leave and go to a…
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Lion Encounter
In most parts of the world, seeing a lion is a very much controlled experience – typically in a zoo. In Etosha National Park in Namibia, you have to keep your camera handy because there’s no telling when you’ll see a large animal – or even if you’ll see one at all. In spite of…
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Animal Shorts!
A handful of short wildlife videos from a recent trip. In the first, we discover how the “puff adder” got its name. Then, see a group of banded mongooses – mongeese? – doing silly things. Finally, a crocodile enjoys a snack, like clockwork, at 2 pm on Saturday. The videos are all taken at Kempinski…
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Zebras at Dusk
The “golden hour” directly before sunset offers really interesting options for photography. If you’re on a game drive in Namibia at the right time in the right place, you can get some truly stunning photos. Unfortunately, however, you’re at the mercy of the driver many times, and if you’re facing directly into the sun it…
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Accidental Photos
Sometimes you can get a cool photo when your camera fails. Standing under a streetlight in Katutura, a small child was begging to have his photo taken, yet for unknown reasons the flash wouldn’t fire. The result is below. I wish I could claim it was on purpose!
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Victoria Falls at Dusk
Awhile back we visited Victoria Falls, on the border of Zimbabwe and Zambia. They’re not the biggest falls in the world, but at a mile wide and 110 meters deep, they are up there. I thought the footage went wonderfully with Philip Glass’s “Anthem” from Powaqqatsi. Thankfully, YouTube allowed it, albeit with ads.
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Filming Bee-Eaters in my Yard
I remember one day walking into my back yard at dusk and seeing an odd flash of blue in a tree – out of the corner of my eye. Imagine my surprise when I realized it was a group of 6 swallow-tailed bee-eaters huddled together for the night. I had seen photos of them and…
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YouTube/Google up the ante in the privacy wars
So you’re sick of Facebook gradually nudging you towards completely doing away with all pretense of a private life? YouTube/Google have made the latest move in the online privacy wars. You remember when you started signing in to YouTube with your gmail username and password? And then the whole Google+ / circles thing happened. Now…
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Windhoek to Swakopmund: the Scenic Route
You can get from Namibia’s capital, Windhoek, to the coastal city of Swakopmund, in around 4 hours via a paved road with one lane in each direction. Or you can head directly west from Windhoek, and you’ll quickly hit a gravel road (with a somewhat ironic “100 kph” speed limit sign) that provides a much…
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Making Ordinary Photos Panoramic
Sometimes I wish I had one of those fancy panoramic photos where you can capture the full breadth of something – usually the horizon – don’t you? Well, it turns out that with today’s high-resolution digital cameras, you can easily turn an ordinary photo into a panoramic. With a little planning beforehand. See something that…
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Just Like Riding a Bike
Sometimes it’s easy to take things for granted. Like learning how to ride a bike. Among other things, we teach sports at the Resource Center, an after-school program for kids under age 14, at the Jakob Marengo School in Katutura, the poor and predominantly black township in the northern edge of Windhoek, Namibia. Usually we…
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US Army in Afghanistan Parodies “Call Me Maybe”
Here’s the latest effort by troops deployed overseas to blow off a little steam and connect with friends and family back home. Some may feel it’s inappropriate – but you have to come up with things like this to stay sane sometimes. This is their description: A cover of “Call Me Maybe” performed by US…
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Photographing Victoria Falls
So you go to one of the most spectacular views in the world and you figure the photography is going to be child’s play – just hold the camera up in the right general direction and shoot. Not so in Victoria Falls. This is not for the lack of spots and sights. It’s just impossible…
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Namibia: Strange Birds
Namibia has a number of different types of hornbills – some fairly common, but some a bit rarer. This fellow below – a southern ground hornbill, was spotted casually walking through the forest toward the road we were on, with about 5-6 of his colleagues / family. About the size of a small wild turkey,…
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Sony’s NEX-EA50 NXCam – interchangeable lens camcorder
This just-released promotional video highlights Sony’s latest interchangeable-lens video camcorder. Once you get beyond the nonstandard English, it’s SHWEEET! It’s due out in October, and unlike the typical still camera that “also takes good video” this is a professional grade camcorder that “also takes good stills”. It’s got a 16 MP APS-C CMOS sensor along…
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Scenes from the Caprivi: Nkasa Lupala Tented Lodge
There’s this cool new tent lodge “in the middle of nowhere” up in the Caprivi. So named because it sits just along the edge of the national park of the same name (formerly known as Mamili), this cluster of luxury raised tents sits in the middle of the Kwando-Linyanti river system, a labyrinth of narrow…
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Caprivi is for the Birds
Caprivi is that northeasternmost region in Namibia that looks so odd on a map. I’m sure there is a really interesting historical reason dating from the colonial days for Caprivi being part of Namibia. But for now it just sticks out there, too thin to really even qualify as a panhandle. It borders Angola, Zambia,…