Year: 2011
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Watch “Life in a Day” on YouTube
Last year I wrote about how Ridley Scott and Kevin MacDonald were seeking YOUR contributions to use in a film about life on Earth’s most documented day – July 24, 2010. I was disappointed to miss the film’s release on July 24, 2011 because I headed off to my new home in Africa the day…
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Macro Photography: Weird Big Bug
There are so many insect species out there that it’s almost impossible to identify the ones you come across. This one flies and lives in Namibia, and has odd hind legs, almost like a bee laden with honey. It’s fun to take pictures of, though.
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Windhoek’s Informal Settlements
According to some statistics, 60 percent of Namibia’s urban dwellers, 25 percent of all Namibians live in so-called “informal settlements.” They come to Windhoek in search of jobs, opportunities and a better life. And in spite of the fact that Windhoek enjoys a reputation as a city which has taken better care of its newest…
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Macro Photography: Grasshopper After Rainstorm
Check out these macro photos of a grasshopper (or, as my daughter felt was more appropriate, “locust” – it was a good 3 inches long!) that was perched outside out front door. If you look close, you can see little droplets of water on his face.
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iPad for video and music creation
Although you can’t beat the price for video and music editing software when it comes to iFilm and GarageBand for the iPad, trying to create a video from top to bottom using nothing but an iPad 2 still leaves a bit to be desired. Probably people who have never used any other video or music…
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Namibian Blues. Or German.
When 18 white dudes from southern Africa with German names get together for a blues show, you know it’s gonna be authentic. Or was that ironic. Anyway, enjoyed a rare blues show in Windhoek a couple weeks ago when local “Mojo Blues Band” teamed up with the 11-piece brass “Wikiaphoniker Orchestra.” Although at times there…
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Spider: 3 Views
I happened to catch this interesting spider on a glass door, and snapped a couple of different photos. I believe it’s Selenopidae, or the wall crab spider. Because it’s so flat, depth of field/focus issues are not as much a problem as with ordinary macro photography. Because the spider is about an inch across, not…
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Video: 24 Hours at Etosha
Along the southern fringes of Etosha National Park, Namibia’s flagship park, are scattered a handful of camps and watering holes. The oldest of these is Okaukuejo, 18 km from Anderson gate in the southwest corner of the park. At Okaukuejo, the “bush chalets” are oriented around the watering hole in a westward-facing orientation, which makes…
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Document One Day On Earth
There’s a wonderful project called One Day on Earth where they are asking for help in documenting just that. If you happened to catch some video on 11.11.11 (sorry for the late notice!) you can sign up at the site and contribute your content for consideration in a feature film. The same was done on 10.10.10…
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Zuccotti Park with a Touch of Irony
Love this video I found on The Atlantic’s website, in which documentary filmmaker Casey Neistat sets footage of the raid on Zucotti Park in the wee hours of November 15, to Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York. Sometimes the right music can make all the difference.
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Immersive Video – the Next Big Thing?
3-D video is so 2009. Now that virtually anyone with a couple of cameras (or a YouTube account) is capable of producing relatively decent 3-D videos, people are already starting to look for the Next Big Thing. I think it’s going to be 360 degree immersive. Like 3-D, some form of the technology has been…
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Video – Elephants at Okaukuejo
We spotted the first elephant in the distance, and soon noticed he was followed by many more, all neatly in line, ears flapping and trunks swinging in that crazy, bouncy, elephant way. Eventually 32 of them arrived at the watering hole at Okaukuejo Camp,where they drank, bathed, played, and in some cases were a little peeved with…
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Amazing Jelly Bean Stop-Motion
Take a look at this stop-motion music video made for Kina Grannis’ song “In Your Arms.” And before you look at it, take note of the fact that it is 100% stop-motion – no green screen, no CGI. This video was photographed frame-by-frame over a period of 22 months, involved a crew of 30 people,…
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Photos: Reflections at Etosha NP
It’s fun to play around with reflections off a body of water – though in my experience, it’s rare to come across a body of water (a) that’s calm enough to reflect without too much distortion (b) at the right time of day and (c) where there’s something worth reflecting. At a recent visit to…
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Seeking Pledges for Namibia
This November 19, I will be participating in the event, “Namibia Runs for Charity.” From 9 am to 4 pm, I will have the opportunity to run as many laps as possible for Namibian charities. And I could use your help! Now, it would be good to be able to post here exactly WHICH charity…
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Why Afghanistan Matters
For what it’s worth, I spent the last five years of my military career (now retired) working for Afghanistan in the communication realm. Over the course of my ten trips there between 2006 and 2011, I felt constantly annoyed, yet challenged, by the relatively superficial portrayal of the country being served to the rest of…
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Photo: Bug Eats Millipede
I snapped this interesting photo the other day as I was experimenting with some screw-in macro lenses I had gotten in the mail. Here in Namibia, there are millions of millipedes coiled up under rocks, soil, everyplace you dig. So in the course of gardening there are bound to be a few casualties. So this…
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Supporting Africa’s Dwindling Wild Dog Population
Today I’ll be participating in N/a’ankuse Lodge and Wildlife Sanctuary’s “Corporate Eco-Challenge” to help raise money for their efforts to advocate on behalf of Africa’s dwindling wild dog population. African wild dogs, also known as “painted dogs“, are the second most endangered carnivore on the African continent, after the Ethiopian wolf. Estimates of the remaining…
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Flower TimeLapses using iPad
I’ve noticed a number of the flowers here in Namibia open and close daily. Especially some of the succulents and cacti. What that means is that if I want to do timelapse videography I can try and record every day until I get it right. Unfortunately some of the succulents flower only one day, which…
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Coming soon: a “War Correspondent Sim”
They’ve got video games for folks who like just about everything: golf, team sports, fishing, hunting, horseys, shooting bad guys, flinging birds from giant slingshots… Now there’s a game for folks who like editing videos. Instead of actually editing videos, you can play a video game where you edit pretend videos. Seriously, the game Warco…
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Visualizing Kiva’s Microfinancing
What happens when you depict a microloan as a tiny speck of light on a world map, going from one country to another? And then you multiply that by 620,000 lenders and 615,000 borrowers who were microfinanced via the innovative organization Kiva (kiva.org)? Check out this creation by Kiva on Vimeo which depicts five+ years…
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African Water Scorpion?
Today we came across the largest “digging scorpion” I’ve seen so far – about 3.5 inches or so from “nose” to tail. They burrow down in our garden, and this one apparently decided to burrow down into our pool. Apparently 1.5 meters of chlorinated water is no big deal for a scorpion, as he was…
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Sandboarding. Swakopmund. Sony Vegas
For years, I’ve been editing with versions of Adobe Premiere and Premiere Elements, and the one complaint I’ve always had is its tendency to lock up on most computers. The exception has been my old desktop running XP with 512 MB memory – but even there, I’ve got to restart the computer after I finish…
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Spring has Sprung in Windhoek
Spring is definitely in the air in Namibia. At least that’s what my daughter tells me – she informed me that September 1 was “spring day”. Apparently in South Africa and Namibia, it’s not the 21st that heralds the coming of spring, but the 1st of September. And given the weather these days, it’s not…