Year: 2013
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“Pooh” Creator AA Milne’s Secret Life in Propaganda
So it seems that childhood favorite author AA Milne, who created all of the wonderful “Winnie the Pooh” stories (along with some of my favorite childhood poems), also spent some time in World War I writing propaganda for a secret British military intelligence unit. And that this is only known to us because Milne broke…
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B&W Photos from an Old Agfa
My latest hobby is drawing some ire from the “head of household” but it seems harmless enough – scouring eBay for deals on vintage cameras, and, for those for which film is still available, experimenting with photographs to see if I can master this ancient art which is quickly being lost in the age of…
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An Oshikandela, by any other name…
In our local grocery shop you can buy a couple of different varieties of yoghurt drink. Two popular kinds sit right next to each other on the shelf. I’m not a big breakfast eater; as I did when I lived in Europe, I like to take a drinkable yoghurt to work in the morning. I…
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Namibian Fairy Circles Mystery Solved AGAIN!
It’s fun to ponder those unsolved mysteries of nature we’ve all heard about from childhood onward. Last March I blogged that one of those “nature’s unsolved mysteries” was unsolved no more – Namibia’s “fairy circles.” Of course, depending on where you grew up, this may be the first time you’ve ever heard of them. The…
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My Destination’s “Biggest Baddest Bucket List” and Namibia
Here’s a great idea for a video contest: make a 3 minute video about a favorite destination, write a few hundred words about travel, and send three photos. What can you win? a six-month, all-expense-paid trip around the world, and fifty grand in cash when it’s all over (presumably to make up for lost salary?)…
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Namibia’s Dwindling Historical Archives
At 23 years and 8 days old, Namibia is starting to face the very real possibility that its historical archives – the artifacts and memories documenting the country’s long fight to achieve nationhood and defeat apartheid – may be lost forever. Most of Namibia’s original revolutionaries are now in their 70s, and when you search…
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MySpace Resurrected, Photoshop to Close
I know, right? MySpace is back. I just got my invitation to join the new MySpace and decided to go and check it out. Based on what I’ve seen so far, I’m not too optimistic – though the younger crowd that’s into music and music vids may appreciate it. I’m hopeful it will be a…
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Female Entrepreneur Launches Indiegogo Crowdfunding Campaign for Township Bicycle Touring Company
Here in Namibia, where income disparity is one of the highest in the world (THE highest, depending on whose figures you use) and unemployment hovers around 34 percent, small entrepreneurs in both the formal and informal sector are likely to be the biggest drivers of Namibia’s economy in the near future. This is something young…
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Vintage Camera: Agfa Billy Compur
The latest addition to my small but growing vintage camera collection arrived recently. It’s an Agfa Billy Compur judging from the name imprinted on the leather surrounding the case, and it was manufactured sometime between 1934 and 1942. It’s a pretty slick little camera, but unfortunately a manual is pretty hard to come by on…
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More Photos from a 60-year-old Camera: Relearning Analog Photography
The second roll of film from our vintage 1952-ish Agfa Billy came out much better than the previous roll. Digital cameras have been around long enough now that we’ve forgotten the lost art of taking analog photos. Note to self: no place to attach “flash cubes”? then maximize the amount of natural light for the…
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First Results, Agfa Billy I Vintage Camera
It took weeks, but we finally got back our first eight photos from the Agfa Billy 1 (mfr: 1952) we were testing for functionality (see previous blog post). The good news is that the camera works! Mostly. We know that photos have to be taken within 6 meters, because the lens, which rotates to achieve…
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Tone Mapping in the Namibian Desert
I’ve read a number of explanations of tone mapping, but I confess I still don’t understand what’s going on. I know it’s a way to manipulate a digital image so that what you see in the image better approximates what you remember having seen in real life – rather than the disappointing result you usually…
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Getting that “Wild West” feel – “down under” in Namibia
Just outside the vast “dune sea” of the Namib Naukluft Park is the last place you can get gas, before you venture into the coppery-red dunes of Sossusvlei, a dry but harsh landscape where only the most well-adapted creatures can survive. The place consists of the Solitaire Lodge, a small coffee shop and gas station,…
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AFN Commercial: Proud to Serve Again
Here’s another fun “commercial” from the Armed Forces Network, or AFN. In this video, former military are encouraged to take up a job teaching. While this is an admirable profession and I certainly would never suggest otherwise, whenever you’re trying to convince someone to do something, it’s good to portray that in as positive a…
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Video for a Good Cause
One of the things I’ve had the opportunity to do in Namibia is to make short videos highlighting important causes, or to show far-away donors where their money is going. A little more than half a year ago, my wife told me that she had been to an informal settlement (a “shantytown”, literally) where people…
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The Korean Air Force Releases Les Miserables Parody Video
Following a long tradition of military folks getting involved in musical YouTube shenanigans, the (South) Korean Air Force has released a hilarious parody of Les Miserables they call “Les Militaribles.” After only a week, the video has picked up an amazing 3 million views as it makes the rounds on Facebook. For Koreans to put…
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Namibian Nights: The Best Timelapse Ever
I’ve looked at a lot of timelapses, and after a certain number of them you just start to want to fast forward through them because they’re spectacular and all, but after awhile everything just sort of starts to look the same. This one, however, is different. Not only because I’ve tried to take photos in…
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Sunsets: Tonemapping vs Importing from RAW
I’ve been playing around with tonemapping software – Photomatix – which can both be used to create HDR photos from bracketed JPEGs, and an HDR photo from a single RAW file. These are some photos I took of the same sunset (varying zoom levels), and I tonemapped some and just did a regular RAW-to-PNG conversion…
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Joining the Lomography Bandwagon: Agfa Billy
A few years ago, I picked up a vintage camera in really good shape at a flea market in Europe. I think it cost like 30 bucks and I picked it from a tale with at least a dozen other vintage cameras. And it has sat on a shelf with one of those boxy old…
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Documentary: Child Labor in Afghanistan
I wish I could say I had made this documentary on child labor in Afghanistan. This is a story that needs to be told; the circumstances in Afghanistan have led many, many children to lose any real childhood whatsoever. The filmmakers, who work for an Afghan television station, would not have had to look hard…
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Afghanistan, Then and Now
The Denver Post has just posted a wonderful collection of photos of Afghanistan from the 1960s which paints a world that was remarkably different than it is today. Taken by William Podlich, a professor from Arizona State University who took a break to teach in Afghanistan, the photos serve as a reminder of an Afghanistan…
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Make an HDR Photo from a Single Exposure
Yesterday I talked about HDR photography, and how you can combine multiple exposure photos of the same scene with software to ensure all the different parts of the scene are exposed the right amount. What I didn’t mention is that you can also use the Photomatix software to create an HDR photo using “tonemapping” from…
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HDR Photography: First Attempts
I’m sure everyone else has heard of “high dynamic range” or HDR photography, but for me, it’s “The Latest Thing” I’ve discovered. You know how you sometimes come across this amazing scene with lights and darks and bright colors, and you snap a photo to preserve it exactly as you saw it, and then you…
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Armed Forces Network: and now, a word from our sponsors…
I’m not one to complain about the Armed Forces Network – AFN has been a part of my life since the early 1970s, when we were living in Germany and it would basically play during prime time until around midnight, when they would end with the national anthem before going off air. Now there are…