The Mass PhotoShoot

More details as promised.

The Mass PhotoShoot is a little promotional event whereby any members of the public could get the chance to have a mini shoot done by me.

Details/Questions/Answers:

Date to Enter-> Between the June 22nd and July 11th (note that the sooner you enter the better chance you stand of being selected and the better timeslot you will be given)

When will the shoot take place-> Saturday 17th July 2010

The Location-> Suncoast Beach, Durban

How long will the shoot be-> No more than a 20 minute shoot

What should you wear if selected-> You may wear whatever you want to. Swimwear/Formal/Casual - there is no theme. Wear whatever youd like to be photographed in.

What do you get if selected-> a 20 minute mini shoot with me and 5 edited pictures on a CD at high resolution.

When will you receive your 5 Edited Pictures on a CD-> Edits will be done in approx 3/4 weeks and all participants will receive an sms with details. Collection point will be suncoast again.

Why am I doing this-> I have taken a break from scheduled photoshoots during the Fifa World Cup, I see this as a good way to get back into things.

Ways to enter-> Email: info@leefolkard.com ::: MMS: +27824958613 ::: via Facebook

Details I require-> 2 Photographs (one close up and one full length) ::: Your Full Name ::: Age ::: Cell Number

When will you know if you have been selected-> At latest you will receive a call on the 12th July 2010 informing you of your acceptance. If you do not receive a call by the 12th July you unfortunately did not make the shoot.

For those that get a call back-> If selected you will get a call confirming your entry into the Mass PhotoShoot and your timeslot. Now all you have to do is show up on the 17th July at your required time.

If anyone has any other questions, do not hesitate to ask me.
Email: info@leefolkard.com
Call: +27824958613

This event is being hosted by my Project 365 Group (http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/group.php?gid=282716443458) via facebook.

This is the link-> http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/event.php?eid=136703879679714

Newsletter Complete

South Africa bow out of the World Cup, ending with a good 2-1 win over France.
Well done guys - You may not have made it to the next round but you certainly had a nation - for the most part - united behind you.
I will now move my support from my soccer team to supporting my country - who I must say are doing an amazing job at hosting this great spectacle.

On to the next major news story - even though I doubt it will make the newspaper - My newsletter is complete and I have started sending it out via email.
Hope those who have received it have enjoyed the content.
For those of you who do not have it as yet - just get me your email address.

The newsletter will be another way of communicating to you and will from time to time give you some good photography advice and who knows what else?

The main feature of this first issue is "The Mass PhotoShoot"
More details on this to follow.

World Cup Season

What a world cup this has been thus far.
Some unpredictable results have been playing out. I love it when the underdog triumphs.
Who's your money on?

Anyways, with the start of the Fifa World Cup in my country, South Africa - i have taken a mini-hiatus and will only be booking shoots for dates after this illustrious event concludes on the 11th July 2010.
Of course I am still snapping away all the time. And my Project 365 continues each day.
Today being Day 141.

The newsletter is progressing and am hoping to get that out soon. Watch this Space.

My 1st Game

13th June 2010

My first World Cup game that I attended. Germany vs Australia.
Had my German colours on and was ready to support!
Germany did not let their fans down - 4 goals. So far the most goals in a game during World Cup 2010.

I was under the impression with Fifa's ultra strict policy that my DSLR camera would not be allowed in - so I dusted off the sony cybershot which has not seen action in about 2 years and snapped a few pictures of my memorable and unforgetable day.
I am thinking for my next match though - I will be taking in my DSLR as they did not seem to worry much about cameras.

The atmosphere inside the Moses Mabhida Stadium was amazing, the actual stadium is truly beautiful and aesthetically pleasing.

Sharing a day like this is made more special in that it was shared with people I value in my life.

World Cup 2010 South Africa Kicks Off

It is Here,

The years have passed by and World Cup 2010, South Africa is upon us.
Kicking off on June 11th with the opening ceremony and the first game(South Africa vs Mexico)at Soccer City Stadium in Johannesburg.

Armed with my camera I went off to the Fan Park here in Durban to soak up the atmosphere and take some shots.

The city was abuzz. I have never felt or seen anything like it in my life. One country all behind one event - one spectacle. Of course this is not just an every day spectacle. This is the World Cup.

The 2010 FIFA World Cup is the 19th World Cup, the premier international association football tournament. The final is forecast to be among the most-watched events ever.

At the fan park the vibe was amazing. The feel of the people all bonding. People from different cultures and different backgrounds. Locals amongst foreigners. All interacting in harmony with passion and pride.

I see now why our slogan for this World Cup 2010 is “Ke Nako”. “Celebrate Africa’s Humanity”. "Ke Nako" translates to "It's Time" - thus the basic message in this is; now is the time for Africa to show the world its humanity and reposition itself in the eyes of others - starting here in South Africa.

This is so much more than soccer to South Africa and I am honoured to be a part of this country. I will remember June 11th 2010 forever.

Enjoy the few pictures I have from the day.
June 11th 2010.

I am an African

"I am an African.

I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land.

My body has frozen in our frosts and in our latter day snows. It has thawed in the warmth of our sunshine and melted in the heat of the midday sun. The crack and the rumble of the summer thunders, lashed by startling lightening, have been a cause both of trembling and of hope.

The fragrances of nature have been as pleasant to us as the sight of the wild blooms of the citizens of the veld.

The dramatic shapes of the Drakensberg, the soil-coloured waters of the Lekoa, iGqili noThukela, and the sands of the Kgalagadi, have all been panels of the set on the natural stage on which we act out the foolish deeds of the theatre of our day.

At times, and in fear, I have wondered whether I should concede equal citizenship of our country to the leopard and the lion, the elephant and the springbok, the hyena, the black mamba and the pestilential mosquito.

A human presence among all these, a feature on the face of our native land thus defined, I know that none dare challenge me when I say - I am an African!

I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the great expanses of the beautiful Cape - they who fell victim to the most merciless genocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the first to lose their lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and dependence and they who, as a people, perished in the result.

Today, as a country, we keep an audible silence about these ancestors of the generations that live, fearful to admit the horror of a former deed, seeking to obliterate from our memories a cruel occurrence which, in its remembering, should teach us not and never to be inhuman again.

I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native land. Whatever their own actions, they remain still, part of me.

In my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East. Their proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture a part of my essence. The stripes they bore on their bodies from the lash of the slave master are a reminder embossed on my consciousness of what should not be done.

I am the grandchild of the warrior men and women that Hintsa and Sekhukhune led, the patriots that Cetshwayo and Mphephu took to battle, the soldiers Moshoeshoe and Ngungunyane taught never to dishonour the cause of freedom.

My mind and my knowledge of myself is formed by the victories that are the jewels in our African crown, the victories we earned from Isandhlwana to Khartoum, as Ethiopians and as the Ashanti of Ghana, as the Berbers of the desert.

I am the grandchild who lays fresh flowers on the Boer graves at St Helena and the Bahamas, who sees in the mind's eye and suffers the suffering of a simple peasant folk, death, concentration camps, destroyed homesteads, a dream in ruins.

I am the child of Nongqause. I am he who made it possible to trade in the world markets in diamonds, in gold, in the same food for which my stomach yearns.

I come of those who were transported from India and China, whose being resided in the fact, solely, that they were able to provide physical labour, who taught me that we could both be at home and be foreign, who taught me that human existence itself demanded that freedom was a necessary condition for that human existence.

Being part of all these people, and in the knowledge that none dare contest that assertion, I shall claim that - I am an African.

I have seen our country torn asunder as these, all of whom are my people, engaged one another in a titanic battle, the one redress a wrong that had been caused by one to another and the other, to defend the indefensible.

I have seen what happens when one person has superiority of force over another, when the stronger appropriate to themselves the prerogative even to annul the injunction that God created all men and women in His image.

I know what if signifies when race and colour are used to determine who is human and who, sub-human.

I have seen the destruction of all sense of self-esteem, the consequent striving to be what one is not, simply to acquire some of the benefits which those who had improved themselves as masters had ensured that they enjoy.

I have experience of the situation in which race and colour is used to enrich some and impoverish the rest.

I have seen the corruption of minds and souls in the pursuit of an ignoble effort to perpetrate a veritable crime against humanity.

I have seen concrete expression of the denial of the dignity of a human being emanating from the conscious, systemic and systematic oppressive and repressive activities of other human beings.

There the victims parade with no mask to hide the brutish reality - the beggars, the prostitutes, the street children, those who seek solace in substance abuse, those who have to steal to assuage hunger, those who have to lose their sanity because to be sane is to invite pain.

Perhaps the worst among these, who are my people, are those who have learnt to kill for a wage. To these the extent of death is directly proportional to their personal welfare.

And so, like pawns in the service of demented souls, they kill in furtherance of the political violence in KwaZulu-Natal. They murder the innocent in the taxi wars.

They kill slowly or quickly in order to make profits from the illegal trade in narcotics. They are available for hire when husband wants to murder wife and wife, husband.

Among us prowl the products of our immoral and amoral past - killers who have no sense of the worth of human life, rapists who have absolute disdain for the women of our country, animals who would seek to benefit from the vulnerability of the children, the disabled and the old, the rapacious who brook no obstacle in their quest for self-enrichment.

All this I know and know to be true because I am an African!

Because of that, I am also able to state this fundamental truth that I am born of a people who are heroes and heroines.

I am born of a people who would not tolerate oppression.

I am of a nation that would not allow that fear of death, torture, imprisonment, exile or persecution should result in the perpetuation of injustice.

The great masses who are our mother and father will not permit that the behaviour of the few results in the description of our country and people as barbaric.

Patient because history is on their side, these masses do not despair because today the weather is bad. Nor do they turn triumphalist when, tomorrow, the sun shines.

Whatever the circumstances they have lived through and because of that experience, they are determined to define for themselves who they are and who they should be.

We are assembled here today to mark their victory in acquiring and exercising their right to formulate their own definition of what it means to be African.

The constitution whose adoption we celebrate constitutes and unequivocal statement that we refuse to accept that our Africanness shall be defined by our race, colour, gender of historical origins.

It is a firm assertion made by ourselves that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white.

It gives concrete expression to the sentiment we share as Africans, and will defend to the death, that the people shall govern.

It recognises the fact that the dignity of the individual is both an objective which society must pursue, and is a goal which cannot be separated from the material well-being of that individual.

It seeks to create the situation in which all our people shall be free from fear, including the fear of the oppression of one national group by another, the fear of the disempowerment of one social echelon by another, the fear of the use of state power to deny anybody their fundamental human rights and the fear of tyranny.

It aims to open the doors so that those who were disadvantaged can assume their place in society as equals with their fellow human beings without regard to colour, race, gender, age or geographic dispersal.

It provides the opportunity to enable each one and all to state their views, promote them, strive for their implementation in the process of governance without fear that a contrary view will be met with repression.

It creates a law-governed society which shall be inimical to arbitrary rule.

It enables the resolution of conflicts by peaceful means rather than resort to force.

It rejoices in the diversity of our people and creates the space for all of us voluntarily to define ourselves as one people.

As an African, this is an achievement of which I am proud, proud without reservation and proud without any feeling of conceit.

Our sense of elevation at this moment also derives from the fact that this magnificent product is the unique creation of African hands and African minds.

Bit it is also constitutes a tribute to our loss of vanity that we could, despite the temptation to treat ourselves as an exceptional fragment of humanity, draw on the accumulated experience and wisdom of all humankind, to define for ourselves what we want to be.

Together with the best in the world, we too are prone to pettiness, petulance, selfishness and short-sightedness.

But it seems to have happened that we looked at ourselves and said the time had come that we make a super-human effort to be other than human, to respond to the call to create for ourselves a glorious future, to remind ourselves of the Latin saying: Gloria est consequenda - Glory must be sought after!

Today it feels good to be an African.

It feels good that I can stand here as a South African and as a foot soldier of a titanic African army, the African National Congress, to say to all the parties represented here, to the millions who made an input into the processes we are concluding, to our outstanding compatriots who have presided over the birth of our founding document, to the negotiators who pitted their wits one against the other, to the unseen stars who shone unseen as the management and administration of the Constitutional Assembly, the advisers, experts and publicists, to the mass communication media, to our friends across the globe - congratulations and well done!

I am an African.

I am born of the peoples of the continent of Africa.

The pain of the violent conflict that the peoples of Liberia, Somalia, the Sudan, Burundi and Algeria is a pain I also bear.

The dismal shame of poverty, suffering and human degradation of my continent is a blight that we share.

The blight on our happiness that derives from this and from our drift to the periphery of the ordering of human affairs leaves us in a persistent shadow of despair.

This is a savage road to which nobody should be condemned.

This thing that we have done today, in this small corner of a great continent that has contributed so decisively to the evolution of humanity says that Africa reaffirms that she is continuing her rise from the ashes.

Whatever the setbacks of the moment, nothing can stop us now!
Whatever the difficulties, Africa shall be at peace!
However improbable it may sound to the sceptics, Africa will prosper!

Whoever we may be, whatever our immediate interest, however much we carry baggage from our past, however much we have been caught by the fashion of cynicism and loss of faith in the capacity of the people, let us err today and say - nothing can stop us now!"



- Former President, Thabo Mbeki

The 'Right' Price

"Finding the right price points for selling photography or bidding on an assignment is the Holy Grail of the photography business.

What do you charge for licensing an image for an ad in a magazine, a billboard, or for a local merchant's Web site?

What about pricing a photo shoot of a parade for one of the corporate sponsors?

How about a wedding?

No matter what the product or the service, pricing is the most daunting problem facing all photographers in their first years, and it seems there is no sure-fire method to finding what works.

The natural thing to do is research price charts or guidelines, but as the industry has evolved and competition has grown, such data points are no longer reliable.

What's more, it's not that simple.

Even veteran professionals get frustrated by the volatility in pricing, not just among different clients, but in the way the same product can vary dramatically from one case to the next."

For the last few weeks I have been trying to restructure my pricing guide.
Such a daunting task. But I am wanting to break away from the normal pricing system and give you, my potential client, more choice and more options.

I have a good idea of how I am going to do it - I just need to put it to paper.

Moments

"Some moments are just to good to be missed.
They make you smile whenever you remember them, and if you've captured them, it's always worth the revisit."