Painting in mountains where once dinosaur walked

Facts courtesy of KZN Wildlife Rhino Club

The Drakensberg Mountains, meaning “Dragon’s Mountain” in Afrikaans and called uKhahlamba, “barrier of spears” in isiZulu, are the highest mountains in Southern Africa, rising up to 3,482 m (11,422 ft) in height. Geologically, they are formed from basalt and sandstone resulting in a combination of steep-sided blocks and pinnacles. The sandstone layer was deposited as the remnants of a gigantic sea that occupied much of what is now Southern Africa some 500 Million years ago. The Basaltic layer which overlies this was deposited about 220 Million years ago in what many geologists think was the largest volcanic eruption in the history of the world linked with the splitting of the tectonic plates of Africa and South America.

In these mountains we often find fossilised sea shells and wonder how they could be here when we are so far above the sea. Even more curious are dinosaur footprints on the roof of a cave at Giant`s Castle! These footprints were left in the silt of the ancient sea. The Drakensberg is one of only two mountain ranges (along with the Simian Mountains of Ethiopia) to have been formed in this geological way, which accounts for its extraordinarily distinctive formations and colours. The landscape is dominated by extremely steep cliffs, some of them amongst the most impressive cliff faces on earth, such as the Amphitheatre Caves and overhangs are frequent in the more easily eroded sandstone It is here in the caves and on rock faces that the ‘First People’, the San Bushmen, lived and where they painted their view of life in these mountains.

You can come with me to see these extraordinary paintings and paint a few of your own in this amazing part of the world, while enjoying a South African Painting Holiday

Photographic help from David Peterson

Today some photographic help from David Peterson

David discusses exactly how to use his technique in lesson 2 of his free Image Editing Secrets course. He has a tutorial for Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop Pro and the free Google Picassa.

Have you had a problem when shooting scenes with both inside and outside subjects.

Either everything inside is dark in the resulting photo, or everything outside is too bright. When a photo has a high dynamic range. That is, they have bright sunlight and dark shadows. It is impossible with current technology to have both parts of the photo correctly exposed.
While you can’t eliminate the problem entirely, there are a couple of choices you can make to minimze the problem.

Recompose The Photo

This is probably the simplest solution. Take a photo of a scene with very bright and very dark parts, move your camera to eliminate one of the extremes ie either close curtains for the shot, or take the photo from the window looking inside.

Use Exposure Lock

If you can’t recompose the photograph, instead tell the camera what part of the image you would like to see. The rest of the photo will be either over or under exposed (too bright or too dark) but at least you will see your subject. You can do this by placing the center of the image at your subject; half depressing the shutter to lock the focus and exposure; move the camera to re-compose the image; and fully depress the shutter.

Some cameras have an option called ’spot metering’ to set the part of the image you’d like to be correctly exposed. If your camera has this setting, enable it before using the technique above.

Use Fill In Flash

If your scene has a sunny background, but your subject is in the shade (or has a hat on), turn on the flash. I know it seems wrong but it really does work! By using the flash, your subject will look as bright as the background.

Use a Filter

If your scene is of a bright sky and a dark ground (for instance at sunset, or on a cloudy day), you can use a graduated neutral density filter. This filter cuts out some of the light from one part of the photo (the sky). This will correctly expose the ground and the sky. These filters can be complex to setup, so I don’t usually recommend them for beginners.

Fix The Original Photo in an Image Editing Program

Finally, if you can’t take another shot at the same location, you can fix the original image by changing the levels using a paint program. This works best when your subject is darker than the rest of the photo (because cameras lose detail in over-bright areas). The darker the subject, the harder time you will have fixing the image.”

MY PAINTING TIP FOR TODAY

Techniques are useful tools to learn but your style will become apparent as soon as you understand that you need to produce not the likeness of a scene or object, but an account of how you as an artist, relate to it
Thanks to Bob Brandt, issue: A&I March 2006

P.S. Accept our warm invitation to join me on a painting holiday I promise you will remember – forever!
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Frogs in my garden

On the 2nd of February it was World Wetlands Day which commemorates the signing of the RAMSAR Convention, an international agreement on wetland protection.

As we have a lovely couple of days painting in iSimangaliso Wetlands Park it’s a good time to reflect on the wet world of our froggy friends and their cheerful cacophony and the enormous good they do in controlling insect pests.

They are apparently some of the most sensitive indicators of environmental damage and any chemicals or pesticides in their habitats have a devastating impact on frog populations.

There was a time a few years ago, when the whistles, chirps or croaks of frogs were rarely heard in the suburbs, even though many gardens had pools or water features. But, that certainly isn’t the case today. Our rather strange weather, wetter than normal, has proved a sheer delight to the frog populations in my suburb and on warm and wet nights they are regaling us with very loud frog serenades.

I hopefully presume that this is a good indication that the message is getting through to Joe Public to use substances that are environmentally friendly.