Richard Stupart

Today is day ten of fourteen production days at the National Arts Festival here in Grahamstown. Having drunk enough instant coffee to give my stomach a callous, I brought a bodum into the newsroom with me this morning. Mmmmm. Real coffee.  The days are spent busily climbing through every market stall, theatre, coffee shop and street for photographs. The evenings are spent catching up on the parts of my life which are not strictly arts or Arts festival related. Which is a polite way of saying “Dear god, I have been busy these last days”. Out of the chaos, however, are a few more images. And a promise of a story as soon as I have properly slept.

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Played by Bevan Cullinan, Gary the Tooth Fairy is a comedy play on at Festival in which Gary discusses life as a tooth fairy in modern South Africa. What was meant to be a simple photo shoot for an interview turned into an hour of running up and down the garden outside the Journalism building. Fairies are fickle creatures to tie down for an interview, you see.

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7am. In the Grahamstown rubbish dump, stilt-walker Richard Antrobus picks his way through old tyres, broken plastic and mud the colour of offal. Of all the places I thought I would find myself on a Saturday morning – in my entire life – this is quite possibly the very last. Richard is being trailed by a team of three Rhodes University TV students who are filming his antics in the dump as part of a series of twenty four one -minute documentaries on Grahamstown behind the scenes of the National Arts Festival.

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There is much that I have come to remember that I missed about university. Like learning – that feeling as though you are actually becoming smarter with each article read. Or that feeling of checking books out of the library  as though you were becoming wiser for the exercise. Like the  conversations that draw late into the night on the strings of ideas of the world as it could be. I’ve also come to remember exams – that periodic test of otherwise unshakable self-belief.

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For an extended overland trip in Africa, particularly one made without the (relative) luxury of a 4×4, there is the inevitable question of what gear to take. While there remain a fair swarm of decisions still to be made about everything from a tent to a first aid kit, I have largely made my mind up about the key gear I intend to take to fulfill two of the most creative activities on the journey. Taking photographs to reflect the story of the journey to Cairo – and weaving together the words to bring out the rest. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been spending a fair amount of time recently trying to get better at HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography. Scientifically speaking, it’s where you take multiple exposures of a scene,  to make sure that you can expose correctly for the bright bits (sunlight, car lights, fire, neon lights at a strip mall) and the dark bits (shade, dark alleys and so on) and then combine them into one image spanning a full range of detail with no blown out highlights or black underexposed bits.  For those not prone to scientifically speaking, think of it as filling your camera with reality-affecting drugs and taking the photos that result.

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This coming week sees me in Grahamstown, working from decidedly more interesting and restful surroundings than the usual rush of stress and dirty air that characterises Johannesburg. Or at least the parts of it that exist when I am in my car. Which in Joburg is far too much of the overall experience. The onset of an expected (by everyone except me) cold front has made for some beautiful skies and clear days, perfect to try and get some photographs of the more interesting buildings and scenery here. Something which, thanks to some excellent advice from Dan and a pant wettingly-large hole being shot in my savings, is now possible with a spanking new camera.

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