The West comes to the South

Over the last few years I’ve been commissioned to photograph the construction of a massive chemical project in the USA. My shoots have been planned and facilitated by my good buddy Randy, a safety specialist at the existing plant, and an all round great guy.

A few weeks ago Randy advised me of a package arriving for me care of a colleague who was flying to South Africa.
I’ve just picked up the package and to my great delight, it’s a pair of - wait for it......... cowboy safety boots!

On my last shoot I had noticed a few of the construction workers wearing these outrageous cowboy style safety boots and decided I gotta get me some of them. They are fully compliant, steel toecapped, chemical and electrical resistant and all the rest. Unfortunately, being loaded down with masses of gear as always, I just couldn’t buy a pair to bring home with me.

As an industrial photographer, one our most important pieces of equipment, after the cameras I guess, is a really comfortable pair of safety boots.

Well, I pulled these on as soon as I got back to the studio. Unlike most safety boots they are immediately comfortable and I am beyond delighted with them. Thanks Randy, what an amazing gift!

I haven’t taken them off yet and have been thinking that if, as they say in the old Westerns, a man gotta die with his boots on, I guess I should die in these!

Actually, I'm going to test these out to see if they're comfortable enough for me to sleep with them on.

The dilemma now is that as they are such great boots, can I see my way clear to actually using them on site? You can see the state of my old boots and I’m worrying about how much it would hurt to mess up the new ones.

The flip side of that coin is that they would probably just get more awesome with some mileage, dirt and wear on them.

Life’s full of tough decisions……….

Bryan Brown joins the business

Bryan Brown has, after much deliberation between continuing his studies in Psychology and Genetics and starting a career in the media industry, has decided to go for the latter.

So far he has obtained a drone pilots licence, organized and initiated all the considerable applications and requirements for their operation and spent much time training with me on stills photography and doing research and training in the many skills needed for motion picture work.

Over the last few years Bryan has been stepping in as assistant on various of my shoots, in between studies etc. and has been trying to decide whether to follow in my footsteps with photography and imaging as a career.

This is now an ongoing effort which is driving towards Planet KB adding video to it’s services offered. So far we have acquired various equipment and, more importantly, knowledge and we are finding out that there is an enormous amount still to be learned. In reality the learning in this business, be it stills or video, is a process that never ends.

I have always been exclusively in the stills photography field and that will remain the main drive of the business, especially for me, but more and more these days we are being asked if we can produce video.

It’s always been my strong conviction, and it still is, that the two disciplines shouldn’t be mixed by one person on one shoot. The requirements are so very different that if the photographer does not put all of their energy into one or the other, the inevitable result will be a compromise in the stills, or the video. Or both.

With this in mind, we have decided that with Bryan joining us, there is a good opportunity for us to venture into video work without compromising our existing skills. In short, let’s do this thing properly!

I have to say, it is giving me a lot of satisfaction to be able to pass on some of my many years of experience to my son. But make no mistake, Bryan is enthusiastically finding his own way through all the skills, and in the process I’m learning a lot from him too.

Energy Drinks for Safety

We sometimes go through quite a lot of energy drinks and my view on it is that it is a positive thing in terms of safety.  Basically, when you’re out on an industrial or mining photography assignment, it often involves working from before sunrise to well after sunset, with probably a hard day of surface or underground photography taking place in adverse conditions between the two.  These can have factors like extreme heat and humidity combined with hand hauling heavy equipment over long distances as well as up and down many flights of stairs or ladders.

This is all great - it’s free gym and keeps us fit without us having the choice of skipping it when we’re tired.  However, a little assistance from energy drinks helps to get us safely home after such a day.  Often the danger is compounded by the fact that the mine or plant in question is most likely to be quite remote, leaving us driving through the dark on potholed "B" roads.

I’m not generally in favour of artificial stimulants, but if it’s a choice between falling asleep at the wheel and getting home safely – better we grab the bull and get some wings. 

We try and stay off the stuff as much as possible reasoning that you probably develop a tolerance of some sort to it and then , when you need it most, it may not be as effective.

I’ve found over the years than Monster (green’s the favorite) is great for a mild pick-me-up but when the chips are down and your life may depend on staying sharp, I haven’t found anything better than the original Red Bull.

Traveling through Southern Africa by Road

The photography we do requires us to do a great deal of travel by road.  Many locations are better accessed by road, especially with the large equipment load we need on mining and industrial photo shoots.

We often choose to drive even seven or eight hour trips rather than fly to save the hassle of transporting gear by air then transferring to hire cars.  It’s always nice to simply load up the truck with everything we think we may need rather than scrimping and cutting back on gear with flight restrictions in mind.

One of the things I love about this is that we get to see many places that we would otherwise never get to see.  Needing to get to a remote destination often takes you through places that most people, especially tourists, would never dream of bothering to travel to.   This all works out wonderfully in line with my travel preferences.  Whenever I travel on vacation, I deliberately avoid all the tourist sights.  It’s a feeling that I don’t want to see what’s put on show, I rather want to see the places that most others never get to.  A lot of our locations are in areas that are very far off the beaten track and don’t have definite destinations that would cause anyone to go there unless they have business there, or at least a definite purpose.

I’m not saying everyone should visit these sort of places but I do think if gives a wonderful insight into how real people live their lives beyond the cities and the tourist traps.

There is also great beauty out there that never gets seen by others and in a selfish way I feel I get to claim these experiences as my own.