Over the last few weeks I’ve been scanning in old film negs… a fun reminisce for me, relationally and photographically. I started with a Pentax point & shoot and Costco bulk film. Then along came my first SLR, a Canon Elan II. Soon after I started shooting on professional film (Fuji NPC) and using a better lab. Can you spot which is which, and where things changed? Have a look: “2002: First Shots“
I’m finally getting around to scanning the pile of negs & slides sitting beside my desk. (I’ve been wanting to do this since… well, for-freakin-ever.) Some of this stuff goes waaaaay back, before I even considered myself a photographer. It’s fun to look through… see where I’ve come from, where my visual side got its start.
Bulembu went from a sleepy hollow of Swazi homesteads to a major mining operation – producing one-third of Swaziland’s GDP – to a near-ghost town in the space of several decades. Now it’s in the midst of another transformation. To tell the story, I’ve put together a photo essay from my recent assignment: “The Bulembu Story” (There are a few dozen photos, so it may take a minute or two to load).
My recent assignment in Swaziland was a 2009 calendar on Bulembu. The concept was to photograph people involved in transformation, telling their story in a single frame. I approached this primarily through wide-angle portraits of the characters in context, attempting to include hints of past, present, and future as much as possible. I made extensive use of my new lighting rig to control tone and contrast.
Click the image to view a few selects from my portraits in Bulembu.
N.B. I’ll be posting a photo essay about the town after I get back from some R&R on the mountain this weekend.
63 hours in transit coming home is enough to make me never want to fly again… OK maybe not :) This trip set my new record: 14 flights, including two aerial photography helicopters and six long-haul legs.
I’m so very glad to be back on firm soil in the cold Vancouver air. (Just in time to travel a bit more up to Silverstar :)
I took this photo a few nights ago, waiting for dinner out on the lodge porch. The clouds were billowing over a nearby hillside. When the crescent moon began to peek over the horizon, I grabbed my camera, tripod and telephoto and snapped this long exposure. I’ve created it as a wallpaper for you to enjoy (right-click to save): Bulembu Moonrise Wallpaper
7 days, 4000 photos, 8 more flights and many interesting stories later, I’m headed back to Vancouver. I think I’d call the trip to Bulembu, Swaziland a photographic success. I feel like I was able to get to know the story and the people, and capture them well.
The photographs are destined primarily for a calendar, which is a unique challenge. I was trying to capture multiple layers in each shot: the images need to be beautiful and truthful, and they need to be something people will hang on their wall. Bulembu is a broken community in the midst of redefining itself. There is extensive history as well as big ambitions for the future, with a lot of problems to overcome. The challenge is for each image to tell all that while being something you can look at for a month.
I’ve posted a wallpaper of one shot that I like. I’ve also got two galleries ready to go… at the moment I’m in Nairobi, where the bandwidth is minimal. I’ll upload them when I’m back in Vancouver.
Just two more long flights, and then a little R&R before diving into the todos that have been piling up for six weeks…
Edison Chirwa emigrated from Malawi looking for work in 1949. He started working for the mine a few days later. He’s lived here with Leah ever since…
Just a few minutes to make a quick post… Kelly and I have arrived safely into Bulembu. I’ve been busy shooting since then… we’re now about to begin photography day 3. This place presents some unique photographic challenges – the usual transport and scheduling issues, the spread out nature of the town, and the high grade of image required for a calendar.
I’ll post more as I can, and perhaps a gallery of images shot so far. (Internet is faster here, but only available during the day when I’m working.) For now here’s a photo from the night we arrived.
Photographed these hills the night we arrived into Bulembu… what a beautiful setting for a town.
