Yesterday I photographed a beauty salon: Perfect Nails. Very interesting: beautiful place, you can't go wrong in such an interior. It ws together with Penny Orsmond of Notion Creations doing the styling. We have done quite a bit of work together, so we know each others work very well. That helps things go quick and smoothly.
Perfect Nails has a coffee bar at the entrance (good cappuccino I can testify!) and all rooms are styled by the owner Leigh, who did a great job.
 Left: Penny working on the photo of the sauna.

Back in good old Blantyre. The bus had a little delay yesterday, otherwise the trip was good. Now catching up with the regular work, and up for the holidays!

Right now I am back in Lusaka, after three days in Nothern Zambia to photograph large scale agriculture. That was two flights in small aircraft from Lusaka. Centre pivots for irrigation, coffee planting, tractors, that type of work. Interesting. Tomorrow I'll fly back to Malawi.

Wednesday and Friday I made photos for the calendar of the NBS Bank. Thursday the opening of a Cashbuild Store. This is a South African company providing construction materials. They are serious about corporate resposibility: they donated construction materials to seven schools, and organised an arts and performance competition. The performances were done at the opening of the store in Limbe. Very nice!

 A while ago I made advertising photos for a campaign by Alternative Marketing for Old Mutual Insurances. They have begun to appear on billboards and newspaper ads. Nice to see my work used that way!

Joke and me went to the second hand bookstore. New books are expensive here, and we are not rich. Second hand books are fun. And what did I find? Dream Street, about the Pittsburg project, the masterpiece of W Eugene Smith, the great photographer who pioneered the photo essay. What a treasure!
Check this:
http://www.ralphmag.org/DY/smith-photographer.html
http://masters-of-photography.com/S/smith/smith_articles3.html

Thursday I got back home after a few days of work for PACT in Nkhotakota. Peer education, clinical services, about HIV/AIDS. Interesting, and this type of work really gets me going. I do something I enjoy, and I am contributing to the improvement of the country.

We're in the field now. which is great. It is wonderful to document the things that matter. In this case: HIV testing and counseling.
We did this in Nkhotakota earlier today, now we are in Dwangwa, where tomorrow we will photograph the field work with plantation workers and fishermen, and clinical work in several places. I will keep you updated.

I did get the brief for the photos I am going to make next week. Very nice! It is via Africa Interactive. I'll be photographing PACT projects. It is about capacity building, and HIV/Aids projects. I love field work, and I am looking forward to this assignment. I will keep all of you updated!
I have worked with Africa Interactive before; then it was photos of a technical college.
On another note: I am getting active on Flickr again. Check out my photos there:
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/arjenvdm/

Yesterday I taught again at the Polytechnic. As always it is fun and the class is interested as well as interesting. A slight drawback was that we still have no electricity at Chichiri Campus. That means I cannot project any photos. Now how do you teach depth of field and selective focus without showing photos? I decided to throw in the time and let the students handle the cameras themselves. The cameras students have themselves are usually point and shoot, so they can not do much in this area. But we do have two Sony A300 cameras. (Thank you Sony, for the donation!). Some students did it just like that without any experience, others needed a bit more time. But we got it done. See the student photo above, showing selective focus with me out of focus.
Tomorrow there's another lesson. I just hope for electricity.

Yesterday we finished the wildlife photography weekend. Interesting participants. They wanted to know what all the buttons on their cameras are for, so then we got into exposure modes. that works well: in wildlife photography you often want to blur the background. And we looked at the composition and light with the animals. We got some great eland photos, and a zebra fight, that made for spectacular images.

Game Haven is a good place for this, and as always Greg, the manager, was very helpful.
Today Joke (my wife, pronounce Yo-kah) will be coming back from a week research in Kenya. It will be good to see her.

I am doing a nature and wildlife photography weekend at Game Haven in Bvumbwe. I have only three participants, they are very nice. All women. As they are interested in people photography also we put some of that in. They got some interesting images this morning. Tomorrow morning we have another early morning game drive.

I'm back now from a trip to Lilongwe and Machinga, with Frank from FD. We made photos and interviews for JTIs Inside Magazine. Interesting work. We left Blantyre at 5 am because Frank had some work to finish the night before. He had worked deep into the night, so I drove most of the way while he rested. In Lilongwe we did portraits and photos of the factory. They keep it as clean as possible, but the tobacco dust got to my head anyway. I was tired pretty soon, and I kept thinking it was the tobacco dust. But when I was home, this morning I tried the exercise bike, and found they I am terribly out of shape. So that played a big part. Im going to exercise, to keep my photos up to standard. I have to be able to walk around all day with my equipment on my back, and kneel and climb and what have you. I want to be a photographer, I better keep myself in shape. Maybe my age is also catching up with me!
Anyway, I love portraits, and I love industrial photography, I kept Rodchenko in mind.
Then yesterday we visited JTI Liwonde. We started with a tree nursery, which is quite photogenic. Then we saw a live barn (barn made of live trees!) under construction: it will take three years for the trees to grow big enough. And a farmer who managed to invest in a shop in Machinga.
Today I will teach again at the Poly, and photograph a meeting, here in town.

Yesterday I first met the mature entry students at Polytechnic. I was a bit intimidated, because there were Thom Kanje, business editor of the Daily Times, and Gregory Gondwe, also a very experienced jounalist of the Daily Times. I wondered if I had to teach them, or they should be teaching me. In photography of course I do have the skills. And they were motivated. Thom mentioned he would like to make photographs like Thoko Chikondi, my former student and assistant. She is getting famous, in the journalism community for sure, and maybe even with the general public.
Because the group is small, eight students, and very experienced, it all went fast and smoothly. We covered more ground than in the regular class, and still we were finished with all the subjects before time. And we found time for practicals, the cameras Sony donated are very valuable. Some students did make good photos.
The theory of exposure takes a bit of time to get used to, but I'm sure these students will pick up on it soon.
Next week I will prepare a bit more work for them.

Yesterday I photographed a pre-miss Blantyre event at Mkango lodge. Nice place, nice people, and some new models I had never photographed before. The blue photo is Priscilla and the quirky one is Yalenga.
This afternoon I have another class at the Polytechnic. This will be the mature entry students. It is interesting, I have not taught that group before, so it will be a new experience.

Today was my second time teaching at the Poly. It was a bit technical so I stretched the students minds. Exposure; basic and necessary for a serious photographer, which I am going to make out of them.
Next week we will be going into practicals. We are a bit short of cameras, and not all students have one themselves. Even with a camera phone they can do assignments. It is more about the content then about image quality.
Tomorrow I will not be making photos for a corporate calendar, that is delayed till next week. But I will be going out to Zomba to photograph an event: a corporation donates to charity, and they want my talent there for the photos. I did the same last week, and it was hot, hot, hot! Anyway, I chose to come to tropical Malawi, and I should not be complaining. I'll drink lots of water, and enjoy the job!

Yesterday I started teaching at the Polytechnic. Finally. The semester was delayed a bit because of a strike of the support staff. That pushed the lessons back a few weeks.
Yesterday was interesting, a new class. Some were very interested, and some even had good ideas on what they were looking for from me. They had published photos, but felt they lacked the knowledge on how to work towards a great photo.
We were in a new classroom, the electrical sockets were not installed yet. That was o big deal, enough light. But tomorrow I want to start projecting photos to discuss. The sockets should be there!