Changing with Light

Reflections and Refractions

In my previous blog about light be did a basic exploration of light, why we can see and colour temperature. This was to give you a basic idea of what we're working with in photography, light. If you do not have a good understanding of light and how to get the best out of it, you will spend hours in Photoshop trying to make a mediocre image, acceptable. But if you understand light and use it to your advantage you can capture an ordinary moment and make it spectacular.

When a ray of light hits a surface one or more things can happen, it can reflect off the surface and travel in a different direction, it can pass through the medium and continue on a new straight path or it can be absorbed.

We've touched on visible light combining different wave lengths that bend in a slightly different ways to create different colours. Also how certain wave lengths gets absorbed and some reflected when it hits and object. Now what happens when light passes through a substance, like water, or class, or the lens of your camera?

Refraction of Light

As you know light travels in waves and it travels at a certain speed, 299 792 458 m/s in a vacuum to be exact. This speed varies from one medium to another. When light travels through one medium then another, the speed will change and the path of the light will bend. This is called refraction.

Now take into consideration the angle that the light hits the medium; and if it moves from a denser medium to less or the other way around. You can see this when looking through a glass with water. The light will hit the glass and because it is a different density, will slow down and bend, again when it hits the water and again upon exit, distorting the image.

The Bends?

Now how does this effect your photography? Ok so you can take some interesting distorted portraits through a fish bowl, but the true reason is lenses. The reason why we are able to capture the quality of light we do now is because we use a piece of glass that will bend and concentrate light onto a surface for us to capture. Different combinations and shapes will bend light to our will. Simplest form is a magnifying glass, combine that idea and you have a telescope.

There are two main factors that that determine how much a lens bends the light. The reflective index(n) of a material is how much it slows down the beam. Air being n=1, water n=1.33, glass n=1.5 ect. Then the angle of incidence is the angle at which the light hits the medium, the greater the angle the more the bending. So if you combine these basic principles in convex and concave lenses you'll understand how your lenses have the ability to either magnify what you want to capture or allow you to capture more of a confined space.

“The picture… is but a succession or variety of stronger lights thrown upon one part of the paper, and of deeper shadows on another. Now Light, where it exists, can exert an action.”

- William Henry Fox Talbot

This is a touch on the basics of a very interesting subject. Understanding how light behaves will help you take better pictures. We'll get into focus and different lenses next time, but please contact me if you have any questions.

Saartjie Baartman Centre

This month I decided to approach a the first one-stop centre in the country for women, youth and children who have experienced domestic and / or sexual violence in their lives.

It is still a massive problem in South Africa where woman and children do not have a safe space to escape from what could be an abusive environment at home. It is an unfair situation where woman think it is normal to be treated like they are less and children are sitting in the position that the person that is supposed to protect them is causing them the biggest harm. The Centre doesn't only create a safe space, but also educate these woman and children about their worth and their rights. Truly inspiring.

 

"The Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children (SBCWC ) is a one-stop centre for women and children who are survivors of abuse. Our vision is the creation of a safe and secure society and a human rights culture where women and children are empowered to exercise their full rights."

- Saartjie Baartman Centre

Director, Shaheema McLeod, provides strategic leadership to the Centre. She is responsible for strategic planning for the growth and sustainability of the Centre, for partnership development, fundraising, networking and the replication of similar centres in other parts of the country.

"By naming our centre after Saartjie Baartman, we are remembering and honouring a woman who has become an icon, not only to her own Khoikhoi people, but to all women who know oppression and discrimination in their lives."

By The Saartjie Baartman Centre

If you don't know the story or Saartjie Baartman and why she is such an icon and so relevent, I'll give you the short version. Saartjie Baartman was a Khoikhoi woman born in the Cape Colony in 1789 and was taken to Englang in 1810. She was accompanied by her employer, Hendrik Cesars, and William Dunlop, an English doctor who worked at the Cape slave lodge. Because of her large bottom they wanted to show her on stage as a natural marvel, the "Hottentot Venus" to earn money. She caught the attention of British abolitionists while performing in Picadilly Circus and argued that she was made to perform against her will. Dunlop did supply documents that gives her concent, but the validity of these were questioned. She was eventually sold to an animal trainer in Paris to amuse onlookers at Palais-Royal. Baartman lived in poverty, and died in Paris of an undetermined inflammatory disease in December 1815.

The Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children (SBCWC) was opened in 1999 as the first multi-disciplinary service (one-stop) centre for abused women and children in the country. This provided an opportunity for organisations to come together as partners to develop an appropriate on-site multi-agency service delivery model for the effective management, treatment and prevention of violence against women and children. It also presented an opportunity for a partnership approach between government departments and the non-governmental sector.

Vision

The vision of the SBCWC is the creation of a safe and secure society and a human rights culture, where women and children are empowered to exercise their full rights.

Mission statement

The mission of the SBCWC, as a human rights-based, non-governmental organisation, is to provide a comprehensive range of services that are accessible and safe to women and children by:

• Working in partnership with organisations that advocate ending violence against women and children
• Providing 24-hour emergency shelter, short and medium term residential care, and childcare services
• Prioritising awareness of women's rights on issues such as HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence, legal and socio-economic rights

Objectives

Developmental objective - We have established an integrated and comprehensive one-stop centre for women and children who are survivors of gender-based violence

• Manage an effective and co-ordinated one-stop centre partnership that provides a comprehensive range of services for abused women and children.
• Establish, through research, a best practice intervention model to challenge and end violence against women and children.
• Provide effective community outreach work to end violence against women and children through preventative and awareness programmes.
• Develop an effective networking relationship with other organisations, networks and tertiary institutions that advocate and seek an end to violence against women and children.
• Promote research and advocacy on gender-based violence in order to influence policy makers and society in general.

To get involved, please contact:
The Saartjie Baartman Center
+27 21 633 5287
info@womenscentre.co.za
Klipfontein Rd
Manenberg
Cape Town
or Visit their website

For the love of Light

Exploration of Light

As I've mentioned before photography is all about painting with light. It is using the way light gets absorbed, reflected and refracted to create an image. I'm still a very traditional girl and still love film photography, and I do believe that analogue photography does explain the essence of understanding what light actually does to give you the ability to capture an image using light.

I will get into the basics of film at a later stage but this is a simple article to explain the basic facts about light and how it acts. It's essential to understand light as you need these technical objections to be combined with aesthetic aims to produce an outstanding picture.

It is simple to understand that photography depends on light. Exactly the same way our sight depends on it. Why can we not see in the dark? There is no light from the sun reflecting from all the surfaces around us to be visible. What is light and how does it have to power to allow us to see the beauty that surrounds us?

Visible Light

I'm going to try and keep this simple: Visible light is what humans see and forms a very small part of the whole spectrum of electromagnetic waves, ranging from gamma rays to radio waves. The reason humans can only see visible light is because the chemical reaction in the carbon based chemistry of our cells, that allows us to see, only gets triggered by waves around this range. Any longer, it doesn't carry enough energy to trigger a reaction and any shorter, too much that can damage this chemistry, like sunburn from ultraviolet light.

Colour of light

Light is a mixture of many different colours. If you look at the rainbow or maybe you saw how white light splits through a prism. This also have to do with the fact that they have different wave lenghts and will bend in a slightly different way than the other colours. When light hits an object – say, a leaf – the object absorbs some of the light and reflects the rest of it. Which wavelengths are reflected or absorbed depends on the properties of the object. This light then travels in turn to the light sensitive retina in the eye where the message gets sent to the brain: green.

Electric light uses these qualities and simplifies it to create light, that looks to the normal eye like daylight, but not exactly. This is why the sun makes different pictures than florescent or incandescent light. The colour of light will effect your image accordingly. Think of the cold blue light of florescent lights in a hospital and the warm effect of the incandescent lights in your lounge. This has to do with the colour temperature of the light. Our eyes naturally adjust to this but not film or the sensor of your camera.

Colour temperature gets measured in kelvin, over 5000 K are cool colors, while lower color temperatures (2700–3000 K) are warm colors. Daylight being between 5000K and 6500K. It is based on the principle that any object will emit light if it is heated to a high enough temperature and that, as the temperature increases, the color of that light will change along with the temperature.

Also think of the yellow glow of the sun setting through trees and the pale blue light just before the sun rises. Daylight will also change depending on time of day and the obstructions or interaction it has along the way. It is important to be aware of this to either keep to the true colours or manipulate to create your own magic, essentially painting with light...

“Do not Bodies and Light act mutually upon one another; that is to say, Bodies upon Light in emitting, reflecting, refracting and inflecting it, and Light upon Bodies for heating them, and putting their parts into a vibrating motion wherein heat consists?”

- Sir Isaac Newton

As you've noticed this was a simple basic explanation and not a complete scientific exploration. The aim was to get you to understand what you're working working with when taking a picture. Next time I'll dig into how light bends through materials. This will have an effect on how different lenses distorts your images. Please contact me if you have any questions.

The Bookery

"Bringing the School Library to life"

I drove past The Bookery one morning on my way to the studio. Not my normal route as I had to collect prints on the way, but still in a road that I come past often I spot The Bookery. Why have I not yet spotted them and what are they about?

After a little bit of research I realized this is my charity for the month! This Non profit organization quickly became close to my heart concentrating on the essentials of basic education, books.

"Literacy and numeracy are the first steps towards social and economic change for both individuals and communities anywhere."

- The Bookery

The Bookery aims to provide and support school libraries that are under resourced in South Africa. According to them, there is a dramatic shortage in school libraries with over 90% of public schools in South Africa doesn't even have a functional library.

The Bookery was established on 1 March 2010 under the coordination of Rich Conyngham and soon after the first two libraries were open. Thembelihle High School in May 2010 and Lavender Hill High School in June 2010.

The aim was to have a positive impact on schools and learners in under resourced communities both academically and culturally. Making this possible by sourcing books and resources from the general public and a variety of different partners.

The Bookery started as a branch of Equal Education's campaign for school libraries . EE is an organization promoting quality and equality in the South African educational system as well as a leading in youth leadership development. In October 2013 however, The Bookery became an independent NPO and continues its great work in the building blocks of the education of South Africa.

To get involved, please contact:
The Bookery
021 461 4189
info@thebookery.org.za
79 Plein Street
Cape Town
8001
or Visit their website