Photography: A World of Possibilities.

What an interesting hobby photography is. It is everything art is plus more, much more.

I was bitten by this rather ubiquitous art form while doing research for an online shop that is slowly getting itself of the ground. The range of camera paraphernalia that one has to choose from boggles the mind. Boggling the mind is actually putting it mildly. And that is even before one gets to take a photo of something that the minds eye see as emotionally attractive.

On the camera front, the choices are enormous but mostly controlled. Nikon or Cannon, Pentax or Lomo, Sony or Kodak. The variations are quite painful to the novice photographer, but it will mostly come down to quality, price and what effects one desires from the light capturing machine of choice. The most difficult part for me was deciding on the amount of Mega- pixels my prospective camera can capture images at. Lets just say that I am still flabbergasted.

The next catch comes when one needs to choose a lens to attach to the body of camera. Choice is part of life but wow, when it comes to choosing a lens, the possibilities are endless. What usually ends up happening is that one will settle for a middle of the road lens assembly and grow the arsenal from there.

Modern cameras are mostly equipped with various capturing settings of which one will be AUTO. This setting allows one to start shooting immediately - this is unlike the photographic machines of old where patience was a pre-requisite: Visualise the shot, prepare the settings, aim, shoot and hope that the settings were befitting the shot at hand; or that the roll-of-film was not defective. Then there was the developing processes to account for…

Once I settled on a camera with , the correct Mega-pixels and a lens, I needed to choose a camera case, a memory card (to extend the amount of photos I can take in one sitting,) a flash unit and a tripod; and not forgetting the blasted batteries (normal or rechargeable!?)

Finally I paid and left the shop full of apprehension and trepidations all rolled into one. Where to begin? What to Shoot? Did I buy the right camera? Must get the batteries charged…endless thoughts of doubts and misgivings.

But I learnt quickly. The best way to learn is to shoot, shoot and shoot some more. Having digital technology at one’s beck-and-call means that a photograph can be viewed immediately and settings adjusted on the spot, thus alleviating the patience paradox of old.


Now what do I do with my Kodak mik-and-druk?

South Africa's criminals wait World Cup out on the bench

Only 172 cases have come to the World Cup courts, the noise of the gavels no match for the vuvuzelas. The scorecard, as tallied by the Justice Ministry through July 5, reads: 104 convictions, 7 acquittals, 28 withdrawn or dismissed, 33 pending.
The World Cup case that drew the most attention was hardly a sin that would startle the squeamish. Two Dutch women were accused of illegal advertising after they entered a stadium wearing orange mini-dresses and leading about 30 other young females clad exactly the same. At the hemline, visible at the upper thigh, was the small purple logo of the Bavaria Brewery.

SHOOT: So let's see this level of no nonsense policing all the time.

clipped from www.nytimes.com JOHANNESBURG — It has been small stuff, mostly. A Swiss man threw a glass of whisky at a Dutch camera crew. A homeless South African stole a blanket from a tourist’s unlocked minivan. A friend of Paris Hilton’s was caught with a marijuana cigarette. A hotel’s cleaning crew helped themselves to underwear belonging to the English soccer team. A cataclysmic wave of violent crime in South Africa, the fear of so many World Cup killjoys, has simply not occurred. No wave, barely a ripple. The criminals have put in a more indifferent showing than even the French players. “With increased police activity everywhere, the criminals have been afraid to come out,” said a police spokesman, Col. Eugene Opperman, allowing that lawbreakers may simply have forgone their misdeeds to watch the games. By “everywhere,” he meant places tourists were likely to go: the stadiums, the nightclubs, the upscale malls — the focus of 44,000 police officers.

Let's keep up the standards of service delivery, public transport - ZILLE

Zille said "immutable deadlines" now needed to be set up in terms of addressing South Africa's social problems.

"If we can learn this lesson from the World Cup, and apply it in a way that does not erode democracy, it will have been more than worth it."

SHOOT: It shows you that we can up our game when it comes to policing and enforcing, and also, we must.

clipped from www.sport24.co.za Johannesburg - The lessons of the FIFA Soccer World Cup can be used to improve the justice system and service delivery, Democratic Alliance Leader Helen Zille said on Sunday. "The lessons of the World Cup extend far beyond sport," she said, citing the example of the 56 dedicated courts set up to deal with cases for the sporting spectacular. "The results have, apparently, been astounding. "Within four days of kick-off, 20 cases had been brought before the special courts and four finalised. At this rate, the special World Cup courts will finalise five times more cases per month than normal courts." Zille said an equally "dramatic" example of rapid delivery was the less than four years it took to build the Cape Town stadium. "In contrast, a proposed housing development, initiated at the same time as the stadium, is unlikely to be completed until 2013." Zille said the difference lay with the fact that for these projects there was an "unchangeable deadline".

During SWC South Africa's infrastructure fails

The government has urged fans to avoid road congestion by using public transport, which received a R40bn upgrade ahead of the tournament.

SHOOT: There's not much in the news about aggrieved fans stranded until 3am on trains with no electricity but you can bet it was a miserable experience. Yes we built stadiums, but we were really ready to host these games when we can't even keep the lights on?

clipped from www.sport24.co.za Metrorail trains were forced to switch from electric to steam locomotives because of the power cut, delaying the last two trains by between two and three hours with the last fans only arriving at 03:30, said Tumisang Kgaboesele, head of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa. "We are very concerned. We have already apologised to our customers," he told AFP. Metrorail ferried 13 600 people to and from Pretoria's Loftus Versfeld stadium on Wednesday for the Group A match. South Africa suffered national blackouts in January 2008 that raised alarms about the nation's ageing electricity system. The 10 World Cup stadiums each have generators to ensure power supplies during matches.

Strong Earthquake Rocks Johannesburg

SHOOT: Crazy!

clipped from www.news24.com Johannesburg - An earthquake that measured 4.3 on the Richter scale was felt along the West Rand and parts of Johannesburg on Monday afternoon, the Council for Geosciences said. The quake, recorded just before 14:00, was relatively stronger than those usually measured along the mining belt, seismologist Ian Saunders said.

Crime in South Africa during the #Fifa World Cup - so far

SHOOT: The most shocking is that while Uruguay is playing their game, their stuff is being swiped in their hotel rooms. Disgusting. These hotels must also be reported and blacklisted after the game.

clipped from www.sport24.co.za Cape Town - The Mother City's special World Cup Magistrate's Court dealt with its first three cases this week, including a theft from a Japanese tourist in a police station, police said on Thursday. The theft took place at the Caledon Square station in the city centre on Tuesday, police head of 2010 operations in the Western Cape, Major-General Robbie Roberts, said. "The tourist was in the CSC (community service centre) in Cape Town police station and he left his bag unattended. "He went up to the third floor and when he returned, he found that his bag was gone." clipped from www.news24.com Journo robbers jailed for 15yrs A Nigerian and a Zimbabwean man have been jailed for 15 years for robbing three foreign journalists in Magaliesburg. Chinese journalists robbed Uruguay team robbed at hotel 6 held for robbing soccer fan Six people who allegedly robbed a hotel in Mpumalanga and held up a Chilean soccer fan have been arrested in White River, police say.

Warm-up match stampede a wake-up call

"We have security plans that are there," said Col. Hangwani Mulaudzi, another police spokesman. "I think this is one of those isolated cases where we did not anticipate the large number of people who would be interested in this game."

SHOOT: I think SA will be caught napping in a bunch of areas, unfortunately. It's not really a 1st world country any more.

clipped from news.yahoo.com JOHANNESBURG – No one was killed. Most of the injuries were minor. Yet a stampede at a supposedly low-key warm-up match set off alarms for World Cup organizers as they reassessed their plans for keeping fervent sellout crowds under control. Hopes for a safe tournament remain high, officials said Monday. But the scary incident at a Nigeria-North Korea exhibition match was a stark reminder of past stadium disasters, in Africa and elsewhere, that have been one of soccer's recurring and deadly legacies. "This is like an alarm clock," FIFA president Sepp Blatter said. "This will not happen in any match of the World Cup — you can be assured." In Orkney, South Africa, 42 fans were killed in a melee and stampede at a 1991 match between the archrival Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs. Ten years later, when those same teams met at Ellis Park in Johannesburg, 43 people were killed and 155 injured as fans — many arriving without tickets — tried to push into the overcrowded stadium.