Seasons Greetings everyone! I trust all at Group f11 will have a wonderful holiday (?) over the next week and come back fresh with lots of imagery... Paul how's the camera disaster following you :) Time for a Christmas present?

On a different note, here's something to mull over - SANParks have released their latest policy regarding photography and filming in their parks (http://www.sanparks.org/groups/filming/2008/filiming_policy.pdf). I'm not sure whether this bodes particularly well for anyone with a tripod...or an SLR for that matter, but maybe I'm being pessimistic. Be warned though that according to the law now you cannot earn income (or pocket money) from images shot in SANParks without a paid up front photography permit. Will this affect your shooting? If we are really going to start looking at the lettering, does this mean SANParks owns copywrite to the image of Table Mountain? or Cape Point? (extreme I know, but this kind of law is a slippery slope). What does this mean for stock photographers which are speculative at the very least?

So while you ponder, have a wonderful Christmas and seasons blessings to you and your families.

E

.... oh and rip roarous New Year ;)

Monk's Cowl Stream - and Dec's theme

It's late, but water nonetheless. I wanted to shoot the water theme in a studio shot but lack of time as a result of a new member of the family :) has me resorting to the fail-safe style. Does it work? Comments always appreciated (tech details: 10mp capture with a 12-24mm lens - 100ISO, 3sec @ f11. Small burst of flash, second exposure of 6 sec @ f11 blended into HDR to obtain detail in the shadows)

As an aside - Nikon have finally introduced their full frame mega-pixel heavy flagship, the D3x with a 24.5mp sensor...all for the pocket change tag of US$8000!!! That's heavy when Canon's equivalent sells for 1500 less and Sony have just introduced a 24mp FF of their own for less than US%3000. On the home range this means that anyone who wins the lotto can probably buy a D3x for roughly R90k (what with our draconian import taxes)... and people say digital is cheaper than film ;)

On a final note...December's theme, if anyone has a chance to give it a bash with all the festivities is, 'light - the photographer's medium'. As a change as well, here's January's theme, courtesy of Neil. The idea for January is to pick a book and shoot an image that could be used for it's cover. Post the title of the book along with the image. Good luck, you might need more than a month, hence the early warning.

E