 I
have joined a business session held at Sheraton Hotel Pretoria (see photo
on the right for appearance), South Africa during a week of April 2001.
I could not have any time to go out for photo shooting during the session
which started in Monday Morning and ended in Friday evening (3:00 p.m.),
thus Sunday (the prior day of session start) afternoon after my arrival
at the Hotel and Friday evening after session finished were the only two
chances for photo shooting.
In Sunday afternoon I went to the front garden
of Union Building which located beside the Hotel. Union Building
is the office of the president and we can not get into the building, however,
the front garden is a beautiful place and everyone can enjoy there.
In the front garden there are, from the building side, flower gardens and
grass plots, shaped long and narrow latitudinally, in several levels like
big stairs, and then big flat glass plot.
The first 3 photos are of Union Building.
First one is a view from the far end of the big grass plot where a big
bronze statue is available. Second one is a view from flower garden
and the third one is a night view from my room in the Hotel.
Next 3 photos are of long and narrow gardens.
The first one is a big tree with sun, symmetric composition and contrast
between light and shadow attract me. The second one is a kind of
foxtails, I took care of out-of-focus quality and composition. The
third one is of leaves of canna. Zebra pattern and colors on the
leave interested me.
The last 3 photos are snap shots. The first
one is a structure of a small coliseum. Can you see a bird on the top?
The second one is a mother and a boy going up the front stairs. The
third one is a view of Pretoria City over a cannon in front of Union Building.
In the Friday evening some of attendees of the
session went out for dinner to a tourist attraction managed by an African
aborigines. When we got into there, a chieftain of the aborigines
guided us to show ways of their life, living places and so on. Then
we were guided to a big hall and they displayed us various kinds of dances
with energetic movements. Lastly they treated us to dinner with traditional
African foods, such as crocodile, ostrich and impala, etc.
The first 7 photos are of their people and houses.
Except for the first photo these were taken without flash in the evening
light after sunset, thus all are tinted in blue, somewhat.
The next 7 photos are scenes of their dances.
The hall was very dark and it was needed to expose film over 1 second
with F2.8 diaphragm. If we take photos by normal way with flash,
these will be poor photos with dark-out back. Then I decided to use
slow-synchronization technique which will make more fantastic, light back
photos but with blurring.
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