I was very fortunate and blessed to have received a few Certificates of Merit at the club.
As with all “good” photos, there has been a good amount of hard work and a lot of luck. I am however of the same opinion as Gary Player who said: “The more I practice, the luckier I get!”. I do take a lot of photos and I also believe in the 10,000 hour rule. You can read more about this in the book “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell. But in short Gladwell repeatedly mentions the "10,000-Hour Rule", claiming that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours.
Three of the photos I have had success with at the club are “Labstar Geekman”, “Mud Warrior” & “Ouma’s cousin”.
Labstar Geekman was shot at an event in the Old Snowflake mills in Potchefstroom. 
It is a day organized by a professional photographer, Emil Wessels. He creates little teams of 3 or 4 photographers and then gives some ideas where after the team has to figure out the shots! You are then rotated every 40 minutes or so and as a team get another setup. My team was allocated to a dance group called The Studio and this shot was taken as from that session. The gent in the photo real name is Francois, but his stage name is Labstar Geekman.
Once I determined the correct positioning for the lighting and the correct shutter speed it was easy. I also took a few shots where I tried to capture some movement but this shot seemed to be the best. Very little post processing was done (The makings of a good photo). I did a bit of cropping as I had to shoot at a wider angle to ensure I got everything in. The dancer only freezes for a fraction of a second at the top, or is that bottom? I also sharpened it a bit and bumped up the vibrance. Technical: Shot with a Canon 7D @ 24mm, F9.0, 1/160 sec, ISO100.
Mud Warrior was shot at one of the Warrior races (www.warrior.co.za) earlier in the year. The meeting was held in Midrand at the Red Barnhouse.
Individuals and teams tackle an obstacle course which consist of anything between 6 and 30 obstacles and stretches over a distance of 5- 29 kilometers. The competitors participate in classes Rookie to what is called Black OPS, for the real serious guys, and gals.
The second last obstacle on this VERY cold winter’s day was a mud pit. What made it worse was that the mud was made with ice. The ice was refilled later in the morning to ensure the pit styed ice cold. The competitors had to go through the pit and one basically only have part of your head not in the mud. With the mud being ice cold, it is not a place for under 18’s as some of the competitors’ language wasn’t the best when they emerged from the pit.
Mud warrior was one of the few gentlemen who had a grin on his face while he was waiting for his team mates to emerge. I only cropped this image and upped the clarity a bit. Technical: Shot with a Canon 7D @ 300mm F5.6, 1/400 sec, ISO500.
Ouma’s cousin was shot during a trip to Vietnam earlier this year. This country has countless photo opportunities! In the North of Vietnam lies the Sapa province.
Many of the ethnic Hmong people (These are the people that came from South China during the 18th century) stay in this region.
On most days but mostly on weekends there are regional markets all over the province where the people then come to trade.
The various Hmong (Black-, green-, flower Hmong, etc) groups have different traditional colours. The ladies all dress up in traditional clothes when coming to the market. Each market will only be attended by one type of group as they are regional. The lady in the picture is from the flower Hmong and I took the picture after she packed up her goods to leave for home. They carry quite a bit and walk very long distances.
Although the clothing looks very colourful and makes for great pictures, the people are very poor. Although they are very friendly a lot of them are very camera shy. The lady seems to be smiling on this photo but I think I just caught her at the right time. She was kind of telling me to go away. The photo was taken from quite a distance as you have to “steal” a lot of these. You will see from my focal length below and the fact that this is about a ¼ crop that I was quite a bit away.
I took quite a few shots across Vietnam of the different Hmong people and a few of these were of the older generation. The eldest lady I took a photo of was 97 (apparently) and I called that photo “Ouma”. From their I called some of the others “Ouma’s sister” and so on and hence the name “Ouma’s cousin”, trying to create a “family” of pictures. Technical: Shot with a Canon 7D @ 214mm F5.0, 1/16 sec, ISO100.
