photography – Page 5

for your eyes only…

Just the other day I had my mum on the phone and wanted to tell her about this awesome “Je chanterai pour toi” DVD I got when she told me: “yes, my dear, I already read it in your blog.” (ati ?!)

My mum is cool.

(hi mum! :-)

Sooooooooo………………. I figured, even if this blog just represents a tiny fraction of who I am and what I would like to share with YOU out there, I will not hesitate a second to volunteer, to sacrifice myself for your ultimate LMAO experience:

1993 1998

2004 2005

Facing Reality, that is.

1993: that pic is from my Kenyan driving licence (‘over 18’)
1998: that pic is from when yours truly was doing it the corporate world way
2004: that pic is from when I realized that shorter hair is better for working on a sewage treatment plant
2005: that pic is from TODAY!

Kiku’s Blogcasting Corporation (KBC)

"So, tell us, how did you actually learn how to make those videos?" – "Well, I went to this website called current.tv and had a quick look at the VC2 survival guide, went to a shop, got a decent cam, a better mic, a tripod and a nice bag and …well, you know, I just let go, maaaan?!" – "Ah….is it that simple?" –
"Yeah of course, maaaan… I mean, look, many of us are of the so-called MTV generation and have been spoiled by sitcoms, so we kinda know what the viewers wanna see….you know?….we got the right timing it takes to make the point. …This is especially important if you just have 30 seconds for a spot. It’s all a matter of timing." – "Ah…and how did you promote your videos?" – "Simple. I started off with videoblogging in my blog and people would actually recommend to upload my stuff on current.tv. So there I went, promoting my spots on the world wide web and only paying for my internet connection fees, no needs for an agent or somethin’…it’s so simple, I tell ya, you just get your gear together, point that damn cam at somethin’, edit the shots on your mac and upload them!" ——

Fiction, dear readers, I am far far away from Vlogging or even making my own little film. Of course I wish to have some cash cow in my shamba that coughs up enough dough every morning, but till then, I’ll have to stick to my little Sanyo Xacti digicam and use it’s 30fps (at least!) movie function to produce short clips for this third-rated blog. One day.
In the meantime, I will enjoy good documentaries like the one on Wangari Maathai or another one on how to make fire in the wild (Kudos to afromusing for blogging about this the other day + Martin for giving me this nice hint!).

P.S.: And while you’re at it, please make sure not to miss out this video on a massacre which has taken place in Turbi/Marsabit. Or as MentalAcrobatics has put it the other day: "Show me; and I will remember."…

Googleardhi

I was really wondering about blogging this, but here ya go:
A good friend of mine, Lady Kikuyumbuzi, had this crazy idea of climbing Mt.Kenya. Having a great ability to assert herself, she quickly persuaded some other volunteers (read: unaware interns) to accompany her on this quest of climbing the highest mountain in Kenya.

I never had any doubts that she’d do that one day when she told me, but, to be honest, I never really expected her to do it this early. She dropped me a few lines from Nairobi on saturday and wrote: “yeah, and btw, I’ll be climbing Mt.Kenya on Monday…..and there’s this other appointment I’m having like at the end of the week”. Yeah….
CAN YOU IMAGINE why I adore her that much?!

Anyways.

So I am sitting here in my warm and comfy room in Germany and thinking to myself: Well, I can’t be in Kenya right now due to other obligations, but my thoughts (and prayers!) are with her anyways so maybe….maybe I’ll just start another Google Earth session and have a closer look at the slopes of Mount Kenya. Maybe somewhere between Bwana Whispers shambas I’ll find a little Mzungugoat holding up a sign that says: “Hello Bw Kikuyumoja, me I am here. Sound and safe”.

I think it started way back in 1982 (?) after the AirForce coup when the Moi-regime banned all detailed maps of Kenya. Before, I was told, you could get the most detailed maps of Kenya (YES, those ones with contour lines!) and after that ….well, we apparently all know what those city maps of Nairobi looked like during the 1990s. They were just cut down to a minimum and rendered useless for real Safari needs…

Now, imagine this lack of proper maps and try to think of it in GoogleEarth. And it doesn’t even matter if you’re in Kenya or Germany – small Kijijis like Naro Moru or Suderburg (which is where I study – boys, this place is SO lost!) are not indicated on the map. In fact, those ignorants over at GoogleEarth HQ (a.k.a. Keyhole.com) apparently lost the key to the room that contains all those juicy, detailed maps that would show us our beloved Nairobi in its full beauty.

The Internet community though, being as resourceful as a kenyan fundi, quickly came up with a working solution. Why wait for more zoomable maps at higher resolutions if you can have real pictures taken at ground level and overlayered into GoogleEarth’s maps?! This useful Flickr plug-in for instance, which shows the closests 50 images posted on Flickr (based on your current viewing area). Of course it’s just a few pictures now, but as communities grow, more and more images on Flickr & other web resources will hopefully become connected to placemarks on GoogleEarth. This GoogleEarth Bubudiu isn’t just a great toy – it’s a new way of marketing locations. And Kenya being a preferred tourist location, why not promoting it through Google Earth? (Which of course reminds me of EduVision’s eSlates project at this point and adding a tourist functionality to the programme where they give out PDAs to tourists (with some futuristic “GoogleEarth for PDA” installed) and clickable maps…”Oh, yes, we’ve already marked our route on the PDA”. Or somethin’…)

Yani, this all goes to show that I might not be able to actually put my feet on the slopes at this very moment, but at least I can have a closer look upon the route Lady Kikuyumbuzi is taking and….I guess upon reading this blog entry once she returns, she’ll probably never talk to me again. Why? Well…remember Whisper’s wife Thatcher? Haia….go figure…

Maasaizungu

An dieser Stelle brauche ich eigentlich gar nicht weiter auf den heute in den Kinos anlaufenden Film "Die weisse Massai" nach dem Buch von Corinne Hofmann eingehen, sondern kann elegant auf einen guten Blogeintrag eines Maasais in der Schweiz verweisen, der sich vor einigen Tagen schon recht informativ dazu geäußert hat.

Ich denke wenn der Film wie "Nirgendwo in Afrika" die Touristen nach Ostafrika lockt und das Land in seiner Schönheit beim Publikum ankommt, ist das irgendwie sinnvoller als die story an sich…

Woodcreeper

Manchmal gibt es Dinge, die man in ihrem Umfang nicht richtig nachvollziehen kann.

Meine Großnichte z.B. (11 Jahre alt) und ihr Hirntumor, den sie ironischerweise als "Paris Hilton" bezeichnet hat. Was die OP und die Folgen (Chemo, etc.) betrifft, so kann ich mir aus der Ferne nur insofern ein Bild davon machen, als dass meine Cousine uns alle sehr detalliert und regelmäßig via email informiert.

Beim flabberbrowsen fand ich dann eben einen Link zu einem Kerl, der die Fotos von seiner Hirntumor-OP nicht nur in sein Blog, sondern vor allem bei Flickr eingestellt hat. Es ist nicht nur krass, es ist sogar höchst interessant. Allerdings ist das nix für Leute, die den Anblick einer geöffneten Schädeldecke nicht ertragen können.

Ich bin mir immer noch nicht sicher, was ich davon halten soll. Tatsache ist aber, dass der junge Mann die Bilder der OP (sind ja nicht so viele) mit der gesamten Flickr community teilt, und so vielleicht auch einen Weg gefunden hat, um mit der Situation leichter umzugehen.

Für mich als Betrachter ist es eine interessante Erfahrung und gute Möglichkeit, einen kurzen Einblick in eine Welt zu bekommen, die vielen Gott sei Dank ersparrt bleibt. Und genau aus diesem Grund habe ich es hier gepostet.

Es ist interessant zu sehen, wie die Welt sich durch das Internet verändert und Einzelpersonen für einen kurzen Moment die Aufmerksamkeit einer großen Masse auf sich ziehen können.

Chîzu…

Dieses Bild stammt von der Website von Juergen Specht – einem in Japan lebenden deutschen Fotografen, der unter anderem hunderte Bilder von Automaten in Japan aufgenommen hat.

Er schreibt: "I believe that every photographer is a story teller. This is my story. The story of a German photographer living in Tokyo, Japan."
Seine Bilder hat er unterteilt in artistic galleries, truthful stories, daily Singles & documentations (~cultural explorations). Besucher der Website können ihre Lieblingsbilder gleich abspeichern (coole Idee).

Bei mir wecken solche Bilder viele Erinnerungen an früher – es ist der Wahnsinn, was aus Shibuya mittlerweile geworden ist. Die Website ist insofern auch schön, weil sie manche Eigenarten der Japaner (Engrish – siehe Bild) aus der Sicht eines Gaijins witzig darstellt.

Daher: Kiku’s Surftip der Woche!