Helping develop Zimbabwe's communities....

During my career as a professional photographer I have been fortunate enough to work with some exceptional organisations and corporates dedicated to uplifting Zimbabwean communities through their Corporate Social Responsibility and community development programmes. Covering these programmes has taken me all over Zimbabwe and I have been fortunate enough to meet some amazing people in areas I had never travelled to before. I always walk away from a trip inspired by the efforts of both the communities and the organisations running the development programmes.

The Dissection of a Dhow...

I am blessed to have had excellent training in my field of profession and we strive to pass on some of that knowledge as often as possible through our Introduction to Photography Courses. However, despite the power of knowledge it can be almost useless if it is not applied in the right manner. There is no exception to this in the field of photography and thats why getting out and using your camera so you gain as much field experience as possible is invaluable.

As a working professional I have the opportunity to do this every day, and with a wide scope of clients, locations and personal interests the experience that I gain everyday is invaluable. You can also never stop learning, something I am always happy to admit to.

Despite all this wonderful experience and the often complex way in which we have to shoot some of our corporate work, its always fantastic to be able to get back to the real basics, and often the results are stunning.

This happened recently while I was on a short holiday in Mozambique, we had rented a dhow for the day and were heading off to the tropical beauty that is Paradise Island in the Bazaruto Archipelago. I was on holiday and thus very chilled, had no brief from a client and just one lens on my camera, almost bliss! So back to basics it was, to photograph the boat from as many angles as possible to showcase the Dhows' different functions and character.

When I talk about composition in our Intro courses I always try to emphasis that you need to move around your subject as much as possible to get as many different angles of your subject as you can, this is very basic stuff but I am left wondering if a little bit of experience doesn't help you decide that basics are often better!

Recharging in the wheat...

As a professional photographer I am at the beck and call of my clients to create visuals based around their concepts, brand identity and company ethos. This is a wonderful thing as I get to work with some creative and innovative people and am always involved in the creative process. This also means that on a day to day basis I am also juggling many different brand identities and their specific requirements when it comes to photography.

As wonderfully exhilarating and energising as this may all be, after long periods of constant shooting the creative edge can be dulled a bit and weariness may set in. So what would any normal person do, go on holiday or take a hiatus? Not me, I like to squeeze my creative juices by taking my own pictures, of a variety of subjects.

Ideally I like to disappear into the bush for lengthly periods, however this may not be practical all the time especially when the calendar is full. So it was at one of these junctures that I found myself quite happily sitting in a filed of wheat on a friends farm, quietly on my own. 

All I had was one camera with a 105mm macro lens, no pre-conceived ideas and no brief to fill, wonderful. This allowed me to take pictures of whatever I saw that interested me, and in a field of wheat this can really help get the creativity flowing, how else do you make wheat look cool? For a few hours late one afternoon I was lost in this happy bliss of selfish composition, and I think the results speak for themselves?

The above pictures are the result of that happy abandon and energised me even further to try and get more creative, different angles of the wheat. So over the next few days, during the golden hours when my family where happily distracted elsewhere I would disappear into the fields with no preconceptions and just a few different lenses to see how creative I could be.

Confident that I had done the macro lens proud I moved over to creating shots with a wide angle lens as well as my panoramic setup.

Creating a 180 degree panoramic image of this field of wheat at sunset allowed me to showcase the sheer size of the field.

I love using my wide angle lenses, they have an ability of really opening up a perspective in a unique way and this worked to my advantage as the fields of wheat I was photographing were huge.

So by doing what I love for myself for a few days I managed to fully charged my Chi, got my creative juices back to bubbling and came away with some wonderful stock images. Not bad for a few days 'holiday'.

Inspiration in the Darkness...

The shrill chant of children's voices echoes starkly in the fridge like classroom, the maps and colorful drawings plastered on the rooms’ walls are barely visible in the darkness. With barely enough light to see their material, 3 groups of children huddle around cheap, dim solar lanterns reciting mock test answers in preparation for their upcoming grade 7 exams.

Swathed in warm clothes and a beanie to ward off the bone chilling cold is the leader of this inspiring scene, Fuyana Tshatiwa, grade 7 teacher at Ngamo Primary School near Hwange’s National Park’s southern boundary. Entirely of her own accord and at her cost Fuyana is coaching 14 members of the grade 7 class every evening for several hours. The bitterly cold nights, worsened by the unheated concrete classroom and the lack of decent lighting are no deterrent to this inspiring teacher, who has already had a full day’s work at the school.

Tonight, as she inspires me and the few visitors who are with me in the classroom she is more upbeat than ever, buoyed on by the fact that the school has just received a donation of a 5Kva diesel generator, which brings the promise of decent lighting and thus easier learning.

The generator was donated by a selfless visitor inspired by the amazing work the teachers are doing at Ngamo Primary School, crucially, this visitor was a tourist on holiday in Hwange National park with Imvelo Safari Lodges and had visited the school as part of a community activity. With the support generated by tourism operations like Imvelo and Wilderness Safaris the Ngamo community have stepped up to the plate and are thriving, all thanks to tourism dollars.

For me personally this visit was an amazingly inspirational experience and a reminder that despite the current doom and gloom attitude in Zimbabwe everyday people continue to do amazing things in their communities. Fuyana braves the cold and the dark not because it benefits her but because she is selflessly committed to the enrichment and development of her grade 7 students, something we should all take note of.

As a photojournalist I am privileged to often find myself witnessing inspiring people doing amazing things, but will shamefully admit that I do not know whats going on in my own community back at home. Like Fuyana, I am sure there are selfless people doing inspirational things just round the corner from where I live, so I am going to find out and support them however I can, after all, isn't that how thriving communities are built?