Mountain Vistas, stormy skies, colourful fields of flowers; purple, pink and white cosmos, waves of yellow delosperma blanketing the edges of gorges, cloud formations like fleets of long masted ships sailing through the skies, stoic faced herdsmen wrapped in colourful blankets, waving yellow grasses catching the cold air whipping through the mountain valleys, curls of smoke drifting lazily from stone chimneys and through the thick thatch of grass woven roofs. This is Lesotho, this is the Mountain Kingdom. 

A starting disclosure: I am including images of children in the below article. Most of them I obtained permission to photograph. Some of the images I photographed while on editorial assignment for clients. Other images were shot during the various travels that I have done through the years. 

The world around us seems in the midst of some culture war where conservatism and liberalism take no prisoners in their ridiculous affront against each other. One of the victims in this battlefront is the depiction of the youth of this world. Photographing children is now a threatened pursuit. To be able to photograph the youth in sport requires a string of documents including police clearances, and here in south Africa, proof that your name is not on a nationally held sex-offenders list. Woe betide the parent who wants to photograph their child on the side of the sport’s field lest they be accosted by other parents for photographing their children without explicit consent. 

Both sides have valid, logical arguments when it comes to photographing youth. It makes sense that one should get the permission from a guardian before an image is created. At the same time though, how does one photograph events where there are hundreds of youths taking part? Do you get a consent form from everyone present? What happens when one parent declines? Does that event then not get photographed? Unfortunately the approach that sees anyone with a camera as a sexual predator has had a profound effect on how photographers around the world approach the subject, and I think we have lost something as a result. 

After spending the last few months running back-to-back photographic workshops through Namibia, the Richtersveld, and the Drakensberg, one question keeps coming up from photographers joining my trips:
"What exactly should I pack for Namibia?"
Rather than answering the same email repeatedly, I thought it would make sense to turn the advice into a practical guide that photographers can return to before heading into the desert.

Namibia is one of the most rewarding photographic destinations in the world, but it is also a country of extremes. You may find yourself photographing towering dunes in scorching midday heat, pelicans along the icy Atlantic coastline, or wildlife at sunrise in surprisingly cold conditions.

Packing properly makes a huge difference — not only to your comfort, but also to your ability to work efficiently as a photographer.

Life gets busy. As a photographer I am constantly chasing the elusive buck, hustling from gig to gig. No sooner than you have signed off a project, than you are either actively seeking out a new project, or have already been thrown deep end into a new one. This is a constant state of existence for anyone living in today’s ‘gig’ culture. I’m not even going to get started on the nightmare that is image management in this kind of atmosphere of constant hustle, but I am going to discuss how we fly by images and forget about them, before they should be forgotten.  

I was recently asked to judge a small international photographic competition, of which landscape photography was a genre. Readers will no doubt assume that I am about to go off on a tirade against the plethora of overworked and essentially false impressions of places and spaces - the spirit that I understand led to the creation of the Natural Landscape Photography Awards. To an extent they would be correct. There were indeed a number of images that were simply ‘overcooked’; not just a step into the valley of the uncanny, but a wholehearted plunge beyond reality. There are of course a range of arguments allowing for the ‘anything goes’ approach, such that photographers can stretch mountains, bend trees, and create kaleidoscopic skies since that is what they ‘felt’ they were looking at. I’ve been guilty of saying much the same in the editing process; that one should edit the image to the way that it ‘looked’ and felt to you when you were shooting the scene in the first place. 

There’s a particular moment in Fes when the medina exhales—when the last threads of morning chill pull back and the day’s rhythm begins to sharpen. The mullah’s calls have dwindled and the sounds of the streets filter above the ancient stone walls. It’s in these quiet, golden moments that the city reveals itself to the patient photographer. Fes is a labyrinth of centuries-old craftsmanship, intricate geometric design, and spirited street life, and wandering its lanes with a camera in hand feels like stepping through a living tapestry.

The Laowa D-Dreamer 10mm f/2.8 is an extraordinary piece of glass. It’s not just another wide-angle lens — it’s ultra-wide, rectilinear, and capable of producing images with impressive sharpness and minimal distortion. Designed for photographers who thrive on creative extremes, this lens offers a truly unique perspective that few others can match.

I’ve just returned from an incredible week-long photographic workshop on the island of Madeira — an extraordinary island off the coast of Portugal in the Atlantic Ocean. Despite its small size the island is host to a phenomenally diverse range of landscape locations. Our small group based ourselves in the quiet coastal town of São Vicente on the northern coastline, an ideal central location that allowed us to reach almost every corner of the island with no more than an hour and a half’s drive. In Madeira, this kind of accessibility is essential — not only because of the diverse range of landscapes on offer, but because the island’s weather changes at a moment’s notice. We spent a fair amount of time learning to interpret the plethora a weather apps, web cams and local advice as to where to go for the best photographic conditions. Needless to say, flexibility and spontaneity are the photographer’s most valuable tools here.

If you’re a photographer, graphic designer or creative professional tired of subscription-models, the recent upgrade of the Affinity suite is not just big news; it’s potentially game-changing. How to get off the Adobe subscription train and onto a more affordable editing platform and workflow is one of the most common questions I get on photographic workshops.

As a result I have long been on the lookout for tools that don’t burden you with monthly fees but still give you serious editing ability. Now, Affinity has taken a bold step — combining its photo editing, vector design and layout-publishing tools into one unified app - just called Affinity - and making it free for everyone.

I consider a photoshoot, particularly a landscape photoshoot a success if I can walk away with a publishable image. That’s one publishable image. Obviously a commercial shoot is different, but the hit rate for out of the park awesomeness is still pretty much on the low end of figures. A really good landscape shoot might offer up a few publishable images, but again, the expectation should never be more than one.