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. 

A large island floats serenely in a rings of sapphire and turquoise. A larger body of green mountains lies some distance away, the mainland I assume as the aircraft banks away and and we see once more nothing but ocean though the starboard window we are sitting next to. A dhow appears with it’s blue sail, cutting towards a shoreline that is again becoming visible as we descend towards the water. The plane flares gently and palm trees whip by as we land on the ridiculously short run and trundle up to a tiny, but still international, airport building. A wave of wet heat washes over us as the stewardess opens the hatch door. Stepping out, a big sign with ‘Welcome to Nosy Be’ can be seen near the entrance to the building. We’re here. 

There’s a stillness to the air, a faint feeling of crisp cold nipping at the skin and fingertips, like a tingling electricity. Silence reigns apart from the whisper of wind as it entices the grass to swish and sway with its breath. The yellow and pale green stalks rustling and leaning out over a vertical and disappearing drop to the waterfalls and rivers far, far, far below. Clouds form and dissipate, curling round the lower hills and their valleys, stretching out and exploring the canyons and forests of the lower mountains. This is the stillness and quiet before the sun peaks it’s burning orange face over the distant horizon in the east. There’s light enough that everything is awash in the magenta and pink glow of pre-dawn. The shadows may be a cool blue, but the sky is starting to ember. Then it appears. A burnt red glows at the top of the taller peaks and ever so gradually washes down the side of the mountains’ tallest heights. Alpine glow paints an extraordinary palette of saturated colour down the flanks of the escarpment. Dawn has come.

A while ago I was reading an interview with a rising landscape photographer whose work was really quite eye-catching. A comment of his grabbed my attention when he quite proudly pointed out that he didn’t even know who Ansel Adams is (quite clearly he did otherwise he wouldn’t have actually known the name to start with). For some reason it irked me and I didn’t really know why. It might have had something to do with a similar comment that photographers place on a pedestal certain other well-known photographers, and if you don’t know and understand their body of work, then you cannot possibly be an artist in your own right.

It’s a generally held truism that portrait photography requires a short telephoto lens to get the best results. We even tend to refer to 85mm lenses as ‘portrait lenses’ and the 50mm as a ‘poor man’s portrait lens on APS-C cameras (coming out to a 75mm focal length equivalent on a Full Frame camera). I strongly suspect that the travel photography out of covers like the National Geographic in the 80s, along with the Time/Life magazines is part of the reason we generally reach for the short telephoto when we photograph people.

I regularly meet photographers, both enthusiast and professional who don’t rename their photographs on a regular basis. By this I mean more accurately they that don’t rename the image files on the computer. This is a terrible idea if you create images and intend to work on them in any meaningful way through post-production, or if you want to do more than shoot pure for social media (and even then it’s better to rename the files). The usual excuse is that it is just too much work and hassle to rename the files. It really doesn’t have to be though.

The bustle, colour and riot of smells that is Marrakesh can practically assault the senses when you first step out of your vehicle onto the kerb. A kerb carved from stone and possibly having stood there for the past half century. Although of course modern tar, pitted with use, covers the more ancient cobblestones, and runs up against newer concrete curbs as well. Traffic screams by in an insane riot with rules that seem only apparent to the local drivers. Stepping away from the din that is the vehicular ring road around the old city walls, the Medina, you pass into a cooler alley filled with pedestrian traffic and the occasional hooting motorcycle. This is Marrakesh, and it’s awesome!

Namibia lies high on the bucket list of many photographers around the world. Why wouldn’t it. Every year international photographic salons showcase imagery created in the extraordinary Namib Desert - ancient remains of long dead trees surrounded by jarringly red and orange sands, the hauntingly beautiful abandoned town of Kolmanskop - slowly consumed by the desert sands as it spills through doorways and over windowsills - to the eerily alien like landscape of the south: Quiver Trees perched on dolomitic boulders seemingly stacked haphazardly by some ancient giant creature.


We haven’t reached pre-covid levels of travel yet, but it certainly felt like we had as I narrowly managed to get to the front of the immigration queue at Namibia’s Husea Kutako airport, just moments before a large aircraft from Europe disgorged it’s load of passengers. Quizzing travellers while waiting for luggage and again later at the first accommodation of my own route, the usual destinations were rattled off: Sossusvlei, Luderitz, Swakopmund, Giant’s Playground, Fish river Canyon and of course a beginning or ending in Etosha. Apart from Etosha, all these locations are in the south of the country.