How Photography can Help Teams

Working in teams is a great thing, yet it comes with challenges too. Different personalities, different backgrounds, different ideas, different ways to work and all working for the same goal, friction must be unavoidable.

Friction has a stimulating aspect, but mostly it means loss of energy resulting in inefficiency and unhappiness of the team members. Such a process can develop unnoticed for quite a while and when it actually comes to surface it can be a difficult task to identify the core of the problem and to solve it, because emotions might be high up already and blur the view.

In these situations photography can be a very useful and insightful tool. It can be part of team building sessions, business coaching or leadership training. Using photography brings play into the situation, fun and joy. And it visualizes the issues the team wants to address. What no one can say an image can show. The intuition (or the unconscious) speaks and what emotions blurred, the eye now can see.

If the team chooses to do sessions in a nature environment like e.g. as part of a photographic safari or embedded in a wildlife photography course, nature will be a stimulating environment to open up and enjoy the process, away from the usual environment with all the good nature has to offer. Yet, the key to seeing is the photography, no matter in what environment. Photography is the pleasant that allows easy access to instant insights.

Try it.

 

Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com

Indie Library: A self published photo book library

Larissa Leclair started The Indie Photobook Library in Washington D.C., giving a home to rare self-published photo books hoping that the collection will be preserved for future generations to see what great work photographers did, although they might not have been officially acknowledged by publishing houses.

The books in this library are physical books and its great that there is a place to keep them safe for the future, but what about the ephoto books? Wouldn’t it be great to have an ephoto book library instead of ephoto books scattered over the internet with several online publishing platforms? How would it be to have an online library of online ephoto books accessible for anyone from the photography lover to photography teachers available as “text books” during photography lessons?

Imagine photographing during travel, lets say in France or on photographic safari in Africa or on a cultural trip to Asia and uploading right away your on the go ephoto book to the online library and also to find inspiration and tips while creating your photo book from the online library. It could be some kind of itunes “store” for ephoto books, but then free access.

Inspired? Someone should do it and make the photography community happy.

 

Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com

 

Bringing Back the Magic and Finding the Awesome

One might be tempted to say that photography has become hyped up as a technical spectacle of megapixels and Photoshop features, with little magic left. Technology enthusiasts might disagree and say that the technology is magical and fascinating, yet that is a car too. What is the magic of photography?

Imagine you are walking the path you walk everyday, the route to your work, to the bus, to the subway or to the mailbox and you thought you have seen all what is to see on that path. But one day you take your camera and you photograph while walking that so familiar path and suddenly you start seeing again. There might be little flowers in your neighbor’s garden, a broken wooden chair in a driveway creating interesting patterns on the tarmac or a cat spying on you every morning from behind the curtains.

Photography makes us seeing and appreciating the beauty in little things we usually pass unnoticed. Photographs are moments of awe that brighten up our days. Maybe the magic of photography is simply the “seeing” with little technology needed, although technology can add lots of fun.

Keep looking for the awesome and find magic.

Happy snapping!

 

Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com

 

Send Love for Christmas

With Black Friday just behind us and Cyber Monday still in full swing it might be a good idea to think of the essence of giving. Isn’t it all about love?

Well, if we can make somebody very happy with a new set of coasters or the newest electronic gadgets, just do it. Yet there is a way to send love in a more intimate and lasting way. Send your images as a loving Christmas card.

Use for example the marketing tool Mailchimp for your very private Christmas cards to family and friends. Mailchimp is usually used by companies for their email marketing, but of course it can be used for anything else. It is for free, offers plenty of customizable templates and you can import your email address list and send it out at once to all. You can create your own Christmas card with your own photographs, sending the message you want your friends and family to receive in a stunning design. It is a great tool to express your creativity and love at this magical time of the year.

If you wish to employ somebody else’s design abilities, a very good place to go are the Jacquie Lawson e-cards. It is not possible to integrate your own images, but the design and animations of the cards are truly lovely and touching. It costs only a bit to join this website, but its worth it. They offer for all sorts of occasions really loveable cards.

And of course there are still the probably most desirable real hand made cards with hand cut pictures, ribbons and hand written words. Nothing can beat that. They are treasures, kept forever in lovely boxes to be unearthed years later to remember the moment of received love.

Send your love too!

 

Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com

Safari Story: Desperate

It was in the Sabi Sand in South Africa that we followed a young male leopard. He was not from the area and he had to be very cautious, because he was on the territory of an older strong male leopard. One could see that in his behavior. He was nervous, moving constantly and he was hungry. We followed him during a couple of game drives and he became more and more desperate. He probably hadn’t had a kill for a few days now and that didn’t help him with his concentration on the hunt. At one stage he just ran right into a herd of impala, not even trying to stalk, just hoping to snatch one, which of course didn’t happen. On the same morning he was in a tree when an antelope walked passed underneath the tree. The antelope saw him and was gone in a flash, he still on the branch, just looking frustrated. We started feeling desperate as well. He must have food now. The leopard continued moving through the area and he came pretty close to a house where a guy was working outside. We gave the guy a warning that a hungry leopard was around, but he seemed not impressed. Well, we took a break and went for lunch back to the lodge. When we went out again after lunch we heard that “our” leopard had finally made a kill! Our thought was immediately, did he get the guy from the house? Well, he did not. The leopard was happily sitting in a tree with his kill, a nyala, and enjoying his meal. We were happy too. He made it. Once again a leopard’s perseverance had won from bad luck, hunger and difficult circumstances on enemy territory. They are survivors, the leopards.

Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com

Wantful Christmas Presents

Wantful, isn’t this a wonderful word? It doesn’t exist officially, but it should.

The word reflects our desire to want something in a gentle way. Its not that rough “I want it and I’ll get it no matter what”, it’s the gentle desire of something very beautiful and precious, like for example great design, amazing art, fabulous quality or impressive craftsmanship.

When you look at your photographs do they feel wantful? Try it and make a Wantful Catalog your loved ones can choose from for their Christmas presents. Of course you can include also all the other things you make and that are wnatful to others. Just make it as an online catalog and send it around to your friends and family and see how their wantfulness emerges.

Happy wantful gift giving!

Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com

Living Pictures with Light Field Camera Lytro

Photos we take with our “normal” cameras are 2D images and nothing is wrong with it, yet there is more what one can do with a camera and this is when Lytro comes in.

The Lytro camera is a light-field camera. That means the camera captures the 4D light field information of a scene and by doing that, the images can be refocused and even the perspectives can be shifted afterwards. Ever had that moment that you wished you had taken the photo with a different angle, different point of view? You can change your point of view now with the new Lytro feature from December 4^th just at your computer after the image was taken, well when the image was taken with a Lytro camera.

Comes pretty close to our human eye, doesn’t it?

Happy snapping and playing!

 

Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com

Image above by Greg Tokarski

Pic of the Week: Imagine You Are There

Imagine early morning in the Masai Mara, you departed on your game drive just before dawn and when you turn onto the open plains she is coming, the sun, first warmly coloring the clouds before evolving from the horizon and sending light and heat for the day ahead.

Imagine you are there.

 

Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com

 

Romance: Karen Blixen – Peter Beard

Do not jump to conclusions, romance is not an intimate relationship, romance is a strong connection sometimes people have, like mothers with children, siblings, soul mates or like we sometimes call them “like minded people” or rather “like hearted people”.

Peter Beard visited Karen Blixen at her home in Denmark. This was in the early 60ies and Beard was at that time a young man who had just started exploring East Africa and had been very much drawn into Blixen’s book “Out of Africa”. Well, a lady from Blixen’s household said that he seems to remember Karen Blixen of her big love Denys Finch Hatton, yet the connection the two was most likely the love and fascination for Africa.

Beard took some great photographs of Karen Blixen and probably even the last one ever taken of her, she died in 1962. Quotes from Out of Africa are on many of Beard’s photographs and it seems that they saw Africa the same way, had the same connection with the continent and its people and wildlife, shared the same fascination and loved it deeply. What Blixen was saying with words, Beard was saying with photographs and Blixen’s words on Beard’s photographs are an overwhelming combination.

Find a selection of Peter Beard’s work on his website or in the book Peter Beard Trade Edition or get in the car and drive to Arles in the Camargue in Southern France. Hotel Nord Pinus in Arles has an impressing small collection of original Peter Beard photographs, including a Karen Blixen portrait.

What fascinations are you sharing? Even thought to capture them in photographs?

Photo above: Peter Beard Karen Blixen photo at Nord Pinus in Arles.

 

Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com

 

Striking Photo Stacking Technique

There are many ways of painting with your camera and there are probably even more ways of painting with Photoshop, but this one is really a nice one.

Matt Molloy’s photo stacking technique cloud images look just amazing, like big rough brush strokes have set the clouds on the pictures.

Here is how Molloy does it:

“To make these ‘photo stacks’, I first shoot a timelapse, taking a photo every 5 seconds or so. (Settings differ depending on the subject and lighting conditions). I then merge several photos into one image using Photoshop. I start with the first image from the timelapse as a normal photo and then blend the rest of them with the ‘lighten’ blending mode. This only adds things that are brighter than what was in the first photo, and so you can see things like the paths of stars as they move across the sky. (The movement of the stars is actually from the earth’s rotation).”

It sounds like a lot of work, but it looks like being worth trying.

Find more of his work can be found on Flickr and 500px and good luck with playing with light.

Happy brush stroke setting!

 

Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com