Blog category: Mali
Déjà Vu – Mali vs. Senegal
What comes after the G.A.S.?
G.A.S. what the hell is that??? Well let me explain, it is the so-called Gear Acquisition Syndrome, a problem a lot of people who want to take (great) photos suffer from. Mostly it are men but, some women also might be affected. I had it as well; bought too much far too expensive stuff to take photo’s with. At some point it was enough, this point was reached when back in 2007, I planned a trip to Mali. During the preparations I learned that there’s a lot of dust in Mali. Too dangerous for all my “expensive equipment”. At the end of the day, I got a Panasonic FZ-50, my new tool survived sand and dust and I took my first portrait shown here.
Not bad for a start, I almost got healed. But then I bought a Canon 5D with L-Glass. Far too heavy and expensive and in 2015 I ended at Fujifilm X Pro: the end of my G.A.S. What comes after G.A.S.? First of all there is the widely unknown, P.B.A.S. (Photo Book Acquisition Syndrome). I am still suffering from this but this syndrome is more constructive, it is a source of inspiration. Maybe at some point I start to blog about all those books I have on my bookshelf. I currently suffer from the W.D.S. (Website Design Syndrome) and try to find an escape. For the previous website (photo-vinc.com) I spend far too much time on design of the site itself. Early 2018 I found my old website (Photo-Vinc.com) needed a successor, I decided to stay with WordPress as framework, got a nice theme and some promising plugins. The idea was to use everything without modification. This did not work out, I made a child theme to solve problems I saw, CSS to make things look consistent. It took me over 10 months of time to finalize this website. Far too much, to less time to work on the material I had from various trips. My advice? If you want to focus on images and present them, try something like SquareSpace. This will be much quicker als looks (almost) as good as your own design. And if you don´t follow my advice and want to know what I use then check the about section of this site where, at the end I explain which theme and plugins I used for this website. Can I help you? To keep it short: No, might be able to see some symptoms but I’m not able to heal you. You have to find your own way.
Dancing girls – The story behind
At the moment at the home page of this site this picture is displayed. What is happening there?
Back in 2007 we where traveling in Mali. As you might expect it is a country not easy to visit, it is very different from the world we are living in. There is little to eat and drink but a lot of sand and dust. We stayed some days in Djenné and from there went for a walk in the desert. Far away we saw some houses and dry threes, enough to not get lost for ever.
On our way back we met this group of young women, they got water from town and where on their way to their homes. Even when they carried a heavy load they wanted to have their picture made. The fun and happiness they showed where simply impressive and they exposed a high level of pride and confidence. Basic feelings everybody strives for. What is different is how people are showing such feelings; in the western world people are often hiding their feelings while in remote places people often are much more open even to strangers.
