PHOTOGRAPHY FEATURE
SWAKOPMUND
THROUGH A DIFFERENT LENS Xenia Invanoff-Erb
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enia Ivanoff-Erb is a professional graphic designer, brand consultant and photographer. This year, she proudly acknowledges, she has 25 years of experience in the business of “bringing brands to life”. She graduated from Rhodes University with a BA degree in Fine Arts which she says “provided me with a solid background in the Arts but with a degree that certainly did not open any doors into the world of commercial design. I did, however, have the opportunity to study photography for one semester with the world-renowned South African photographer, Obie Oberholtzer. Not once did I pick up a camera nor did I really take much note about shutter speeds or apertures ... What Obie did teach me
was how to see an image and how to evoke emotion through an image”. It is interesting that at the time Xenia started her university career, the well-known Namibian photographer, Tony Figuera, had just completed his studies at the same university. “That’s not the only thing Tony and I have in common: last year while Tony was helping me prepare for my first photographic exhibition in Swakopmund, we discovered by chance that we share the same birthday,” says Xenia. “I love the sense of unity and the diverse community in Swakop. My husband Georg and I spend many hours exploring nature and the environment in and around Swakopmund. It feeds my soul, it makes me feel alive.”
CAPTURING MOTION The images on this page are simple everyday subjects; there is nothing very remarkable about them except that I have challenged myself to capture the essence of water in motion. The reason I have chosen such simple subjects was because in each subject there was an element which appealed to me: the twilight sky, the aquamarine colour and the dark-red garnet beach sand. To make each subject stand out I applied specific creative skills to capture the viewers’ attention. The two beach scenes use a technique called long exposure. I had to have my camera on a tripod to keep it completely still and set the shutter to stay open for longer then 1/15 of a second to capture the movement of the water. I mostly use an ISO 100 setting for best quality and an aperture of F14 for sharpness throughout the image. I also use a black UV (10xND) filter on the front of my lens which acts like a pair of very dark sunglasses so you can keep the lens open long enough without the rest of the photograph being completely overexposed to the light.
TRAVEL NEWS NAMIBIA SUMMER 2016/17
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