The second picture from my photo record of Grahamstown’s 70 Heritage Resources showcases three beautiful old buildings along Cross Street – numbers 6, 8 and 10. I’m very keen to get a big sky in these pictures because that shows these domestic English buildings are in an African environment. So I have to take photo opportunities when they come along. This shot had to be taken in the afternoon to get the sun angling across the building facades obliquely and I needed some nice clouds too. It’s a wide angle shot using my Fujifilm F100X.
RODDY FOX
Roddy is a self taught photographer whose first camera, a Zeiss Ikon, was bought in 1974 from a second hand dealer in Glasgow. Through the forty years since then, he's taken landscape photographs with Pentax, Olympus and FujiFilm systems for his teaching and research as a geography academic at Kenyatta and Rhodes Universities. He has always been inspired by great nature and landscape photographers such as Nick Brandt, Beth Moon, Obie Oberholzer and Hans Strand. Since taking early retirement he has been able to pursue his passion for photography, published a photobook ’Symmetry in Nature’ and held three solo exhibitions at the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, South Africa.
His landscape photography is about light: often at low angles, of forests, mist and clouds, the night sky and lightning. He prints on different media depending on the affects he wants to produce: brushed aluminium for reflecting angled light; Hahnemühle German Etching paper for soft diffusion; Ilford Metallic Gloss for vibrant night pictures.
His conceptual photography uses mirroring and merging of layers to explore patterns, motifs and the feminine in nature.