This week I share a slideshow of photographs from my first two visits to Namibia with Jeremy Woodhouse, which contains around 80 photographs and a number of short videos to depict this beautiful land and her amazing people.
This episode is a little late because I got caught up in creating the music for this slideshow. I got tired of fighting copyright claims for music that I have paid a license fee for, first with YouTube and now also on Vimeo, so I’m trying to create my own music when possible, but it’s time-consuming, and this one ran away with me for a few extra days.
Anyway, it’s ready now, in glorious 4K video, so grab a coffee, kick up your feet, and have a watch when you have 8 minutes to spare. The music still isn’t perfect, but it’ll have to do for now, as I’m out of time to work on it anymore. Don’t forget to click that little full-screen button either (the four little arrows pointing outwards, between HD and Vimeo below) to enjoy this in full resolution.
To build the slideshow I used Boinx Software’s FotoMagico 5 Pro, which has just been updated to version 5 and now fully supports 4K video, and I think this is probably the most stable new release of FotoMagico that I’ve used so far, so it was an absolute pleasure to work with. You can buy FotoMagico from the Boinx Software web site or the Apple App Store.
I’ll do a video on using FotoMagico 5 Pro either next week or shortly after, so stay tuned for that if you are interested. For now, I hope you enjoy the slideshow.
If you enjoy the photography and see yourself shooting in Namibia, I’m running a 17-day tour and workshop in Namibia in June 2017, and there are a few places left if you’d like to join us. Visit https://mbp.ac/namibia for details and to book your place.
Show Notes
Visit https://mbp.ac/namibia for details of my 2017 tour & workshop.
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22 Comments
Nancy Hopwood
Posted at 15:29h, 12 MayMarvelous Martin
Martin Bailey
Posted at 16:54h, 12 MayThanks Nancy! I’m pleased you enjoyed it. I hope all is well.
Mark V'Soske
Posted at 20:58h, 12 MayWonderful!
Martin Bailey
Posted at 22:36h, 12 MayThanks Mark!
Mark G Woodworth
Posted at 23:58h, 12 MayVery beautiful! Thanks, Martin.
Martin Bailey
Posted at 08:58h, 13 MayThanks Mark!
SM
Posted at 01:11h, 13 MayReally fantastic Martin! Such an amazing range of images – and the music suits it perfectly. If I can make one suggestion (if you don’t mind) – personally I would let some photos stay on screen for longer than others (i.e. not have the same time for each image), to maximise the impact – the milky way shot for example, or some of the desert images, particularly the tree silhouettes.
Martin Bailey
Posted at 09:01h, 13 MayThanks SM!
I actually did lengthen some of the images, but not many. When you lengthen them more than a second or so though, a lot of the time it really throws off the rhythm and flow of the presentation, and double the length (10 seconds) is too long, so it’s always a tough one to pull off.
Luc Renambot
Posted at 03:23h, 13 MayNice job, looks very good in 4K.
Martin Bailey
Posted at 09:03h, 13 MayThat’s great Luc. I’m pleased you like it. I watched this on my large screen 4K TV too, and it looks pretty good. The sky full of stars with the Milky Way is insane. You wouldn’t think there were that many stars up there, but the 5Ds R sees them pretty well. 🙂
Rick Andrews
Posted at 04:20h, 13 MayVery nice Martin, lovely imagery and great music to accompany your shots.
Martin Bailey
Posted at 09:04h, 13 MayThanks Rick! I really struggled with the music, as I made it from scratch, so that’s really good to hear.
DaveT
Posted at 16:55h, 13 MayGreat video Martin – I particularly liked the star shots and loved the lighting of the portraits of the Himba people (spectacular).
It looks like Boinx does a good job. Before switching o my iMac five years ago, I used to use Photodex Producer for my slideshow stuff but unfortunately it’s not Mac friendly.
Well done too on creating the music – it works very well. May I ask how you created it? Are you using instruments that you are playing yourself or software?
Martin Bailey
Posted at 18:57h, 13 MayThanks Dave!
Yes, I love those Himba people shots too. Mostly done inside their huts with just the natural light coming through the small door, and high ISO, from around 3200 to 5000 mostly.
I used Photodex Producer on Windows too. Good software.
I made the music in Ableton Live, so it’s a bit of both, i.e me playing and software. All of the sounds were created using a MIDI keyboard. I chose the chord sequence based on but slightly different to a song that the staff at one of the lodges sang, but slowed it down from a tempo of 120 to 96, to give me a 2.5 second bar, which meant two bars would give me 5 second per slide.
The synth sounds were modified Ableton Live instruments, and the piano was an unmodified Grand Piano instrument. In Ableton you create little MIDI sequences, then you can click and select them, recording them to a timeline, and then move the sequences around and add extra instruments etc. You basically build the song up piece by piece.
The piano piece was basically me playing, but I’m not good enough to just play it as is. I could play the end piece if I practiced it more, but basically I played each 8 bar phrase first, then added the bass chords afterwards, and tweaked the position of some of the notes to make it better sounding. I didn’t simply Quantize it, as I wanted to keep a little bit of the natural feel to it.
Those 32 bars of piano are what I struggled with the most though. I tend to get stuck in corny sounding chord sequences and waste hours trying to let go of them. 🙂
I also have an AKAI EWI 5000 which is a MIDI wind instrument. I wasted another day or so on a breathy flute solo with the EWI, but it didn’t match the song, so I left it out in the end.
All good fun, but it took way too long. In the future I’m going to try to create the music for possible use well in advance of creating a slideshow, so that I can get a head start on it. For example, I’d like to update my Nature of Japan slideshow, and create a new Iceland slideshow, but I’m now going to try to at least make a good start on the music for these in my spare time beforehand. 🙂
Cheers,
Martin.
Dave T
Posted at 22:02h, 13 MayThanks for getting back to me on the music thing. You certainly put a lot of work into it, and it paid off. Good luck with the future composing.
Martin Bailey
Posted at 09:12h, 14 MayThanks Dave. I need it! 🙂
Jenn Bestwick
Posted at 07:41h, 14 MayCan’t wait:) The Himba people shots are particularly stunning. And we’ll done on the music:)
Martin Bailey
Posted at 09:13h, 14 MayI can’t wait to get back there with you in the group. You are going to have a great time Jenn.
Janet Webster
Posted at 13:05h, 15 MayFantastic images and lovely music. What an accomplished gentleman!
Martin Bailey
Posted at 17:00h, 15 MayThanks so much Janet!
zeofoto
Posted at 07:25h, 16 MayBeautiful work. I didn’t know I wanted to visit Namibia, but now I do!
Martin Bailey
Posted at 08:15h, 16 MayThanks Zeofoto. If you plan to visit, it would be great to see you on a future tour. 🙂