Real Africa? (Kembe, Central African Republic)

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Many years ago I overlanded, hitched, trucked, boated and hiked through Africa, the planet's most adventurous continent. Of the numerous countries travelled, Congo and Central African Republic somehow stole my heart as the real dark continent. Ironically rich in valuable minerals, both are tragically war-torn, underdeveloped and with little semblance of a controlling central government. Regional lords often hold a loose control over a province or area of the country. Poverty and corruption abounds and they are risky to travel to with strong travel advisories from most western countries.

Yet the two countries are full of some of the most stunning wildlife and natural treasures. Magnificent verdant rainforest, untamed rivers, gushing waterfalls and rich and colourful tribal cultures abound. Friendly villagers with beaming smiles and generosity of character hide the harshness of their existence.

This is all encapsulated in the village of Kembé (in the very south of the Central African Republic) and the neighbouring twin Kembé Falls. Stereotypical village life continues on in this simple community of mud huts and grass roofs with the women grinding grain, sorting beans, supervising kids, cooking or cleaning while the men attend to house repairs or organising the village affairs. The odd goat or chicken scavenge for a few tasty morsels among the scrubby bushes and tussocks of grass.

Each afternoon, Kembe Falls provide a haven from the steamy heat of central Africa. Swimming dangerously close to where the falls tumble through a rocky gorge, the children exhilarate as they are swept by the strong current towards the falls before emerging on the shoreline as you imagine they are about to be consumed by the thunderous chutes. The mothers appear relaxed as they complete their washing duties further up stream, as generations of children have undoubtedly diced with pending doom in this stunning location.

Everyone in the village seems neatly coiffured. The local barber with illustrations of their services clip, cut and shear their share of villagers while catching up with gossip and goings-on. As excitable chatter in a mix of French and the tribal dialect filled the air over the rollicking rhythmic music crackling from the radio, there seems more gossiping than cutting with most appearing pretty tidy before any hair was cut. Being rather shaggy, I decided to test the local haircutting service though none of the styles appear very suited to someone with straight, light-coloured hair. To the amusement of several villages, the barber chopped and cut his way through my tangled thatch making me feel much better and neater. Rampaging children dived for locks of hair as they floated to the dusty ground, like I was some kind of rock star.

The late afternoon floated away in the gentle currents of the upper river as the sky turned a vibrant orange in the dusty environment and the luminescent stars quickly dominated the pitch-black environment. This truly is real Africa.

Photo of the Week - Leopard Seal (Antarctica)

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With its huge head and mouth, the Leopard Seal has the ferocious look of a fearsome predator. Though more innocent looking in its relaxed pose in the photo, they are demonised as evil by movies such as Happy Feet. These solitary seals efficiently hunt penguins near the Antarctic shores as they depart and arrive at the rookeries over the summer months.

Other Wildlife Photos of the Week
Brown Bear
Mountain Gorilla
Osprey
Toucan
Hoary Marmot
Condor

Photo Tip: Painless Panoramas with Autostitch

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Connecting photos together has always been a challenge. For the last few years I've been using an amazing piece of free software called Autostitch. Developed by a pair of Canadian university students for their thesis, the software takes a collection of photos, analyses their content and automatically joins them both vertically and horizontally into a panorama.

The program is based on the photographer taking a series of photos of a landscape from one location in any sequence you wish. It doesn't matter if the camera is set on automatic, as the program will automatically adjust for changes to light, scale, orientation, exposure and aperture settings of the different photos. Photos without any overlap are conveniently ignored. Autostitch even works with photos scanned from film.

In my example, I took a series of fifteen photos of Purling Brook Falls in south-east Queensland (Australia). Individually, they look like a random collection of shots, though all overlap each other. When fed into Autostitch, the jpeg image at the top of the post results. Cropping this photo gives a final excellent panorama without the usual hassles of connecting photos or correcting any anomalies such as the strange banding which invariably occur with other software.

The user interface is terrible and the instructions scant. Easiest is to group all the relevant photos in a single folder and use all the photos in that folder as input (use File > Open). The output will be a photo called pano.jpg into that same folder. This needs renaming to avoid it being over-written by further runs of Autostitch.

Additionally, I recommend altering a few options (under Edit > Options tab) as follows:
  - set the width of the panorama (or scale) noting that making this much larger considerably slows the program;
  - consider enabling gain compensation which modifies the darkness or lightness of the various photos to make them consistent;
  - set the JPEG option in the bottom right to 90 or 95 to improve the quality of the final panorama (less compression).

With most of the options being indecipherable (terms like theta max and psi orientation abound) to all but the most astute mathematician, I'd suggest leaving them alone. Indeed, Autostitch does a great job without altering any options at all. If mathematics and image gymnastics is your thing, a detailed conference paper on the science behind the technology is available. A forum entry details the best description of all the options (scroll down a little).

Finally, note that the program is only available as a trial so it will eventually expire (after a year or more) and will need to be downloaded again. The technology has been incorporated into a number of commercial photo editting programs as shown on the Autostitch website.

Download a copy of Autostitch and start building your own painless panoramas.

Anything But Another Bloody Cathedral (Helsinki, Finland)

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If you have travelled around Europe for more than a couple of weeks, you become very accustomed to the expression "ABC" or another bloody cathedral/church. Every major city, town or small village is adorned with a church perched on prime real estate which is hundreds of years old rich in history, art and religious symbolism. They are remarkable architectural achievements (such as in the photo below of St Stephens in Vienna) that stand in testimony to the significance religion has played throughout the ages.

The first couple you see are uplifting experiences, wandering around for hours in silent reverence, soaking in each small chapel, fresco, icon and grave. Photos are joyously snapped of each element of the cathedral.

In the next couple, the pace quickens and only the more remarkable elements of the cathedrals are cause for a considered pause and a photo. After a couple more, though no less spectacular or significant, you start to steer well clear and develop a nauseous uncomfortable fear that you'll be sucked inside and start screaming "let me out, it's another ABC". After a few days, the churches all blur into a fog with only the most remarkable elements even surviving your short term memory.

Helsinki's cathedral is entirely different. This travel wonder doesn't even look like a cathedral. Indeed, at first sight, it looks more like a nuclear fallout shelter than a haven for spiritual enlightenment or private reflection. The entrance is little more than a dark concrete tunnel. What you see when you get inside is certainly a surprise.

Built only forty years ago, the stunning Temppeliaukio Cathedral (in the unusually named Töölö) is gouged out of the suburban bedrock with the walls being simply the unfinished rough rock walls. The cathedral is bathed in natural light which streams through a string of windows that sit between the rock walls and the polished copper ceiling. A large copper pipe organ matches the gleaming ceiling with the rocky exterior making for a blissful acoustic setting.

Its unusual design and stunning architectural use of natural light and rock means that Temppeliaukio Cathedral is remembered well after many other cathedrals have faded from memory. If touring the travel wonders of Finland, this striking cathedral must be on your agenda. It is anything but another bloody cathedral.

Helsinki Vacations

Photo of the Week - Half-Timbered Houses (Lavenham, England)

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Lavenham is a delightful old English village with a disproportionately large church and delicately balanced medieval half-timbered houses. It looks as if a strong breeze could blow these ones over, though they've probably been there for 400 or 500 years. Ironically, the leaning house was the office of the local real estate agency when I took this photo!

One of the regulars at the local bar jocularly claimed that Twinkle Twinkle Little Star was originally written in Lavenham and offered to sing it. The frowns and stark expressions around me suggested I refuse the offer and it was clear that he'd already enjoyed a few pints. Who knows if he was correct but it is something that I've never forgotten.

Other Photos of the Week
Stave Church (Norway)
Remote Sign (Iceland)
Bad Hair Day
The Asymmetric Chapel (France)