Around The World With ...

Alice Keeney!

Alice is a photography instructor here at CCforP and does freelance photography as well. While she resides here in Charleston she travels the globe doing various photography projects. Currently doing a shoot in Namibia, Africa she has sent us a 'postcard' of what she has been up to...


Hello Everyone!
So after a week of being in Africa, I have visited two countries and four cities. Needless to say, I have been moving around a lot! I spent the majority of my first week here in Namibia working on a shoot for Johnson & Johnson's Annual report. I then traveled to Etosha National Park, followed by Swakopmund, on the coast, and then back to Cape Town, South Africa.
No, I was not shooting hair care products, or baby shampoo, for Johnson & Johnson as I have been asked many times, but rather a non-profit that they fund called the Namibia Street Soccer Project. For more info click HERE. Namibia is just over three hundred thousand sq miles, and is populated by an estimated two million people, resulting in the most sparsely populated country in Africa. This project took me to the far north of Namibia, to a town called Ondangwa and the surrounding areas. The rainy season is coming to an end, but there has been some serious flooding in the north. The water has risen to chest height in some areas, and has been such for several weeks now. This region is very hot and humid, and reached about 104 degrees F when I was there. As you can imagine, the lighting is obsurdly harsh most of the time which creates another obstacle. More on that later.

After a successful two day shoot, I headed to Etosha National Park to see the Etosha Pan, a huge shallow depression of about 5 000km². The surrounding watering holes offer some great game viewing. There was an incredible rainstorm that rolled through in the late afternoon offering some spectacular light following. Sometimes things just fall into place for you, as they did with this zebra.


I then traveled to the coastal region, of this incredibly diverse country where the sand dunes run directly into the Atlantic Ocean. It is a sight like no other. Unfortunately, because of the proximity to the cold ocean fronts, the dunes are often covered by fog that sometimes doesn't break til late afternoon. The greatly diffused sun resulted a lack of contrast in many of my images, but the experience of climbing to the top of one of the dunes and looking out on miles upon miles of dunes was magnificent.
I am now back in Cape Town, just beginning to explore the city. I will be sure to touch base with another entry next week, so check back!

For all of you "gear junkies", I brought a back pack filled with the following:
2 Canon Camera Bodies
24-70mm-f 2.8 lens
Canon17-40mm-f 4 lens
Canon70-200mm-f 2.8 lens
Canon50mm- f1.4 lens
Canon1.4 Extender
Canon 2 Chargers
1 Converter
1 External Hard Drive Lacie
1 Laptop Mac
Total weight: approx 35 lbs
(I probably could have done without the 17-40 lens thus far, but I got a few great shots with it, so the extra weight was worth it!)

I hope you are all doing well!

~ Alice

Thanks Alice for sharing your adventures and we look forward to hearing more about your trip!

* all images by Alice Keeney © 2009