Who is Koisan?

A job has become a hobby.  Like a modern-day hunter-gatherer, I now venture out looking for stories and capturing images.

South Africa’s earliest indigenous peoples are the pastoralist Khoi-Khoi and the hunter-gatherer San (awkwardly lumped together in the designation Khoisan).  Wandering far and wide, the San (long known as Bushmen) developed an uncanny ability for tracking game and finding sustenance in what the land had to offer – all the while protecting their precious environment.  They left a unique heritage in music and dance, the spoken word and beautiful rock art all over Southern Africa.

In celebration of their skills and culture, Koisan was born.

The tools of my trade are the computer keyboard and camera.  And a sense of design and language, composition and light, words and context.

What I compose in text or image, is mostly what interests me:  human endeavour, our environment, culture, the arts, science, technology, history.

I’ve honed my skills over 50 years – from school days immersed in reading and composing essays, which I loved, to capturing images on film.  Yes, film that resulted in monochrome or colour prints from a darkroom.  Then I moved on to 35mm colour slides (also called transparencies) and now digital images that we manipulate on computer for better results, using sophisticated photographic software.

Yet, in all these endeavours we employ artistic talent learnt from experience and inherited from those who came before us.