For some reason this was a shoot that was stored far back in my mind, and similar to all things in life; what seemed far away suddenly was a reality and in real “Quick Time”.  Maybe its the whole Facebook thing which is so much the intrinsic backbone of modern social society…well whatever…Aniqah and Nic, and lil’ ol me have been online friends through Facebook for a while and having booked me many months ago, I felt like I knew them already when we met to do our shoot, by seeing the daily updates and posts that many of us participate in doing.

I love that sometimes people are nervous to work with me when they finally do.  Its so not the way I look at it, I am not in any way a superficial person, I love my job and I like hanging out with people so when I work with my fellow humans, to me its kind of like hanging out and creating something fun, deep and new.

Most people that decide to commission me to capture a special time in their lives often say to me that, “the reason they like me is that I have a different approach to images” and so on.  My answer to the way that I carry out my work and duty to my clients is simply that “If I was going to pay someone to do this for me, this is the way I would want it”, and in case I didn’t make any sense there,  I don’t follow the trends in the ever changing world of couple/wedding photography and I purposely do not take  part in any social hierarchy.  I simply do what I do; the way I want to, and I believe that a certain folk will see that and want me to do that for them.

Ok, I’m babbling.  I think Nic and Aniqah are a great example to me of a great client – because they fit my character profile.

BTW and OMG! They are totally getting married like seriously soon.  I wonder what we will create?

These guys are super chilled, and half way through the shoot, we even decided to take a break and go have a drink at Fishermans.  Thats a first for me.  I should do that more often…..?

Ill post images from the wedding soon, and write more then.

Going through my images from the last wedding season from September 2010 – Until the end of 2011 I found so many images that I really love. I thought about putting a post together with about 10 – 20 images but rather I decided to post about 70. Although I have so many more I love, here is a taste of my style and the images that I have taken that I love, at weddings. Enjoy.

  Elana and Roy were married in busy busy December at Dieu Donne wine estate, and had the ceremony at St Georges Church at Solms Delta.  They were a pleasure to work with and such nice people.  It was great getting to work with both of them, as besides being nice people they are both good looking and are photogenic, so for me its a bonus as I get to make them my “schmodels” for a day!!

I worked with my good friend and awesome photographer Lebo Moleko, who also works as a photographer at the Pixel Foundry.  So that made my  life way easier…not that it was tough working with great people, just that we were real busy and I have tons of gear that I haul around so its tough doing that by myself.

I have a new website coming out and I was hoping to have it online by now, so I have been holding back on all the work that I want to publish, however it looks like a couple more weeks, so I decided to post some of the work now.

Dieu Donne is a real nice venue to shoot at and has great staff (which is a big deal to photographers, as we have to sometimes be pushy with the staff as they dont take us in to account, or care much of the time about our role at the event), It has a stunning view like the above image, the only thing is that everything is on a hill so it can be tough for the bride to get around, and I have a knack for trying to shoot in the most uncomfortable places.

I hope you like these images, Im really liking exploring different colour balances and lighting.

For those that wonder how I get my lighting effects, it is all done on 600 Watt battery powered Profoto lights, with a grided softbox.  I like other ways of lighting too, but at a wedding everything is so rush rush and often very windy, so its tough to start bringing out all the other lighting tools.  If I have lots of time, then I do like to bring out beauty dishes and multiple lights.  Then again for that kind of lighting I also need a second assistant, and recently I started working with Fran of Francoise V Photography who is great and is helping me with that too.  Check out my upcoming work to see different lighting scenarios.

Rob and Beth had their wedding about 6 months ago and it was held in Green Point at the restaurant Pigalle.  It was my first time shooting there, and it was real awesome.  Im pretty sure its a themed restaurant/venue, and if it is; or isn’t, the theme of the wedding was kind of like a 1930′s Casablanca theme.

The wedding was real great, obviously…because I was there…!  Just kidding, it is because Rob and Beth rock and I was fortunate enough to be able to be there.  The reason it has taken me sooooo long to post some images from the wedding, is that on the wedding day the weather was so terrible, and I offered to do a post shoot so that we could get some bridal couple portraits.  And then I guess with us both being real busy we only actually arranged for the post shoot to be a few weeks ago.  Im so glad that we did it, as I got some awesome shots, and Im hoping Beth and Rob will love them.

We shot the post shoot at the University of Cape Town, at their CBD campus.  Im sure it has a name, but I have no idea what it is.

Rob, is a musician and is a member of the band Flat Stanley.  And Beth is like an awesome Dancer….Beth please let me know your style of dance.  I forgot.

Right after the wedding, I went with Celeste to Bali, and Rob and Beth did too at the same time.  Bizarre-Much?

Oh, and one more thing.  My goal was to edit all these images in Black and White, to try and fit in with the theme of the wedding, but since Im such a colour mongrel, I couldn’t do it….I tried.  Really.  In this post I included shots from all three shoots that we did.  I also did a video for them.  Ill post a link soon.

Its all back to work and rock and roll for me and my team.  Its 2012 and we are all sails ready.

I have lots of developments coming up.  Firstly and mainly this is going to be one of my last posts on this site, as my brand new site is almost ready and I will be switching over to it soon.  I really look forward to the new look and feel, and also to have a different web site structure so I can easily seperate my work into different categories and also have more sections of “Stuff!”

This Christmas I spent with Celeste and my daughter Laurel Jane up on the West Coast in Strandfontein.  It was so awesome, but I couldn’t bring my surf board and there was surf there….it was hard to watch waves and not be able to go surfing.  Anyhoo….I got to spend some time with my ladies!

So this is my first post of 2012 and Im really happy to be publishing it, with the photos of the wedding of Jacques and Katie.  Katie is from Zimbabwe originally and Jacques is from Cape Town….but they both live in the UK now.  It was great chatting with Jacques because he serves in the Royal Forces and is an engineer serving currently in Afghanistan.  Thats nuts.  I wonder what it would be like to be in the army and in a war and all that stuff.  That is pretty hectic.  I think I would like to be a war photographer to be honest….maybe if I had taken that path…..The images are just so intense, and obviously so.  Have you seen the Bang Bang Club movie?  I suggest you read  the book….also the movie is cool, except for some of the accents which are pretty horrendous, and it makes it hard to take it seriously.   The story however is intense, and reminded me that being a wedding photographer is all about being unique and seperating yourself from all the newbie togs and wannabe photographers….but in war journalism … well that is the real deal! Whoh!

Oh yes, a wedding!  The wedding was awesome, Meerendal is a great venue and you can just walk around the place and get great shots with great areas, without the need to pack up all the gear and to drive somewhere.  The funniest thing ever was when they were doing the garter toss and they blindfolded Jacques and got him to go off and search for the garter…low and behold he found himself with a groomsman with hairy legs…..eeeww!! Was a howl.  Check the photos at the bottom of the post and you will see.  Ok Im back to editing….January is a month for me of just editing as I shot all December long and now I have to get all that out of the way! Sjoe!

Nele and Karl met me just a few days ago, and not having a wedding booking this weekend, I decided that instead of “Just Living” I would edit!  No worries, editing for me is quite theraputic…I work in my office, I have my dogs sleeping on their dog bed beside me….waiting for their walk, I have my guitar beside me for those long processing periods, Im listiening to my latest album that im loving, I have the surf report on screen two and with the promise that as soon as Im finished editing first the dogs will get their walk on the beach and then im going to spend the rest of the day surfing!  So it sounds awesome….if your me…..and if your me, it is awesome!

This will likely be my last post for the year.  I have about 4 weddings before the end of the year, and I also need to have a holiday…and I hope you will too.  This year, like last year we are spending Christmas up on the West Coast at our family holiday house in Strandfontein.  The West Coast is such a gem….I grew up with summers in Plettenberg Bay, and although I will always cherish Plett, and buy a house there one day I hope….The West Coast is wild, rugged and simple.  I love it there.  We have a secret spot about 20 minutes drive from the village and we go out there and whack old golf balls in to the ocean, and start our sun downers at lunch time and pretty much chillax and braai the rest of the time.  Sweet South African Style.  This year, will also be my daughters first Christmas, and even though she is pretty much unaware its going to be a big affair of getting her tons of gifts that she will have almost no use for!  I guess you have to make Christmas a huge deal for kids, it was the highlight of the year when I was young….as IM sure for you too.  Im all dodgy and disgruntled now in my ripe old age, but ofcourse we must preserve these celebrations for our children.

Oh Yes, And the season finale for the weddings of 2011 will be of this very good looking and super chilled Nele and Karl, in Churchaven and Geelbek, near Laangebaan.   We had to postpone this shoot twice before we finally found a good day to do it….It is the ridiculously windy-windy season in Cape Town at the moment, so luckily we found a day that we were all able to do it.  We landed up shooting near Monkey Valley which is a small resort at the foot of Noordhoek beach.  I shot there a few years ago and made a last minute call to go and shoot their again.  Nele and Karl brough along some Champagne, and I found my self starting the shoot with two glasses….I should really do that more often.  Maybe Ill just bring a bottle of booze along on my future shoots, that should paint a great image of me as a first time experience for my clients working with me……ok maybe not!?

I really look forward to this wedding on the 30th of December, and will write more about them when I release the official photos of their day.

Thanks to Francoise V for working with me on this shoot.  Francoise is another Kommetjie photographer that is going to start working with us.  Sha-wesome!

Im really looking forward to this up and coming wedding as it is going to be Cuban themed, so im interested to see how that is going to look, and also it will be somthing different to capture.  We were going to do a Cuban themed pre shoot so that the book that I make for the wedding day would fit in, but for that we needed to really go all out and hire out Cape To Cuba and we were having trouble getting the time right…so we just decided to mix it up a bit in Cape Town.

Ill write much more when I post their wedding.  I am trying out new post processing ways, for some actions that I have created.  Hope you like the look and feel. Im totally diggin’ it!

Roy and Elana are getting married soon at Dieu Donne Wine Estate. Lately the wind has been howling (Its that time of  year in Cape Town) so we had to reschudle the shoot and luckily on the day that we did the shoot it was great weather.
Elana is an attorney and Roy is a professional tennis coach.  I always like to know what other people do….we all get so wrapped up in our little worlds that sometimes I forget that there is another world…but there is!  I though it would be awesome to hire these two as a team.  Roy could help me with my back hand and Elana could help me sue my apponents..so even if my back hand didnt win, there would still be some kind of exchange going on….DRUM ROLL!
Ok, so I should focus more on my work and not trying to be a commedian.

E and R (ER) were great to work with.  I liked shooting Elana, she has a real nice look and the photo below is one of my favourites … reminds me of a painting, that leads you to wonder what she is thinking.  And Roy also, is very easy to shoot.

Anyway, I will write more about Elana and Roy when I post their wedding photos.

This shoot was shot in and around the Crayfish Factory near Misty Cliffs on the Southern Peninsula….In case you were wondering.

Finally!  And I really do say finally with a relief….Im now finished editing the images from Annemare and Damien’s wedding in Philadelphia. 

It was my first time shooting in Phili, and I really liked it.   Luckily it was a cool day when we were shooting as on a cool day it was still pretty hot.  I cant imagine how hot if must get there in February, but im thanking my lucky stars that the day of this wedding was comfortable.

Annemare is a South African Girl and Damien is an Irish Lad.  I really like Irish people.  I know it sounds silly, but I lived in Ireland for 4 years and its the only place in the world that I have lived that I had a group of friends pretty much within a week of arriving there.  In those days I worked at a pub, and on my first shift I was invited by a group of employees from Dell Computers to hang out with them and their mates the next day.  Exact terminalogy was “Were going on the Piss, and you are comin!”  So I went and from that day on and for the 4 years I stayed, lived and worked in Ireland I made such great friends and friends they are still today.  So when I meet someone frome Ireland, I already like them.

Damien and Annemare have a great group of friends and you will see by the photos im sure, how that is true.  That just goes to show that they too are great people.