It’s just past midnight, we finally made it to the hotel in Cape Town, there’s a dent in the rental car and I’m feeling a little crispy around the edges. I think we’ve had about six hours sleep in total over the last three days, not counting the hour or so on the plane, the only thing keeping me awake at the moment is nasty hotel coffee and what I think is Mao’s Last Dancer on the television. I listen to it in Chinese, I’m too tired to read the subtitles. I wanted to write down some thoughts about this weekend’s wedding before I pass out for the night.

I often hear people saying that after the wedding all you have are the photos. I think more important than the photos are the memories. I’m not sure that any photo can evoke waking up on your first day of being married, watching the sunrise over perfect white dunes near the southern most tip of Africa, freezing cold wind coming from the south, whales breaching the water less than 200 meters away. Hugging each other, wrapped in his jacket, smiling, happy. I like to capture those moments, but I’m not sure that any photos can be a patch on those memories.

I did write down some stuff in my journal, but they are early morning ramblings. Awake because it’s too silent, I can almost hear my neurons snap. For someone used to the snap snap of an electric fence, sleep is difficult. I spent a lot of time staring across the vlei, De Hoop is one of those microspots that make you believe that the world is a beautiful place.

I was going to write a separate post about Souli and Rozanne’s day after shoot, up and awake at 6am after being asleep for only two hours because their photographer promised them the best sunrise on the dunes. The night before a smudged memory of family and friends partying and hollering de hoop hoop. Greek dancing and emotions. Plates and a whole lot of shooters – most common heard phrase of the night, “let’s have some shooters!” We saw whales, many whales, leaping out of the water like National Geographic was auditioning. Amazing people, out of this world decor and location … I could carry on.

So I didn’t get any vendor details, cause I’m terrible at that. I can tell you that De Hoop was incredible in terms of service, food and pretty much everything. The decor, as you can see was insane, I did ask where the cutout pop-up bird place mats came from (Kaalkop) ’cause I thought they rocked.

[ quick update : 12 Oct ] – the wedding was put together by the rockstars at Antoinette Events. V and I were super impressed with the organisation and efficiency, and I know that Rozanne and Souli were as well.

The videographer was Jacques from Guava Graphics who was very unobtrusive and generally a nice guy – highly recommended if you need a videographer in the Cape area.

Ok, once last thing, we take on very few destination weddings every year, I am petrified of flying, and V and I are both very grateful to have been able to shoot this one for you guys.

More pics from Rozanne and Souli’s off the map wedding on our facebook page.

More pics from Rozanne and Souli’s off the map wedding on our facebook page.

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We shot our last wedding of the season yesterday, and now it’s time to catch-up. First up is the Next Level Workshop. Amazing to meet so many new people I’ve only ever seen as avatars or facebook profile images, really great to see so many familiar faces supporting us again, even more cool was to meet so many wedding photographers wanting to push through to something new, and the standard of the work produced at the workshop was pretty insane. Photographers came from all over South Africa to Studio C in Cape Town … Joburg was well represented, Pretoria, Durban and some places I’ve never heard of, apparently on the west coast. I also got to see Ian at work, rocking photoshop the way only he can, and revealing some pretty twisted techniques. I did feel a little less out there on my own after watching him work. We did trash the studio a little, very rock ‘n roll … but they repainted it by the time my plane left Cape Town.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes. Much appreciated. That phone kept vibrating throughout the service!

thanks for all the birthday wishes vibrate, 

photography workshop capetown, 

V and I were in Cape Town this weekend, shooting at the always beautiful Vrede en Lust (or as us English speakers say Vrede en Lust) for Linda and Giovanni’s countryside wedding, with extra Italian flair of course. It also happened to be the weekend that the Argus was on and there were people everywhere searching for their inner 80′s guy, dressed in lycra and spandex, carrying single bicycle wheels. Chaos at the airport, chaos at the hotel with people walking around with bananas tucked into their clothes – don’t even ask.

My favorite conversation of the weekend has to have been with one of the groomsmen who spoke very slow and clear Italian to me, I showed some teeth and nodded, I don’t know any Italian. Later that Sunday morning, sitting on the plane desperate to think about anything besides the fact that we sitting in a small metal cylinder high above the ground, I decided that he was telling me that he reads the blog regularly and loves my photography, either that or that I’d left the lens cap on, I’m tending to the former. Actually I did manage to pick up ‘vicino’ which I’m hoping means closer in Italian.

So yeah, another gorgeous day in the Cape, out of the Joburg smog, staring at some killer bee mountains, watching the sun turn the vineyard into an abstract of fiery greens and yellows. Rocking food, amazing venue, a maitre d’ with the most awesome mustache and the most rockstar couple. I’m pretty sure their first dance was to Ne-Yo’s One In A Million. Nice.

More from Linda and Giovanni’s chilled Vrede en Lust wedding on our facebook page.

More from Linda and Giovanni’s chilled Vrede en Lust wedding on our facebook page.

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Good to be back home, back with William and Hamlet who pretended they didn’t miss us, back to driving a decent car (I must listen to Sybrand more often x100 … next time). Cape Town was rainy, gray and misty – as V would say, “wedding weather”. The workshop went well, some familiar avatars around the table, between which there were a couple of Prophoto and Fuji Awards and a Wedding Photographer of the Year. Thanks to everyone who attended.

I could use a couple of more hours of sleep.

I’ve been reliably informed that I haven’t posted on the blog in over a week, thanks for that email we know who you are. Oh, the same person also informed me that I didn’t post a portrait of myself this year for my birthday. Gotcha there, I posted it on my facebook profile.

Anyway, this is a quick update on what’s been going on in the month of June at the studio. We are literally swamped with work at the moment and have been busy as beans putting together albums, photos, working on new joint ventures and trying to reply to the literally hundreds of emails that have come through. Due to this overload, and lets just say that I didn’t expect this many inquiries this year, we are in the process of trying to find an admin person to handle this for us. The good news is that you can expect to see a lot more pics and albums and … other things I’ll mention a bit later … on the blog in the next couple of days as I take a short breather and surface to do some blogging.

We’ve put together a joint venture between ourselves, a canvas printer and a framing company and will be offering really good quality mounted canvas prints. I’m putting together our pricing at the moment, but you’re looking at about R1600 for a 1.5m by 1m canvas, printed, stretched, mounted, delivered – that’s an A0 and A1 next to each other.

Before we get to the fun stuff, I’m really trying to cut down on the amount of email I’m getting. It seems that every week we get an email from someone putting together an online wedding portal, magazine, community or some other form of electronic business which is set to revolutionize the industry offering a one-stop portal for all a bride’s wedding needs and would like us to contribute, advertise or to use our photos. If your site can beat the following stats, or comes up higher in the SERPS for any of the keywords that we compete on, feel free to send me an email (include stats), please don’t call. Otherwise, I drink your milkshake!

We’re changing hosting providers this month, our current hosting doesn’t seem to be able to cope with the amount of traffic we generate, and we’ve decided to switch, so there may be a slight hiccup during the middle of the month while we make the necessary changes. We are also going to change our URL, but more on that later.

If you’re a photographer and have read this far. Hi!, we are in the process of putting together two seminars on marketing for wedding photographers, they’ll be held in Joburg and are full day events full of practical ideas and advice. There will be an advanced version for those who are already full time and a entry level version for those wanting to go full time. Keep an eye out here for more info.

Lastly, we learned a lot this month. Firstly, we need an admin assistant badly. Secondly, don’t try to fit a 1.5m canvas into the green mamba, you need the big black car to transport that kind of monster. Thirdly, wedding photography doesn’t scale, you can have too many inquiries, and lastly, did you know that L. Ron Hubbard lived in Linksfield? I didn’t, oh, and it gets pretty damn cold out in Cape Town, pretty damn cold.

Dylsky, it’s on its way.

Back from Cape Town – thanks to everyone who sent through birthday wishes, good luck for exams wishes and just a hey howyoudoin? we were inundated with SMS’s, facebook messages, skype messages, emails and phone calls from ex-clients now friends, facebook friends, people we’ve only ever exchanged emails with. It’s a good thing I didn’t have internet access. Special thanks to Sjaan and Dylsky for putting me up.

Lets see; Cape Town was cold, rainy and gray as expected. I had a brush with crime, luckily it was only a rental car, however I’m still waiting to see how much the rental agency is going to nail me for. Luckily I did pick the insurance option. Exams went ok, time will tell. The flight was a blur of too little sleep, but I’m back in Joburg and ready to work my way through the emails and change requests. Although I am thinking it may be time to get an admin person to help.

On the studio side, Grace Ormonde Wedding Style Magazine has chosen two images of ours to appear in their new book. Now I know I’ve said my piece about having our pics appear in wedding mags and I haven’t changed my mind. I do however really like their books. Anyway, congrats to our two couples – I’ll show you guys the pics as soon as I’ve let the couples know, but these are two very edgy photojourn images that I have had a lot of feedback on and I was quite surprised that they were picked.

In between all of the heavy … cough cough … studying, I also managed to watch two flicks. Sweeny Todd – The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, brilliantly dark, super gory, so gothic and Tim Burtonesque that it hurt. Stuart Fyvie was the colorist – and he is just incredible, I love his work. The movie itself was beautiful, just be warned that it is a musical and hence there is a lot of singing. I also watched Room 1408 which was ok. Very good compositions throughout the film, and the use of colors was pretty subtle as well.