I’ve been hanging on to this couple session for a while, one of our favourite shoots of the year, old planes, extinct films, rockstar couple. Shot at the war museum in case you’re planning something similar and themed after the end scene in Casablanca and the original movie poster. I was tempted with some crunchy black and white, but decided that a bit of color would give it a nice twist, and make it look more like a movie poster.

Anyway, took me a while to settle on a single image, but this one may be my favourite.

Just finished editing Deborah and Michele’s couples session. For me this image is made by the guy on the bicycle, he gives the image a sense of place and second focal point.

Since they said that they weren’t planning on taking the dress back to Australia anyway …

Almost unbelievably, seven visits to the dentist in three months and my teeth are still sore. I’m still chewing codeine by the handful, its either that or gnawing off my arm. Hopefully, today’s visit will be the last for while. Toothache is very distracting when you’re trying to decide what shade of grey a red dress should be in black and white.

Its been an incredibly busy two weeks at the studio. We’ve been in and out of town on at least four shoots, I’ve been underwater photographing a red dress, more teeth have been pulled out, photographed a rocking bridal on a horse, our promo video was shot, edited and the first draft was delivered. We released a new set of vintage actions on the Dror Eyal Experiment and tried to edit a serious amount of cool weddings. Very little sleep has been had by all and no work has been done on the thesis.

But before I crash for the night, a quick couple of pics from our most rocking couple Leasha and Cameron. An urban, grungy, and just loads of fun, couples session. It was impossible to get these two to look serious for a second.

Its hard to strike a balance with blog posts. On the one hand I want to showcase a lot of our photojourn documentary style photography, because that’s what we specialise in – capturing real moments as they happen. On the other hand I feel that we shoot killer bee portraits and I want to show a lot of those. Then there is the issue that I don’t want to post 50 images from a wedding. I want to show our best four or five from the day so that the client gets a nice representation and can send the link to friends who weren’t able to make it, but I also want to give prospective clients a glimpse of the kind of images we shoot week after week. Its hard looking at over 4000 images and trying to pick four that I feel represent the wedding for me.

Last Wednesday Deborah and Michele got married at the Johannesburg Country Club. Besides being total rockstars, totally themselves, laughing, having a good time and just making it super easy for us to get killer bee documentary images they were also very very photogenic. Too easy. Deborah also realised that we weren’t going to have enough time for her portrait shoot so she booked a day after shoot, which meant that we got to do another portrait shoot at a different location. I’d originally thought maybe something grungy downtown to offset the JCC image, but after seeing that dress and Michele’s suit, I knew that it had to be something classic and elegant.

The highveld thunderstorm season has started in full force, one of the few reasons to still be living in Jozi.

We had one of our coolest couple sessions today, started off at Melrose Arch and ended up at … well, its my new top secret location. Lets just call it Carlo’s place. We got to play with some low light situations, laughed way too much and I even managed to sneak in some caffeine. The weekend is officially over.

PS: Had lunch yesterday with V at this place near Melrose Arch where someone clearly had a very dark sense of humour. They’d named one of the wraps, Mary’s Little Lamb and one of the breakfasts (with two eggs) was known as the Broken Nest. Mary’s Lamb was delicious btw.

When I first started out with my own studio, I knew that as well as photographing I’d be doing some bookkeeping, admin, probably some writing … but I never figured I’d end up as tech support. After today I now know more about ATI drivers, and installing them using only an INF file than any person would need to know to function as a self-actualized individual in the world. Its been that kind of week.

Monday kind of started with a cool photo session out in Emmarentia. Not the cultivated, rose garden, tea and jolly hockey sticks side of it, but the wilder, tangled, less formal side, where the trees are often hit by lightning and their trunks show tangled knots next to burnt bark. It ended up with me trying to translate a Swedish forum post about our work using Google Translate and finished with me rethinking our approach to the blog. It was that kind of Monday.

So yeah, back to the shoot. Chenelle and Omri got married at the Sandton Shul on Sunday and booked us for their day after shoot (or bridal session if you’re American). I’ve spoken about the couple sessions before and they’re some of the coolest shoots we do, basically a one hour session which you can use for an engagement session, day after shoot or whatever. It gives us a chance to try some new ideas, look at some off the beaten path locations and generally have some fun and take some cool pics. We got to do some cool white suit and white dress in a veld shots, burnt trees, and I even got to shoot a lying down image. Chenelle and Omri were that kind of cool.

Ben and Cindy are both wedding photographers who got married a couple of months ago and approached us to do an urban couple’s session. We’re always game for anything urban, and I had a few ideas I wanted to try out. Saturday afternoon they arrived all kitted out in their wedding gear, we got into the big black car and headed into Joburg. First stop, the train yards, I’ve always wanted to do a big shoot there, big bonus points if we could get a couple of trains moving in the background. Alas, us and security could not agree so we headed towards old faithful, the war memorial behind the zoo. We were just settling down to do some portraits of Cindy when security showed up and demanded that we pay “the photography fee”. I snapped a couple of pics while speaking to the guard and we headed back to the car. Seems you can’t just go anywhere and take a pic these days.

Our last stop was an amazing wall I’d spotted while driving through Randburg on my way back from a lunch. The light was perfect, the cars driving by hooted, people stopped and congratulated the couple, and we got some killer bee pics.

If you’re interested in a couple’s session, they’re available on any day when we aren’t already booked. You’re welcome to use them as an engagement session, bridal session, or day after shoot.

A couple of months ago, without much fanfare, we added a new product offering to our packages. The couples session. Basically an hour with V and I photographing you and your partner in Dror Eyal Photography style – you can use it as a session for your guest book, or save the date card, or if you just want some rocking photos of you and your partner.

Anyway, this weekend it was the turn of Carmelo and Rene, two naturals in front of the camera. We met for some coffee at Doppio, and headed out to one of my fav spots to shoot at – the drive-in. Deserted and packed with memories, its one of those icons of South African culture that’s rapidly dying out. Then it was off to our super secret spot where the sun always sets picturesquely, there are trees and windmills and veld and long empty roads. The sun set perfectly as it always does, Rene and Carmelo looked very much in love and the cameras clicked away. Too easy.

So some of the promised photos. We managed to take a couple of hours off last Sunday and go out and do a portrait session with Liezl and Francois, two very cool people – they drove up from Welkom, which I kept confusing with Witbank, or was that the other way around?

We had a very cool session by the old burnt out petrol/diesel station down the road in Honeydew, there was even a rooster running around. I really wanted a shot with them and the rooster but that rooster was way too fast, he’d been around for a while and was way too street smart for me.

Anyway, I’m posting a contact sheet from the shoot, way too many great pics to just choose one or two: