If you’ve spent any amount of time on this blog, you’ve probably realized by now that I love driving. Driving long distances, antique cameras, late night tv and caffeine, hey you got to have some vices. So Saturday morning we hopped in the big black car, headed out into the fog and pointed it towards Gabarone. Big empty road, amazing scenery and coffee out there at the Wimpy in Koster.

I once had a chat to someone who came from Koster, his only comment was “if you swing to catch a chicken you’ll miss it”. I’m still not sure about that expression, but I suspect that it says a lot about people who grew up in Koster.

LeeAnne and Giles got married in the middle of a large piece of veld near her parents house in Phakalane, under a large tree. The reception was a private garden affair, a large tent pitched under the stars, lambs roasting on spits and tons of candles.

Hours later, the taste of the lambs still lingering on my taste buds, the sun is up again and V and I are sitting in the breakfast room at Judy’s B&B, there’s an Australian parrot called Bingo sitting on the chair next to me. I’m downing a mug of hot coffee and mentally going through the images we took the day before – there are some killer bee ones in there. I’m thinking about the drive back as the caffeine seeps into my bones, Bingo says nothing.

We’re watching the sun set over LeeAnne and Giles’ beautiful garden wedding near Phakalane, Botswana (don’t even, there’s no way to pronounce that without sounding rude).

All this time off from the internet and email has had me putting together a serious amount of album pages. Putting together albums is the flipside of photographing weddings. Most people can pull together one or two great photos from a wedding, add a lot of photoshop and you can easily get a couple of killer pics from a wedding to post on a blog. The trick comes from photographing a wedding for an album; you need to shoot sequences, images that fit together, narrate a story, give an idea of what the wedding was about. It’s why I always tell my clients at their consultations that the photography has to be a collaboration between the photographer and the couple.

Anyway, just wanted to show off some pages from Thandi and Tom’s wedding. It has one of my favorite double pages ever. It’s a 60 page Asuka btw.

btw I’ve been listening to a lot of Vampire Weekend, really cool rock band with some reggae touches. Reminds me a lot of The Clash if they had grown up in Joburg and immigrated to London. Check out Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa, or The Kids Don’t Stand A Chance.

I’ve been desperately finishing an assignment on EU patent laws so forgive me for the short entry, I’m all written out at the moment.

We went up to Gaborone to shoot Thandi and Tom’s wedding, circled in a big red marker on my calendar, I’ve been looking forward to this one for over a year now. Thandi was chilled as anything, having fun with her day and her girls, and was such a pleasure to be around. I always think, you’ve planned for so long for the day, when it arrives, enjoy it.

It was quite a ride to Mokolodi across some serious veld, but wow was it worth it. I don’t think any photography can do justice to getting married at the edge of Lake Gwithian, in an enclosure made up of indigenous trees under an arch laced with flowers. Add a marimba band, African skies and two curious hippos who watched carefully from the lake (or was it us that watched them very carefully?).

It was a day that seems to skirt description, we listened to Satan being described as an illegal squatter by a bible waving priest, watched the sun set over the window of the world, made a cheetah purr, saw what I think was an ancient hunting dance, met the number one contender for the world’s cutest kid and were witnesses to one of the most amazing wedding ceremonies I’ve ever seen.

Thandi and Tom, you guys have such a warm and amazing relationship, it was a real pleasure meeting you, your friends and your families. Ok, some pics, there are a lot of them and so many more that maybe I’ll show later:

It’s 11pm, we’re somewhere east of Gaborone, I think it’s east of it, hell I could be west of Gaborone. I kind of lost direction about eleven hours ago when we did a U-turn in the industrial sector. Cell C reception disappeared early this morning when we entered the Groot Marico district. What I do know is that it’s 11pm or somewhere just after. We’re in the bush near Gaborone in an all terrain vehicle with no windows, hurtling down a hill in the dark, towards somewhere hopefully warmer. There are about 20 other people in the vehicle and they are all singing in a language I think is Setswana. I’m writing this on a piece of paper in the dark, because I don’t want to forget, I’m not sure that photos can convey the effect of being out here.

Finally back home after a 400km ride across the border. Just checked the pics, backed them up, there is a migraine settling behind my left eye. You’re going to have to settle for just the one photo until Monday.