Being inside a hora at a Jewish wedding is a bit like being a coin inside a washing machine, at least it feels that way when you’re trying to hang on to your camera, get some insane close-ups and stay on your feet. Add an Israeli cousin, imported directly from the motherland and you’re talking some serious dancing, acrobatics and just general organized chaos. This one is from Shannon and Gary’s wedding at Avianto.

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I’ve had a look at these images quite a few times now, managed to drink two cups of coffee trying to think what to write. I have writer’s block again. It’s late again, and I’m trying to string together something coherent about the whirlwind of emotions that today/yesterday has been. So I put the kettle on again, the mad fluffy black cat sliding past, completely ignoring me. The fridge is humming, the night time drama of insects and rain is playing in the background. This blog post is not writing itself, for some reason every week I kind of hope that it would, but it never does. So it’s getting later. I must start typing.

I love jewish weddings, I love the cultural aspects of it, the ancient rituals of the bedeken and the signing of the ketubah. I’m biased. I know. But somehow photographically the images seem to resonate for me. Most moments in a wedding do resonate for me. There is a deep sense of emotion when a father walks down the aisle with his daughter – I mean which father doesn’t dream of walking his daughter down the aisle one day? The look on the groom’s face when he sees his bride for the first time, the nervous tick that most grooms seem to pick up after the ceremony , you know the one where they spend the rest of the afternoon fiddling with their wedding ring. I love those moments, just those raw emotions, and of course all the other in-between moments, the subtle glances and hands clutching at each other. The guests congratulating the couple, the kids overdosed on sugar and excitement, flowergirls taking their roles very seriously. We try capture those moments. People always say that you have nothing after the wedding but the photos, I think you have a lot of memories, memories that photos sometimes help you remember, but I suspect that most grooms will never forget the moment they saw their brides for the first time.

For me, this wedding was full of those genuine moments. Sure, yes, we did try to get Gary to stop smiling, no, we didn’t succeed, yes, we took some killer bee pics at Avianto in the lavender fields, in a bit of veld at the bottom, inside the village (but far away from the bicycle), but really these were far outweighed by just how much genuine emotion the day held. So now it’s hours later, I’m pretty exhausted, the kettle has switched itself off a while back, I’m not sure I have another cup of coffee in me.

More moments from Shannon and Gary’s Avianto Wedding can be seen on our facebook page, maybe even pics from their rocking horas.

More moments from Shannon and Gary’s Avianto Wedding can be seen on our facebook page, go ahead and tag yourself.

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You have to be pretty tough to survive being a groom at a jewish wedding.

Jan/Feb are catch up months at the studio, so I’m posting bits and pieces that catch my eye as I edit.

I know, I know, I keep starting my blog posts with … the rain, but it is wedding season in Joburg, which happens to nicely coincide with the rainy season. By the time we arrived at Shepstone Gardens to set up and plan our shoot, the sky was already black and the rain had just started coming down. All of this despite the fact that the BBC site had predicted that it would only rain later that evening.

Nicole and Milton were calm as beans about the whole rain thing actually, I was a bit stressed (I had somehow managed to miss my extra large cappucino at the Wild Bean before I left home). It seemed like just minutes before the bedeken (the veiling of the bride in a Jewish wedding), the sun came out and one particularly picturesque shaft of light kept landing on Nicole’s veil as she circled Milton under the chuppah. Killer bee. I love the wedding season and its storm clouds, the moodier the better.

all the images were processed using our actions (which are free for download).

Anyone want to loan me some money to buy the old Johannesburg Post Office? and if you’re not reading the Daily Maverick yet …

How busy are we? We finally got a day off yesterday and decided to unwrap the DVD player we bought last month and finally watched The Wrestler. Lots of weddings still to be blogged.

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.

Monday, and its bucketing down in Joburg. The kind of rain that last week drowned the mamba, she’s still in the shop and I’m heading towards Shepstone Gardens for Tova and Brad’s chuppah. I had been kind of mournfully looking at the rain out of the bedroom window this morning, swearing softly under my breath and muttering something about sunny South Africa, when V pointed out that at this point I probably wouldn’t know what to do if it didn’t rain on a day I had to shoot a wedding.

Shepstone Gardens is rapidly becoming the IT venue if you’re going to have a wedding on that end of the world, and they seem to be building more and more cool nooks and crannies every time we shoot there. Beautiful venue and a stunning, stunning wedding – I would have actually liked to have posted some images of the actual chuppah and bedekken, cause from a photojourn perspective there is so much emotion, but I feel that they are private moments and best left for those who were there. We did the photoshoot in twilight, I’m not even sure that the sun made it out of those clouds except for one glorious moment during the chuppah. Did I mention that Tova, Brad and guests raised the roof at Shepstone? You haven’t lived until you get stuck inside a hora at a Jewish wedding wondering whether to breath in or breath out or take photos.

Just thought I’d add that we got a lot of help from DVI who were the videographers at the wedding and are highly recommended.

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