It was looking like rain, not heavy rain, but that soft soaking rain that seems to have taken up residence in Johannesburg for the last couple of weeks, the kind of rain that wouldn’t put a cramp in your style but might seriously get under your skin after a while. That kind of rain tends to produce soft light, very green greens that if you mute them just right you can get that old world kind of look.

I was back at Shepstone Gardens, the rain had kind of stopped, the rogue hen was scampering about and Nicole had told me earlier that she wanted something a bit edgier, something less pretty. Once the ceremony in the dutch garden was over we took the retinue and headed into Newtown, dodging a photographer shooting what looked like a cover for a youth magazine or maybe an edgy model portfolio, and locating a spot where the light fell just right.

Nicole was cool, relaxed, knew what she wanted, in love with her Brett and the architecture of the inner city. A great start to the year, some killer bee pics in the inner city and probably my all time favorite bridal retinue pic. I don’t often like to take the retinue with us on the couple shoot because they tend to distract the bride and groom, but this lot were perfect, we used them as background, as foreground and we even did some formal group photos under the bridge.

Shepstone is fast becoming our regular wedding venue it seems, either that or we just get a lot of cool, funky clients. Last weekend, no rain, no scorcher of a day, wedding running late – bonus, extra time, which means we get to do some killer bee bridal portraits. Add to that a very smooth, and calm bridal couple and you have the making of a serious party – hang on, it did rain, in fact it came bucketing down, seconds after I had finished the last group photo, I remember now, I spent a good 20 minutes in the rain looking for a lens cap I’d dropped.

Anyway, this week I wanted to post a couple more posed, classical kind of portraits. For me, they were that kind of couple – although the speeches did leave me in stitches.

Rob and Santi from Digital Video Images, always helpful, always getting their lighting just right. Always keeping us entertained

Late on Sunday evening, just wrapping up the weekend, almost Christmas, almost another year has passed.

yes, that copyright notice is annoying me too.

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.

We were photographing the dessert buffet at a recent wedding when a man wearing tzitzit and singing along to Mick Jagger’s Satisfaction, stopped, smiled at us and said that we must try Shelley’s homemade pecan nut ice cream, that it was a once in a life time experience (there’s some confusion as to the story at this point, V recollects him saying that it was peanut butter ice cream, I seem to remember him saying it was pecan nut). Since we almost never say no to anyone singing a Rolling Stones song, we had a taste. I’d place it in the top ten most delicious things I have ever tasted, maybe even top five.

SHELLEY GEFFEN CATERERS – (011) 440-3882

I’ve left this blog post for a bit because I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. I loved so many things about Zuko and Amon’s wedding, from Zuko’s oriental inspired dresses, to the way that they combined their traditions and added their own rituals. I loved the fact that she rode in on a white horse and handed over a sword, that a large part of their ceremony was conducted in Xhosa, the respect that was given to their histories. I liked that one guy that was translating for the guests (from Uganda I think), I liked the symbolism and the thought that they put into everything.

I didn’t understand everything, especially from Amon’s side, but the emotions and meanings were universal. I remember Zuko saying something along the lines of the red in the dress symbolizing the blood that’s our history, and thinking that history is something that can not be ignored. I liked the lantern release, two lanterns released into the night sky, burning their way into the heavens.

It was a very magical day, at the always amazing Shepstone Gardens, and as we leave Zuko hands me a fortune cookie, my fortune reads “our strengths grow out of our weaknesses”.

This was our last wedding for the season and V and I are taking a couple of weeks off to recharge, breath in the desert air and try out some of the antique cameras we’ve been collecting. I’m going to try set up a couple of automated posts to keep all of the “true stalkers” entertained while we’re away.

The delicious east meets west cuisine was by Miya’s. They have sushi classes!!

btw 12 people have emailed in and confessed to being the stalker, I’m going to email everyone back once we figure out a way to award the free portrait shoot.

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.

Not much news on our front, still working on Shelley and Marc’s Shepstone Gardens wedding, which is an amazing venue, and if I look at our stats, our most asked for location. Also been seeing ads for Shelley’s new production Does My Bum Wobble, which is by all accounts, and bits and bobs I’ve seen, pretty hilarious.

I’ve also recently bought myself a little FM radio – there are only so many movies you can half watch while editing photos – and have been hearing this ad for sho’t left. It starts off with a bunch of people with Australian accents talking using South African slang, and the pay off line is something along the lines of 95,000 Australians explored South Africa last year – shouldn’t you be taking a sho’t left. This strikes me as funny as they were all probably visiting their rellies.

We photographed Dale and Claire’s Johannesburg Country Club (or Country Club of Johannesburg as some people seem to call it) wedding this weekend – pics and an entry soon. Just wanted to add that this time of the year, those clouds tend to roll in around 17h00 and the sun disappears long before the official sunset, so plan accordingly.

It’s been a long couple of weeks, I’ve been (figuratively) chained to the desk in the basement working on albums and doing the post on what seems like millions of photos. Two of my cameras broke while shooting a wedding – the two batteries on the big black camera’s battery grip literally shot out, snapping the hooks and the housing – fortunately I had backup cameras, but that would account for my dry wit at Avianto. After many phone call and trips to Kayalami, the local Nikon repair center and I are finally seeing eye to eye as to who should be paying for the repairs. Anyway, it’s been a while so I figured a bit of an update on what is going on in the studio is in order.

Nicola and John’s album, they’re the baobab guys, was nominated for an album award. After speaking to Nicola we decided not to submit it, I’m not really big on photography competitions, but it was nice to get recognition for a really cool album. I don’t think I posted anything from that album so a quick couple.

I also finished Swathi and Andrei’s killer bee Mauritius album.

I even finished Shelley and Marc’s Shepstone Gardens album (some from that one later this week, after they get a chance to see it). I did find this cool birdcage pic amongst the images – I’ve been having a Eugenio Recuenco week, so it may just be me that loves this pic.

We also opened a couple of dates in Jan, March and May due to cancellations for those that are still looking. I did send out mails to everyone who asked to let them know if anything changed. I’m also in the process of investigating switching back to the traditional albums from the storybook, coffee table books, and am in talks with a local bookbinder to make me a custom sample album.

Also really getting into Hendrik Kerstens’ portraits.

We often shoot a day after shoot for our Jewish clients. Day time weddings tend not to leave time for a portrait shoot for the couple, so we offer a shoot a day or two after the actual wedding. We shot this one of Mark and Shelley at Shepstone Gardens, killer venue and nice hosts.

Maybe a couple more from this one next week …

So we were in action at Shepstone Gardens this weekend. I’ve actually been struggling a bit with this wedding, way too many cool images, and just an amazing wedding in general. Shelley had a vintage theme and the dress was a serious work of art. The day was incredibly cool and Shepstone Gardens kicks ass as a venue – oh and they had a pretty cool rabbi as well. So just a couple of images from my side today.

Check out their day after shoot.