Friday, Red Ivory Lodge. Somehow this is how I’d imagined two people who had been dating for 17 years would be getting married. Relaxed, at ease with everything, a lot of emotion amongst the family, and a killer bee view across the Magaliesburg. A first dance to Depeche Mode’s ‘Somebody’ gets top marks from everyone including the very strict Russian judge.

Some vendor details:

DJ: Sean Torres
Video: Nick and Santi from DVI
Decor/flowers: Don’t quote me on this, but I think I saw Cindy from The Bloom Room leaving as we arrived.
Venue: Red Ivory Lodge, one of our favorite venues – James is always there to make sure things are running smoothly, the food rocks (The onion soup with Camembert!) and the view/location is out of this world.

You can see more from Mark and Melissa’s Red Ivory Wedding here.

So the season has started and we’ve been seeing a lot of new clients, chatting to them, the general consensus seems to be that they’d like to see more blog images from each wedding. We’re going to try something new this season and post an extended version of the wedding on our facebook page – yes we’ve finally joined the rest of the world and have a facebook page! – so a short, tight edit for the blog and an extended version for facebook. Click here to see more images from this wedding.

Photography season has finally started, and what a start to the season. Two photographers getting married – always a rush when you’re photographing another photographer, and very cool when they turn out to be such nice people – an amazing sunset, a close gathering of family and friends, rockstar swagger and a venue we haven’t been to before. Forgive the way too many photos, I may have gone a bit overboard.

Phew end of the season, start of the world cup, I think the neighbour’s kid has been blowing his vuvuzela non-stop for the last two days (how does he breath?). Last weekend I was privileged to shoot Barry and Deidre’s wedding at the Johannesburg Country Club. Irreverent, classic and lets just say that the guests were a little on the fun side, not something that the JCC is famous for.

This one is a bit different, I didn’t shoot any of these pics. A couple of weeks ago I had an emergency and couldn’t make it to a wedding, several people jumped in to help and I was grateful to Andrea, Ben and Eileen who covered for me. So a couple of pics from Peter and Karien’s wedding, a sneak peek from a day that looks like it was a chilled and funky affair.

We were up at Nylstroom this weekend, or Modimolle if you prefer, for Elizette and Shaun’s wedding. It rained. I know a lot of people talk about it raining on their wedding day, but we’re were talking serious rain, the kind of rain that comes down in buckets and buckets for hours, the kind of rain that requires large umbrellas, boots and a GPS. It had been looking ominous as we started approaching Modimolle, barreling up on the N1 from Joburg, and it was kind of gently drizzling when we arrived at the chalet Elizette was getting ready in, but it started seriously coming down on the way to the ceremony spot. We were in the groom’s jeep, headed up the mountain on a 4×4 track to the big fig tree that they were get married under. I was kind of half day dreaming, thinking that if it didn’t stop soon we may need an ark or some kind of boat to get back home.

So I loaned my umbrella to the father of the bride, wrapped up in my almost warm gray jacket and started shooting. One minute to shoot, one minute to wipe the water off the lens, thankfully the D700 is weather proof, but not the ideal weather for photography unless you happen to be really really into cumulonimbus clouds. The fig tree, the people under umbrellas and the bride and groom kissing under an umbrella made for some killer bee pics though.

I know what you’re thinking, especially if you also happen to be a wedding photographer, and I was also pretty curious about how we would go about doing some portraits, the light was fading fast because of the serious clouds, there was no indoors, and the rain didn’t look like it planned on stopping any time soon. I had a vague plan involving umbrellas, a video light and a safety pin, so we hopped into the jeep and headed down to a spot I had seen on the way up the mountain. Elizette was game, Shaun looked he had seen a few serious storms in his life and the veld didn’t look that muddy…

… twenty two minutes, that’s how long the rain stopped for, twenty two minutes to get in some killer bee pics with those amazing skies, and that perfect shade of yellowish blue that only seems to occur after a serious rainstorm, but Elizette and Shaun brought the rockstar swagger with genuine moments and happiness at being married. Then the rain was back, so we jumped in the jeep, dried the cameras again and headed towards the reception, the windscreen wipers fighting a losing battle with the rain, and a vague thought in the back of my head that we may need some help getting out of the venue if the dirt road we drove in on turned into mud.

By the time the reception started, I had mentally prepared my blueprints for an ark – it wasn’t a huge ark, but it had killer wi-fi facilities and a serious cappuccino machine. By then the fire had been lit, there was a coffee station set up, the DJ was spinning tunes, the news arrived that the Bulls had won, and I probably should have been thinking about how far the nearest petrol station was (about 6km less than the amount of petrol I had left in the tank) instead of happily looking through my pics on the back of the camera.

ok, probably more images than you wanted to see from their portrait shoot but I was pretty chuffed that we managed to nail such killer bee images under those circumstances. Ah, yes, almost forget, I was joined by the super talented Stella Sassen (RE.INVENT I) for the day.

I recently read a review of my work where the writer called my photographs, colorful and playful – I think she may have confused me with someone else.
If you’re a true stalker, you would have noticed that I haven’t posted anything from around the beginning of May, we had some unfortunate news which kept our full attention from the studio. We are rapidly catching up on the work, and I’ll be posting updates more regularly.