Its been an odd two weeks, I’ve finally made the big switch to a Mac based studio and it hasn’t stopped raining (not related I hope, or I may be starting on a family sized ark really soon). So this is my first all mac wedding, I love the speed but miss all the shortcuts, actions, scripts and other bits and bobs that had to be left behind on the PC.

I’m going to let the pics from Dave and Emma’s Shepstone Gardens wedding speak for themselves this week, with maybe a bit of a blurb under each one.

I’ve seen a couple of searches on this site for ifiles – there are more details here. Please note however that there no plans at the moment to print more.

We get a lot of emails from other photographers asking questions about how we do things. Two questions we seem to get a lot are, how do you choose images for the blog and how do you decide on the post production for the images. The first one is easy, its a gut reaction, if it was an image of V and I would I hang it on my lounge wall? The second one is a bit more difficult, it has a lot to do with the feel of the wedding, the decor, the couple, maybe something that stood out for me about the day.

Which brings me to Saturday at Casalinga with Taryn and Chris, which was filled with ice cream trucks, crafty cigs, mr potato head cake toppings (and grandmother’s cake toppings from 1938), white takkies and loads of rock from the 90’s. Tradition and graphic design, rock ‘n roll and humour. Safety first, ice cream second. It was whimsical and quirky and the groom wore a button which said, Keep Calm and Rock On, a retake on the 1939 WWII Keep Calm and Carry On poster (the keep calm movement hasn’t quite hit SA yet), which I think pretty much summed up everything for me.

They both seemed to be having such genuine fun, which was really nice to see. It was also nice to be back at Casalinga.

Things I like about Casalinga:
- the co-ordinators are super efficient, on the ball and friendly to the vendors.
- we’ve had some of the nicest food we’ve ever had at weddings there.
- they lit candles and turned out the lights for earth hour which I thought was cool.

some pics:

in a twist of fate that may be charitably called ironic, about 90 minutes after earth hour, minutes after we arrived home and started our backup process, our suburb was plunged into darkness due to a power failure. Either Eskom wasn’t too sure what to do with all the surplus electricity, or someone at Eskom thought that earth hour was compulsory but couldn’t figure out a clock.

or Karen and Duncan (+70 friends) take over a small town.

This weekend is kind of hazy for me, and not just because it was almost three weeks ago, so please excuse the fragmented post.

I remember it was a long weekend and we were going to stay over for two nights. So we’d left early on the Saturday, on the highway headed east, dodging people who had gotten their licenses in Narnia, and those that were in a hurry to get to their holiday destination or meet their maker (they didn’t seem able to make up their minds). Trying to squeeze past aficionados of deep fried fat and all things greasy on our way to the next cup of caffeine at various petrol stations. Showing teeth while double-o super sexy made its very slow way up the hills.

Finally at Kaapsche Hoop, Karen hops into super sexy and shows us to our accommodation. We pass a small bar with a bright sign on the outside. She says, “That’s Salvadore’s everyone was there last night”, her tone seems to suggest that they may not have put it back together yet.

Our accommodation, Long Creek Lodge, rocks. Its clean, has beautifulI views, and it even has monogramed lamp shades – not my initials, but cool nonetheless.

I remember the wedding day being a riot of color, sound, glitter, lots and lots of confetti, mist, disco balls, magic, strange people in elvis outfits, mist, a man dressed as a reindeer, Dr Quinn medicine woman, jaeger bombs, men in kilts, and lots and lots of mist. I remember eating roast chicken off a Springbok Hit Parade (vol 4 I think?) record, and not recognizing a single name on the record label. There were also some dreadlocked horses and really huge pancakes filled with milk tart for breakfast. It was chaos, the good kind, the kind that you talk about for years, the kind that the locals talk about for years.

We snuck out early on the Monday, being very mindful of the fact that most people had still been awake a couple of hours earlier, and that hangovers were probably just starting to kick in, there was mist everywhere, the streets were strewn with confetti, I suspect that we will still be finding confetti in various parts of our camera bags for years to come.

We kind of think of Dunc and Punk as friends, so it seems a bit odd saying that they were cool to hang out with and we had an incredible time, and that we will be talking about this one for a while. Start a party indeed.

ok, so you want to see some pics, yeah?

almost ready for a blog post for this one … slowly recovering and getting on top of things.

So Friday we were at Thaba Ya Batswana, out towards the south end of Joburg. Serious lightning, rain, one of those highveld thunderstorms that turn the world dark. I wasn’t worried, we were with Rob from DVI, he’s a tall guy and carries a steel tripod. I figured I’d take my chances with the lightning. Nicole and Donavan didn’t seem too stressed about the rain either, and brought the rock star swagger to our big veld/dark skies shoot. Add in some super cool family members, people I recognized from our recent Toadbury Hall wedding , and it turned into a pretty relaxed afternoon.

Hours later, leaving Thaba, the police were stopping people just outside the gates. Lights flashing in the dark, mixing in with flashes of lightning. I wasn’t worried, I’d been good, and I was in double-o super sexy.