I’m busy editing Alex and Reyna’s deserted island wedding, and I just can’t help smiling (and wanting to say Nature … with Zan). All I can say is that it’s freezing and I wish I was back in Zanzibar where it is warm and the food is out of this world.

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Time is a funny thing, sometimes weeks stretch by and some days time seems to disappear. It’s been less than a week since we were sitting on a plastic mat in the middle of a spice farm in Zanzibar contemplating whether to eat the starfish in coconut milk that the farmer’s wife had cooked for us, or to plead vegetarianism and stick to the freshly picked vegetables. I’d never been very adventurous when it comes to my eating habits, I like to think that I am, but I know I’m not. Put any kind of seafood in front of me and I’ll probably decline.

This time however we were in Zanzibar and I was determined to taste a durian, I’d read about this fruit ages ago and have been wanting to taste it ever since – it was described as smelling like a sewer and tasting like heaven. We managed to find a farm, by sheer coincidence, that had a durian tree. They are super expensive though but I figured I’d a have a look anyway, standing under that tree we heard a crashing sound and a 2kg spiked durian fruit landed at our feet, talk about luck! Rama reckoned we could taste it since fate had conspired and it had fallen right at our feet. So he sliced it open, pulled out one of the four sacs handed it over and said to put the whole thing in my mouth and spit out the pip. I was a little nervous, this thing had sacs! It was one of the worst tasting things I had ever put in my mouth. Scratch that one off the bucket list.

Since then, it’s been kind of a funny week in Cape Town for the Next Level workshop with Ian, which was a spectacular success and may have inadvertently converted a bunch of people to fashion photography. I’ll put up some pics from the workshop as soon as I recover from sitting on a Kulula plane next to the World Throat Clearing Champion for two hours.

Anyone know where I can find a neuralyzer (the device they used in Men In Black to remove memories), I need to wipe out the commercial for Hugh Laurie’s Let Them Talk from my brain. Some things you just can’t unsee.

We’re back home after some wild adventures in rural Zanzibar, I’m sitting at a desk that has random bits of currencies from various countries, you know the leftover stuff that you had saved for a coffee in the departure lounge but didn’t get to spend because you arrived way too late for that and besides you didn’t want it to interfere with the tranqs you have to take to actually get on a plane. What are you supposed to do with all that left over currency. No-one outside of Tanzania wants shillings.

We had a grand time with Reyna and Zan, and Ben and Kinsey. Sailing in a traditional dhow to a deserted Komonda island with powder white sand, serious coral outcrops and well, you know, blue water. Getting lost on the way back to our hotel in the pitch dark, getting stuck in the knee deep mud way after midnight. There is still mud in my camera bag and I have no idea how it got there.

I think the thing that will stick in my mind for while though is the first dance to the sounds of Ngoma drummers and dancers, very very Where The Wild Things Are and just one of those weird-moments-lit-by-a-bonfire-on-an-empty-beach at the end of which you kind of think, well, that happened. I remembered to take some pics.

I’m going to post a lot from this wedding due to ‘concerned friends and family (aka Moms)’, to those moms I just wanted to say that you have two amazing children, I’m sure the huge reception back home will be as incredible as their barefoot on the beach wedding.

… as for the two of you, I’m starting to save up to shoot ‘Nature! … with Zan’ – the movie. We’ll see you when you get back.

Also a big thank you to Sjani from Weddings in Zanzibar who organized the most rocking Zanzibar wedding ever!

We have even more pics from Zan and Reyna’s wedding on our facebook page. I believe they have facebook access, you’re welcome to leave them a message.

We have even more pics from Zan and Reyna’s wedding on our facebook page, btw the mosquitoes in Zanzibar are silent, like ninjas.

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I’ve put up a quick sneak peek from Reyna and Alex’s wedding on our facebook page – I’ll get a proper blog post and facebook album up in the next week.

I’ve gotten into the habit of keeping a diary whenever I go on destination weddings, I have this idea in the back of my head of putting a book together or even an article for aspiring wedding photographers, but mostly its so that I can read it to V when I get back home.

This bit was written on the day of Paul and Cindi’s wedding. I was sitting on the beach, they were still dancing in the sand, I had a Kilimanjaro beer in front of me. It had been an amazing day end to end, and tomorrow I would be flying home.

“It’s 12:45am and I can feel the sweat sticking my shirt to my back. 12:45am!!! Its damn hot on the west coast of Zanzibar, the kind of hot that would make Tarzan want to go home. On the beach in front of me is a vocalist who sounds an awful lot like someone who learned English from a second language English speaker from an ex-communist country is annunciating the lyrics to Satisfaction … she misses the I can’t get no girl reaction line and substitutes another Aye cont geyt no say tease phaction … it sounds perfect for tonight. I take a photo of the bride and groom against the full moon and the beached hulls of the boats we came in on, leaving the shutter open to try and maximize the ambient light. I hear the shutter click shut just as she segues into Creedance Clearwater Revival. It’s been a hell of a day, Zanzibar style and I’m sunburnt and exhausted. I smile at a couple on the dance floor, seconds later my hangover kicks in. In about 5 hours the muezzin will be calling the faithful to prayer, loud enough to wake me up.”

I ended up shooting over 5000 images on the three days I was on the island, way too many amazing pics to show here. So just a couple from me. I took my Eura Ferrania with, so maybe a couple of arty images later.

coordination – by our fav Zanzibar wedding coorindator, Sjani at Weddings on Zanzibar : info@zanzibarweddings.com T/F +255 (0)24 225 0117 M +255 (0)78 441 9905

They had the most amazing baobabs on the island, huge huge trees, and they were green and heavy with fruit. I’d never seen fruit on a baobab before.

UPDATE: I posted a couple of pics from the Ferrania on my non-wedding photoblog.

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OK, Zanzibar was amazing and Paul and Cindi’s wedding was in the words of one guest … incredible. Coasting along the sea in a wooden boat to Kwale Island, watching elephant shrew outside my room, listening to the monkeys going ballistic on my roof at night, trying to hear the words of the priest over the roar of the ocean … all incredible memories.

Cindi and Paul were total rockstars, they even looked like rockstars, insisted on photographs with the baobab, and in the village – my kind of couple. Thank you both for your hospitality and warmth, the love and friendship of your friends and family are a reflection of your love for each other. I can’t think of a more perfect place for the two of you to get married than on the edge of a deserted island in the Indian Ocean, surrounded by your friends and family.

coordination – by our fav Zanzibar wedding coorindator, Sjani at Weddings on Zanzibar : info@zanzibarweddings.com T/F +255 (0)24 225 0117 M +255 (0)78 441 9905

More in a day or so … btw if you’re a Nikon geek, my two Nikons, one which was recently calibrated and the other which is brand new, did not deal well with the massive amounts of light and contrast in Zanzibar. I ended up switching everything to manual and going old school.

I’m finally back from Zanzibar, which was beautiful and exotic and all the things you expect from a tropical island on the edge of Africa. Give me a couple of hours to unpack my bags, answer the 212 emails in my mailbox, and get the beach sand out of my camera bag and I’ll tell you all about Cindi and Paul’s wedding on Kwale Island. Until then, I did manage to do some work on the flight back. No, my fear of flying hasn’t gone away and yes I still fly tranquilized, but for some reason the tranquilizers weren’t working on the way back, so I edited photos.