Finding the Light

Canon 7D, 200mm, ISO 3200

Generally I am a strong supporter of the philosophy that better equipment doesn’t make you a better photographer. But there are times when good kit makes all the difference…

When Canon announced the new 7D camera recently, I immediately decided that it was time for an upgrade from my (very) old and trusty Canon 400Ds that I have been shooting with for ages.

Tarryn and Marco engagement shoot

As a matter of principle we always scout wedding venues before weddings so that we have a feel for the place and photo opportunities that are available there. I believe it’s an absolute requirement if you want to be professional not to arrive at a venue ‘cold’ but forwarned and hopefully forearmed about the venue’s challenges and opportunities. Tarryn and Marco are to be married in December at Zebra Lodge, about 40km Northeast of Montana in Pretoria, so we grabbed the chance to do their e-session there on Saturday. That way we could kill both birds with one trip into the bush.

Zebra Lodge is one of those typical bushveld game lodges that abound in that part of the world. The countryside is hilly with dense thorn bush and dusty gravel roads. (That’s ‘dirt roads’ for some of the English-speaking world.) We arrived there at around 11 in the harshest possible sunlight so we did most of our photography under the massive, shady bluegum trees. (Thank you, Australia, for exporting those thirsty, beautiful monsters to every corner of the planet!)

The Little Prince

The Grade 8s at Max Stibbe Waldorf School put on a performance of ‘The Little Prince’ recently. I was fortunate enough to be able to be there to take some photographs of the evening and what fun it was! As usual at Max Stibbe, there was energy aplenty from the childrenand the performance was great.

The Prince Watering the Rose

Hayley and Riaan

We went out to the farm at Boschkop to do Hayley and Riaan’s engagement session. Couples like these make a photographer’s job really easy! They just relaxed and had a whole lot of fun while we took photographs. Apart from the fun, we got some really different and fun shots in the barn and around the field where the Nguni cattle graze.

Shooting Kai

We had a recent fun shoot with Kai, a model and artist from Pretoria. It’s unusual and challenging to get a guy in for a fashion/model shoot and so we had some fun with lighting and poses to keep his masculinity while letting his bubbling personality come through! A large number of the shots ended up using one light or at most two. I am particularly pleased with the high key white backdrop stuff we did.

Bjorn and Karien

On Saturday we met Bjorn and Karien at the Botanical Gardens in Pretoria for their e-session. The weather was typical for Pretoria at ths time of year – hot and bright with extremely harsh light even at 4 p.m.! We kept to the shade for the most part and got some wonderful pictures for them before ending up at our favourite little grassed platform and water feature for the last photos of the day.

These first two were taken early in the afternoon when we were still keeping to the shade. We used a flash shooting through an umbrella to give us some nice warm light in the shade. I’m really happy with the results – we’re getting better and better at this of-camera flash thing.

These last two were taken later on when the sun had dropped a bit. No flash here, just a bit of reflector to fill the shadows.

Thanks B & K – we’re looking forward to the big day!

Something Funky!

Chrystal wanted something funky for her model portfolio so we found a slightly grungy back alley and took some photos using lots of off-camera flash. This was followed up by some funky post-processing, mostly in Lightroom, and we have a result!

Portraits of a dear friend!

Corna came around for some studio portraits.

We stuck with head and shoulders and played with many different lighting setups. It’s such fun having a patient model who’ll let us fiddle with the techie stuff – it helps of course that Corna is a seriously good photographer who felt the urge to get on the other side of the lens for a change. Thank you Corna!

Rickshan

Rickshan came by to do a studio shoot. She would love to get into modeling so I offered to do a trial for her and to give her some basic shots for her portfolio. We had lots of fun and produced some great shots for her. Here are a couple…

A surprise portrait session

Yesterday morning we were out shopping, our favourite Saturday morning occupation, when Khotso, Keloagile’s Dad, phoned to ask whether we could do a portrait session for his eye-apple cute 11-month old. So we rushed home, sorted out the studio, still in a mess from taking much of the equipment to last weekend’s wedding, and eagerly awaited their arrival.

The shoot was real fun with the aded bonus of being able to photograph mom and dad along with Pum’kin, as her mom calls her. We rounded it off with some sparky service, delivering the completed CD of low-res images to them yesterday evening before bed time (ours!)

Here are a couple of pics from the session:-