Create. Fail. Retry.

Are you sitting down? Are you ready for what I am about to tell you? My VISA application to the United States has been approved. It's been quite a ride to get to this point, but I would not change it for anything. It has been a while since my last post and so much has happened and as you well know by now, I only post when there's something to talk about. So that is pretty damn exciting. Now to book plane tickets and then come June I'll hop on a plane and be there for a couple of months.

Moving on.

It's been a little more than a month since I quit my day job. I have since moved out of my apartment and moved in with a really good friend for the time being. Other than that I have been busy and what a blessing it is to be busy with something you love doing. I had to play catch up a little after the move, coz that threw things on its head, but I'm on top of things again; for the most part anyway :)

I've shot some cool stuff in the last week or so and I have a bunch of cool shoots lined up as well. Some for clients and some personal work. One shoot I am sharing here today and the other one I have to hold off on until the end of May, but I am damn excited to show you all. There's also a bunch of new work up on the site so go check out the portrait section here and there are two new bearded dudes as well. I'd hoped to be at 50 by now, but I've been kept busy with other things.

It's damn exciting to create new work, but with that comes failure (sometimes; a lot of the time).

I spoke to my friend a couple nights ago after he had shot a wedding and he wasn't stoked about it. He said there were moments where he doubted his own abilities, just coz of stupid little things going wrong, things that shouldn't go wrong, but for some reason just do. I've had those days and we all do. From pro's to amateurs to beginners. Days where just nothing seems to be going right. Whether it's gear failing or the light being crap or the client being difficult to work with or whatever other reason. You WILL have days like that. It happens and it's okay. You've tried to create something, you've failed, now you have to admit that failure; stare it in its stupid face and then retry.

It's not always going to be easy, in fact it hardly ever is, but when that next shoot goes amazing you are on top of the world again and it seems like nothing can kick your ass; right up to the moment where things just aren't working out and then the cycle starts all over again.

Pick yourself up and try again.

Here are some photos from my latest shoot I did. The awesome Melissa van Heerden who did the make-up for my CH2 shoot here, organized it and I am super happy with the shots and look forward to working with her more in the near future, so if you have a shoot and need make-up done get in touch with her here.

Here are the shots and as always; thanks for reading.

The Watermark High

Meet Paul van der Walt (The Watermark High).

Paul messaged me a couple of weeks ago about doing some new press shots for him. This was weird, because a few days prior to that, he posted a photo to his Instagram account about the progress on his new EP and I thought; "I wonder if he needs new photos"?

So yeah, I'm clairvoyant or something.

I was keen. I've been following Paul's work since 2009; I think. He's undergone a metamorphosis since those days of dreamy ambient post-rock/electronica to where he is focusing more on the electronica side of things. That's not a bad thing though.

You can check him out at the following links:

Website

Bandcamp

Facebook

Thanks for reading