17 March 2014: A year in Review

Today marks the one year anniversary of that fateful day.

What day; you ask? March 17th. My last day working at the IT company whose employ I had been under for over 2 years. I'd given my resignation a month prior and this would be the last day before I embarked on the rollercoaster ride of being a full-time photographer.

What's it been like? In a word; exhilarating and perhaps terrifying. I can't think of how many times I have used the word terrifying in the last year, because it's true. Being a full-time freelance photographer (or anything for that matter is a little terrifying). It's also really rewarding. I am really happy about this leap of faith I made.

In this year I have worked for really cool clients; Terrestrial, the SABS Design Institute (South African Board of Standards). I photographed RnB singer, Loyiso Bala.

I lived in and travelled America for 5 months interning for Zack Arias, meeting other heroes like John Keatley and Sara Lando. You can go read about that here.

I worked on album art for The Ocean Doesn't Want Me, which I will be sharing in another post. I photographed the concert pianist Charl du Plessis and I have been working on an array of personal work to round off my portfolio. One of which I have already posted - The Spanish Dancer - and one that I will be teasing you with over the weeks leading up to Easter.

Charl du Plessis performing privately for me and my team whilst shooting.

To say it's been a wild ride is an understatement. I also finished my Dudes with Beards project after 2 years and 80 bearded dudes and it's been great. Thank you to everyone involved in that. Now let's make a book and have an awesome exhibition to complete the final chapter!

This post feels so frantic and rushed and I feel like I need bigger words to describe how grandiose this has all felt, but has it really? I did really small, little, tiny things that resulted in all of these bigger things happening. I wrote a letter and sent it to America, quit my job, shot a really big project for two months, went to America for 5 months, came back and started planning shoots and doing admin and getting people involved that I wanted to work with and then shooting that and now it's just rinse, wash & repeat the latter part.

I am busy trying to build a studio with a good friend of mine whom many of you know; Ett Venter. That will hopefully be up and running by the middle of the year; if we can get our shit together. I NEVER in a million years thought that I would be where I am right now. I still don't quite know where I am right now, but man, am I enjoying the ride.

Thanks for reading

What Now?

That's been everyone's question to me & I've only been back a week. Gimme a break ;P

To be honest I thought I'd land and walk into a job that I put a bid in for, but that is yet to materialize & I also shouldn't place all my bets on getting it although I do hope so.

My plan in a nutshell is to get my portfolio up to scratch over the coming month or so, by removing what isn't good enough any longer & then making a print portfolio. Then in the new year I want to approach some agencies and get myself out there. I'd also really like to approach some non-profits or some organization regarding my "Dudes with Beards" project & of course get it done in the next coming months.

On top of that I need to digest what has happened in my life in the past 5 months & how I am going to apply that to my daily life & my photography & relationships with people.

The latter part is the difficult one in my opinion. Affecting daily changes to a lifestyle I've crafted to (im)perfection for twenty nine years. That's a tough ask. Don't get me wrong, imperfection is a great thing. What I am talking about is unlearning bad/lazy/negative behavior toward myself, my work & other people.

That in a nutshell is my plan. If I have one.

Thanks for reading

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.

Metamorphosis (Part 2)

I suppose I could have said everything I wanted to in one post, but I know I sometimes give up halfway through reading something if I don't find it interesting and I'm not sure how interesting my life is to other people.

So besides all the stuff that I mentioned in Part 1, here, there is even more happening and that has happened. My life is changing at a 1000 miles an hour.

As you know I have plans for world domination *insert evil laughter*. Seriously though, I am planning on going to America which you can read about here and here. That being said. Three weeks ago (Monday; March 3rd) I received a reply from Zack reading: "So sorry getting back to you late. C'mon. I don't know what we'll do with you when you get here but we'll figure it out when you do. We'll take part in your adventure"!

How f**ing exciting is that?! Man!

I have to admit though, I had some doubts for a while, because of an opportunity arising here. I have in the meantime prayed about it and I spoke to some friends and that has put things into perspective for me in a big way.

So, it looks like I might be going to America soon if I'm lucky and things work out for me.

Anyway, let me move on. Another awesome thing I did, was a shoot for local acoustic guitar duo CH2. These guys can flippen shred, but not in the sense of how metal guitarists do (well, they could probably do that too), but they play a mix of classical, flamenco and latin influenced instrumental music. We shot in studio - something I wasn't too keen on at first, coz I like doing environmental/on location type shoots, but I am really happy with the results.

They also had a make-up artist come in and man; what a difference that makes. So rad to have worked with Melissa. We met years ago and now our paths crossed again to make something rad. Go check out her work here.

Here are a few images from that shoot.

Thank you for reading