Chasing a dream…

Sometimes the universe takes the reigns and all you can do is hold on for dear life hoping you won’t splat face first onto the ground. Other times, one can gently take the reigns from the universe and direct your life they way you need it to go. If only the latter was the norm and not the exception…

However, I am turning 30 this year, which means i am half way to 60. *gasp* This age dilemma is forcing my hand a little as it feels like I have not achieved anything of note. How quickly will I be forgotten if I were to kick the bucket tomorrow. Probs… very quickly. As I am not dead yet and so many people from my younger years have disappeared from my life all ready.

So this is my challenge; to be my own cheerleader to do everything extra big to chase every dream and to run an empire but the time I am 37. No more bowing down to the universe. No more waiting for things to happen… no more.

So in the spirit of grabbing life by the tits… a couple of pretty pictures. If any of these makes your eyes sparkle and you can see yourself wearing the image on a shirt or a hoodie or a… face…hat…  you know what I mean. Comment below, or on Facebook or on instagram or twitter or send me a hand written letter with a wax seal. I don’t care just communicate.

I am thinking of dreaming up very pretty quotes to go along with the pictures. So that you can literally wear your heart on your sleeve. I will post more examples as I figure them out.  If there is anyone out there who knows an awesome seamstress or a fabulous tailor who is up for a a challenge, please contact me on above mentioned platforms or even make use of pigeon post if you so feel like it, yes, I am looking at all those beautiful hipsters. (do you see how i make jokes)

I will also be posting some awesome illustrations from Disco.panda in the future who will also be designing some awesome original prints for us. But we shall get to her in my next post.

Anyways, enough waffling I present some example pictures:

 

Example 4

Example 5

Example 6

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

When in Cape Town…

Next week I will celebrate my second month anniversary in Cape Town. This alone is amazing because it feels like yesterday that I landed at Cape Town  International with my two Pekingeses in tow.

When I realized I have reached the two month barrier I got a little panicked, my first line to myself; “you have been here for two months and you  have done nothing spectacular!”

But then I went onto my phone and the pictures I saw made me realize that I have actually been a very busy panda. So here is a little list for everyone who is looking for some weekend fun.

A WALK TO NOWHERE

The Company’s garden.

This is the oldest garden in South Africa, it’s origins stemming from Jan Van Riebeeck’s vegetable garden that the used to feed the original colony. It is quite awe inspiring walking through this garden and seeing the massive trees hovering over all the paths. The buskers playing various instruments and the vast amount of squirrels add towards this old world charm. If you try you can actually imagine people walking these same paths 150 years ago. A lady with a parasol and dainty shoes promenading, on her way to tea, a gentlemen with a hat and pocket watch twirling his ostentatious moustache.

Before I go off on too much of a tangent about time travelling imaginary folk…

In short if you are looking to just loose the troubles of the modern world and you don’t have time to leave the city just go take a walk to nowhere in these stunning gardens.

A MARKET

Kids playing at a pond in Century City

On the last Friday of every month there is a Night Market in Century City. My offices are here so last month we decided to go check it out after work. Century City itself is a confounding place at first. It looks like a miniature Sandton, but completely fenced off, and much much prettier. It is small city within a city, all the architecture is roman inspired and the traffic is surprisingly chill for a place with so many business and apartment buildings. Am I making any sense in explaining this place?

So to get to the night market we parked our car three blocks away from where the GPS told us too and we started walking. As a Joburger it is still completely unusual for me to walk places because no one in Joburg ever walks any were really. We rounded a bend and happened upon a park where people were doing yoga, there was a group of kids running around, woman were walking their dogs and joggers were sweating it out. It was a scene that I have only seen in movies before. Complete tranquil city living bliss.

We finally made it to the night market where we continued to stuff ourselves with amazing food, there was a very big selection of different types of food. And it took us a while to settle on what we wanted. Off course we ended the night with a chocolate, banana and strawberry crepe. All in all a very successful Friday evening.

 

A Small Roadtrip

The View from the coastal road just outside Betties Bay on our way to Hermanus

Looking at above picture one might think that this is some windows wallpaper. Or that there may be a hobbit hiding in the trees. But this is the view for most of the drive on the coastal road towards Hermanus. Massive mountains on your left and the shimmering ocean on your right. It is a slow drive as the road snakes it’s way along the jagged coastline, hugged in tightly by the Mountains. At some points there are massive signs saying drive at own risk, rock slides possible. But even those warning signs could not dim the beauty of this stretch of road. It was breathtaking and soul cleansing all at the same time. Hermanus is a coastal town 150 km outside of Cape Town. Known for it’s wine and friendly locals. It was a stunning weekend filled with laughter, wine and new friends.

And with this picture of the Shire my first ‘Super Dooper Weekend Fun List’ (it’s a working title) comes to an end.

A Joburger in Cape Town

I am coming to you live from the Mother City. The land of Milk and Honey and very COLD winters. I am literally sitting on top of my newly purchased gas heater staring into the emptiness of my half unpacked living room. Sheesh, cold and dry winters is something I am very familiar with, but cold, wet and windy is a whole new ball game. Now, I know I am still in the same country and I only moved to Cape Town four days ago, but things are different, very very different. So i figured I will compile a quick list.

JOBURG:

• Every man for himself, and road rage for us all.
• A resting bitch face is necessary at all times.
• A morning is not a morning made without being narrowly missed; in bumper to bumper traffic, by a speeding taxi in the yellow lane.
• Waiters will not smile, ever.
• Avoid eye contact with strangers at all times, especially in Pick Pay, Checkers and Spar.
• There are no road rules, what so ever, it is like the Wild West. You jump in guns blazing and hope for the best.
• Highveld stereo is your only friend between 6 and 9 am.
• Highveld stereo is also your only friend between 5 and 8 pm.
• Shopping is generally not possible without entering a communist looking building named a mall. You will also pay R5 parking per hour for this torture.
• Public transport means risking your life in a minibus, fondly yet incorrectly referred to as Taxi. It should be renamed to rattling, death trap.
• There is a sky train, but unless you have R200 to go to the airport (one way) most stops lead to a black hole of no further public transport unless you count Uber or rattling death traps as public transport.
• Going to the CBD means taping all your worldly possessions to your person, or hiding them in one of your cavities.
• Except when you go to Maboneng or Braam on a weekend, then it is not seen as a feat of courage but just another hipster thing to do.
• If you live in Fourways or Sandton you will most likely not know how to get to Melville.
• If you live in Melville you will most likely only take the Gautrain from Rosebank to Sandton City once and then come back to moan about all the snobs.
• Walking? What is walking?

CAPE TOWN:

• The weird accents you hear are actually real tourists. In Joburg the only weird accents you hear is when Tannie Babs comes visiting from the farm.
• Traffic is slow going, but strangely enough people seem relatively chill about it.
• Shops close very early here. Like 6pm early.
• Live close to the ocean they said it will be fun they said. Hmmm. Washed a Hoodie on Friday, it is now Monday and it is still damp.
• Going to the CBD means I am going to a museum or a park or my office building or an open air market.
• Public transport is user friendly, cheap and safe. Except during peak times. In peak times all bus users are demoted to squashed meat bags.
• There is eye porn everywhere, mountains, beaches, architecture…
• People smile at you all the time, at first I thought I had something on my face or in my teeth.
• I don’t feel judged when asking for directions.
• Friday work days seem to end earlier.
• There is a vast amount of wine consumption in restaurants. Before noon… on weekdays.
• One can actually be a pedestrian without risking instant death or redistribution of wealth.
• There are real side walks here with safe pedestrian crossings and fancy buttons you can push to make the walking light go green.
• There is no water, I feel guilty every time I climb in the shower.
• I hear the wind can get pretty bad….

 

Looking for models

It has been a long time since I posted an actual blog. It has been a couple of very uninspiring months. I guess I lost focus a little, sitting in an office for ten hours at a time and then struggling through traffic for another three hours can have that affect.

But I realised this week that I had to start doing something creative again or  I may just loose my mind all together. So in short, I am looking for models. I can not pay you as this is more a stress relieving hobby project. But I can promise you high quality images that will be a little different than the usual studio snore fest that tends to do the rounds.

So, if you find yourself in the general Johannesburg area on a Saturday or Sunday and you are looking for something to do, please message me on Instagram or Facebook. Or even here on my website. We will take some awesome shots, have some fun and I can even stick you for a post shoot drinky drink.

Looking forward to meeting all of you awesome humans.

Booking Travel and Potatoes.

Thanks to my day job I know mostly everything there is to know about what happens behind the scenes when booking a holiday. And it is because I have to deal with the same questions and issues day in and day out that I thought I would do a public service and give some pointers on how not to become known as another asshole.

I will dispense this wisdom with common questions I get asked every day.

I will be using Potatoes to explain the more tricky parts of airline pricing because, potato.

You quoted me yesterday, why is the price so different today?

Just like a supermarket has limited inventory on specially priced potatoes so does airlines have inventory on specially priced seats. Think about it this way… The potato wholesaler tells Pick and Pay; we are giving you 500 potatoes at R1 a potato, once those are sold out a potato will be R5 again.Now just replace the word potato with air ticket, wholesaler with airline and Pick and Pay with Travel agent. See, not that difficult to grasp.

The airline is R900 cheaper than you, give it to me at the same price.

Now this is a specific demand that grinds me to no end. Take said potato again. Do you go into Woolworths and demand the same rate for potatoes that you saw at a farm stall the previous day? No, you don’t, because the reason you did not buy those potatoes at the farm stall is because you would have to wash them, peel them , chop them and cook them before you can satisfy your tummy rumblies with potatoes. Same exact thing with travel. With little to no help from you we have to chop and peel your holiday to match your exact demands and then you spend one hour on the internet and demand to know why we are charging a 10% service fee? Well then, why don’t you go ahead and book it on the internet by yourself then? Because you are scared, because deep down you know you have no idea what you are doing. So in summary, if you can pay Woolworths a service fee to chop your potatoes please pay your travel agent their service fee, don’t make them work for free (which you force them to do most of the time) they also have to eat.

Why can’t you give me specials over School Holidays?

Let us take our previous potato again. During the months when Potatoes are not in season they are more expensive because there is less of them. When school holidays hit the world air tickets become like out of season potatoes and those specially priced potato rates discussed earlier are not offered because there is not enough inventory to sell. Airlines then decide to make the best of a difficult situation (and by that I mean they try and make as much money as possible by pricing their limited fares on peak season rates). And this is why you will never find a special rate over school holidays.

Last but not least. I want to travel over Christmas and New Year for R15 000 per person.

Me:           No.

Client:      Why not?

Me:              Because…   Potato.

 

Teacup Humans

When I first started out as a photographer my biggest fear was photographing kids. I was worried that they would be afraid of the camera. And let’s be honest a random human shoving a camera in your face can be traumatising, especially when you are equal lengths to a pot plant. I have countless studio photos of myself bawling my little kid eyes out. Shame, I can just imagine how my mom must have felt every time a day trip to the photographer ended up in snot and tears.

Kids are honest, and if they don’t like something they will make damn sure you know it. I eventually came to a decision that whenever I had a mom who wanted pictures of her child, I would just let them play and photograph them from a distance. No studio, no glaring lights, no artificial nonsense. Just pure, unscripted moments, images a honest as a child.

This little girl was the first ever child I photographed. She made it so easy, she was singing “Let It Go” the whole time. Playing with her puppy and telling me about her day.  She decided that she had to wear my butterfly ring because it will look beautiful in her picture. I agree, butterflies suit her. 

This little girl made me run around the park for two hours straight. She was like a cute little tornado, splashing in the water, picking flowers, whirling in big circles; telling me I had to carry her for a little while because she was very scared of thorns. I just love her hairstyle, very stylish.

This is one of my all time favourite images, these two sisters love each other so much. And little sister will always look at her big sister first to see what see is doing. The dynamic between these two were so sweet and beautiful. And don’t you just love their matching outfits?

She was telling me here about a rock she picked up, she was very proud and hundred percent convinced that it was a magical crystal. I just had to grab the moment to get a picture of those lovely curls.

She was very excited to show me how well she could walk on this tree stump, the umbrella according to her was there because it matched her skirt.

They were busy drawing stars and moons on the road with chalk. She asked me why I wasn’t drawing, I told her; “because I am trying to draw you with my camera.” That is the face I captured at that exact moment.

And one final one of this little whirling dervish. She overcame her fear of thorns. I love how free kids are when they run, as if they may actually reach the horizon.

 

Playing with Photoshop

I am a very big fan of photoshop. But not the run of the mill airbrushing photoshop that a lot of people like. Mine, is a little undefined. I like my pictures to tell a story and I shamelessly use photoshop at times to convey this message. I am not going to explain any of the pictures, I will simply add a caption. Like all art and poetry, this is subjective. Feel free to leave a comment if you would like to discuss any of them. In the near future I may do a post about each photograph, the before and after and a little background on my thought process.

Please keep in mind that these pictures are not meant to convey reality, they are merrily a projection of it.

For purposes of copyright I would like to mention that some of these pictures were a collaboration between a friend and myself. And I will place relevant credit; as well as links in the picture caption.

So let’s get started.

“All that live must die“

“I’ll dream a dream for you“

“Summer will always smell like you” *Main subject photograph taken by Niel Van Rooyen.

 

“Your Darkest desire, in your Brightest dream” *Main subject photographed by Niel Van Rooyen.  

“Imagine…” Main subject and window background photographed by Niel Van Rooyen.  

When we created Steam Punk Mimes

My friend Wilri is one of those people that comes up with crazy projects and ideas. Before you know it you are swept up with this idea and there is nothing left to do but shut your eyes and roll with it. This specific project was one of those moments.

Looking back now, it came out rather good for the time we had to do it in.

To give a little background on what we were doing, at Pukke (North West Uni) they have a yearly Acapella competition, yes, like Pitch Perfect. Every “house” gets a group together and then they compete against each other before competing country wide. We became involved with the group from “De Wilgers”, we were instructed to turn them into steam punk mimes to match with their theme. Now on paper this seems simple enough, white face, dark eyes, red lips, done. However there is only a couple of types of Make Up that will make a face that white. We also learned through trial and error that the black and red must be done before we apply the white, otherwise it just turns into a grey mess. In short, imagine someone’s face as a colouring book, you can not go over the lines, especially with unforgiving colours like red, black and white and there are 25 faces. Suddenly not so simple anymore.

A practise run that Wilri did

We had to paint these faces four times, and each time we only had a couple of hours to do it. Not to mention the touch ups, because boys sweat especially when they are dancing and singing under bright stage lights.

 

Oh yes, did I mention how tricky it was not get the beards white?

 

By the end of day four we were nothing more than Zombies with make up stained hands. But it was all worth it, listening to these boys singing and watching them practise. It really is something else to see a huge guy with muscles to spare break out in song and dance. It was like living in a real life musical.  Unfortunately our Mimes fell out of the competition, otherwise we would have been painting faces all the way to Stellenbosch and back.

 

A couple of our Mimes ready to sing

 

We had an amazing time getting to know these guys and once again Wirli’s crazy ideas paid off.

Another mime ready for the stage.

If you are looking for someone to change your crazy make up ideas into reality contact me and I will put you in touch with Wilri. Or just click on her name and message us on our Facebook page.

Your Travel Agent is not a mind reader, answer their questions.

For those of you who don’t know; at night I am a wannabe Photographer/Blogger but during the day I am a Travel Consultant. I personally don’t deal with public enquiry anymore but I thought it is time to educate the masses on holiday booking etiquette. I will impart this knowledge by explaining why we ask you these three questions.

What is your budget?

Now contrary to popular belief, this question is not asked to steal your hard earned savings. It asked as a benchmark so that we know what we can quote you on without causing cardiac arrest. I don’t understand why people get defensive when you ask them how much they would hope to spend on their holiday. Surely you know in the back of your head what you can afford?

Where would you like to go and when?

This seems like a question with a very straight forward answer. (you are sitting in front of a travel agent after all.) In a perfect world maybe. We, however, do not live in a perfect world. The most common answer is “I don’t know, where is the cheapest?” Now keep in mind that you did not give us a budget, so what exactly is cheap for you? R60 000 per person? Maldives. R20 000 per person? Mauritius. R15 000 per person? Thailand. R12 000 per person? Zanzibar. See how quickly this turns into an evil cycle of quoting and re-quoting?  And PLEASE if you only have R12 000 per person, never EVER demand a quote for December. It is NEVER going to happen. Yelling and telling the agent that the price is ridiculous will not solve the fact that travel in December is stupid expensive.

Have you received any other quotes?

This is usually the question where you stare at your travel agent as if they have just secretly told you that they planted bombs in your plane. We know you are shopping around, pretending you are not makes you look a little dodgy. If your travel agent has this information he or she will know exactly what not to quote you on. Clearly you are not happy with what you have been given so far, so be honest and give your poor agent all the information  you have collected so far. Chances are they use exactly the same wholesale supplier where your previous quote came from, and if you don’t tell them you will end up with the exact same options.

In summary your travel agent can not do their job if you do not answer their questions.