The past two weeks have been manic here in the office and for a good reason. I organized my first ever photography workshop! For a long time I’ve been thinking about my career and where I started out, what I learned along the way and where I’m heading and then realized I had something to share with people.

I’m not a super technical person, but I definitely a very practical one. I realized that there is a big need from photographers to be educated, inspired and encouraged in a practical way. So I decided to organize my first workshop. I’m also a one-on-one kind of person and I’m not to keen on a huge group of people, therefore I decided to keep the class small. The idea of the workshop was like a group of friends sitting around a dinner table, chatting about the things they love!

The main theme behind the workshop was to tell people my story. How I started, how it unfolded and where I am today. It was very funny to go back to some of my very first wedding photos, but I realized it was important to show these photos to the photographers, so that they see we all start somewhere, we all go through the same difficult times, we all have the same questions and we all grow through the process.On Friday we started with some general chat about business and some key lessons I’ve learned. We chatted about issues all photographers face and then we had a delicious dinner together.

On the Saturday we started with hair and make up at 5am! And then we did an early morning shoot (but I’m not going to say to much about this as you’ll see more soon…) After the shoot we had some lunch and chatted about workflow, editing and album layout.

The guys who attended came all the way form Johannesburg, Pretoria, Jeffery’s Bay, Cape Town and even Upington! It was such a privilege to share some of my knowledge with the following photographers:

Kat Forsyth, Hannelee Minnaar, Peter form Cape Town Wedding photographer, Erietha Nel, Lynette from Capture moments, Vanessa De Villiers, Anli  Wahl & Petra du Toit.

Then I have to give a very special thanks to my awesome sister for doing all the catering for the weekend and spoiling us from the beginning to the end! Also a very big thank you to Adri, my assistant for helping me and lending a hand in the kitchen too.

Thank you to The Rose Room for the amazing flowers! The Rose Room sponsored all the flowers for the weekend and the bouquet they made for the saturday shoot looked like it was out of a magazine!

Thank you to Nicola & Wynand for being super awesome models and or all your patience! And another special thanks to Sebastine Pepler for doing an stunning job with the make up and hair.

Here is a taste of what the weekend was like: Saturday’s shoot…just a taste for what’s to follow…