For her final year she had to work on a full collection. Here are some photos of the fashion shoot I did for her portfolio, as well as a few pics of her final fashion show.

If you’d like to follow her fashion blog, go to www.lydiameintjes.com

Manouche is a group of musicians with, as they call it, a Gypsy Jazz style. I love how “different” they are :)

After our wedding I did a shoot for them. We did the shoot on a friend’s farm in Stellenbosch. It was so much fun and the best thing was that I shot while listening to their incredible music :)

Also check out their site or FB page to read more about their latest cd.

Since then Kaycee has been following my work and claims to be one of my biggest fans. When she heard I was coming to the USA she booked a couple shoot with me in New York.

We met in the lobby of our hotel and it was like I knew her. So strange when you finally meet someone you’ve been in contact with for some time, but never physically met before. Kaycee couldn’t stop laughing and made me feel at ease straight away. We headed to Times Square to take a few pics and then headed downtown with the subway. After the shoot we ended up in Starbucks talking about Lightroom, editing, marketing and everything else, over a cup of steaming Vanilla Latte’s :)

I can’t believe Kaycee has only been shooting weddings for about a year. Her work is soooo beautiful! You have to check out her blog!

Was great meeting you Kaycee! I hope you enjoy the photos…

At the moment the whole WooThemes team is in Cape Town and Adii asked me to do a few shots of the team. The brief was urban, relaxed and NON CORPORATE! :)

Late that afternoon I did a family shoot for the Lotters. The shoot was so much fun! Everyone was running around and shooting and laughing, to be honest, some of these shots aren’t even mine! Some were taken by Adri, some by Lizelle and even some by her brothers. It was a shooting madness and laughs flying everywhere! What a fun family!

Because this is not something I do regularly I had to do some research and get some sample shots together. A great site to look for ideas on stock photography is istockphoto. I drew up a mood board for my client and the second step was to find a suitable location for the shoot.

I’m a natural light shooter and I’m not very big on the whole studio set up thing, so I needed a location that could give the idea of a modern office, but also had enough natural lighting for the shots. A great company to use for location scouting is Icon Villas. They have the most amazing spaces to use for shoot and for this shoot I decided on the Bridge House.

*The above photos are from the Icon Villa website, I did not photograph these.

The shoot was quite tricky, because of all the glass. I had to check out for reflections and to harsh light. But at the end all these shots were done “hand held”, between 100 and 400 ISO. All done with my 5D with my 50mm 1.4 or 24- 70mm 2.8. No extra lighting, but a bit of reflector.

And these were the results…

Thank you to Sebastine Pepler for the make-up and hair and Daniel J Photography for assisting on the day.

Lizelle Lotter is one of my close photography friends. She also lives in Stellenbosch and she is making a name for herself overnight! For those of you who haven’t seen her work, you have to head over to her site straight away. She is super awesome and a must add to your RSS feed. Lizelle is such a sweetheart and when I phoned her in a frantic panic, she was more than willing to help me. I needed photos for my about me page and I only realized this the day before the launch of my site. Lizelle and I headed down to the centre of Stellenbosch and like two naughty little girls we giggled all the way. We even got chased away form a site that we apparently needed permission for…oops :)

Thanks Lizelle for some great photographs! I really love them! xox

Monica recently got a new site as well as her first blog! I’m so proud of what she’s done and I definitely would encourage you to add her to your RSS feed. This girl is going places! She loves traveling and recently visited Cairo as well as London.

Last week we had some Sushi in Cape Town and afterwards Monica and I had some fun in the streets of Cape Town. I asked her a few questions and this is what she had to say…

What motivates you?
I’m motivated by positive people – travelling – and life itself. I especially love the cinematography in foreign films – after watching ‘Tri-colour’ by Polish director Kieslowski, I started shooting ‘through things’, and that’s become my signature style.

Why do you like photography?
Photography is my creative outlet – it’s the one area of my life I can be completely free to express myself. I lose all sense of time when i’m shooting and it gives me a natural ‘high’. It’s important for me to keep my sense of curiousity and just keep experimenting and having fun. Not everyone ends up doing what they love, or finding the ‘perfect’ career. I couldn’t be happier and it’s something I never take for granted – I know I am completely blessed.

What is the one favourite thing in your camera bag?
Definitely my 50mm, F1.4 lens – great for intimate, personal shots.

Last weekend we decided to do something fun, unplanned and this is what happened*…

*Side note: Sunset is soooo the best time to take photos!