The G-Spot

Been shooting at Mark's new trails quite a bit lately & just getting more comfortable with the lighting & spending a bit more time on the shots.

De Hoop Workshop

My mom, dad & I presented a Workshop in the De Hoop Nature Reserve about an hour from Bredasdorp for a week at the end of September. It is my personal favorite workshop we give & love the diversity of things to shoot, from sea to sand dunes to animals & macro. Unfortunately the weather didn't give us any good macro opportunities, but it did give us some spectacular clouds & was good to get some landscapes again & I often struggle with them if I don't see something that really grabs my attention, but the cloud & light was amazing in every direction, so I went crazy.
We got there a day before the participants to make sure everything was set up & ready to go by the time they arrived. We managed rather quickly & had some time before sunset to go & shoot. I was pretty keen to have fun in an old abandoned house & knew that this would be the only time to try it with our packed program for the week. There are 2 HUGE beehives in the house & many scattered around outside, so I needed to move carefully. I was just fooling around & kept playing until I saw some potential & with all my flashes set up & self timer on I started to work with what was happening & before I knew it it was completely dark, with my patient parents sitting & freezing in the car & didn't want to disturb my in my creative mess, but time came to an end & I got a lil hoot from the car & after having 3 flashes going off all around me in a dark house the packing up was somewhat of a challenge, but I had great fun & that didn't bother me at all & am luckily quite organized, so found everything in the dark quite easily.

The rest of the week was filled with dune, sea & macro/fynbos shoots, having to get up at 4:30am to be in the right place for sunrise & having some great sunset shoots & having enough food to put me in hibernation the rest of the year. We even managed to do some light painting, but I left my camera behind for those & had to be the director & try & co-ordinate 10 people in 3 rooms & get them to understand the techniques & was quite a challenge, but we had loads of fun & people started to understand the importance of playing with photography & laughed like crazy & even managed to get some great results.

Well, as usual here are a few of my shots from the various shoots we had during the week. Was a bit disappointed that we didn't get to do any morning macro on spiderwebs with dew, but the other shoots did more than make up for that.

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Weak End

With all the rain lately it's been touch & go on the weekends, but this Saturday was a scorcher so decided to get out & enjoy the day. Met Sam & the crew at the Stellenbosch Airfield & there was a veterans day & we were hoping to get close to the runway, but heard about it just too late & wasn't able to get too close, but got a few shots from the sidelines, but Sam & I weren't really feeling it, so got a few shots of the old cars they had there & just relaxed & enjoyed the sun.

We moved on to PRG & rolled the double set for a bit. I was keen to roll a bit & hit a few tricks with Sam filming Andrew & I. Got the cam out to get a shot of Andrew trying a FS shuvit. The ground is pretty harsh at the landing & Andrew took one to the hands & was luckily not too bad, but didn't want to fall on 'em again & wreck himself completely, so we left it for another day.

Koos joined us as we left PRG & went to meet the brothers Grimm (AD & Matt) at Markotter, but there was a function on, so went to hit the De Jagers gap. Andrew popped a few nice tweaked ollies, but the destruction was left to Matt who ended the spot with a nollie BS bigspin & landed super solid. Was quite interesting shooting in town when it's a bit more busy & had a few people stop & watch for a bit & again the cops were around,but not bothered by us too much luckily. The hobo's in Stellenbosch are moving up in their needs & wasn't asked for a R2 or R5, but 1 guy asked me for R100 & another for R20... damn... inflation is hectic...even for bergies. haha

After that we went to have a look at Eikerstad & see if we could get a session on the banks there, but the schools are on lock down & was no way we could get in, so opted to go chill in the mountain for sunset & went our separate ways after that.
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Planes in action

Vintage Cars

Andrew - FS Shuvit attempt Andrew - Tweakage Koos & James were our tripods Matt - nollie BS bigspin LACED!

Whacky Wednesday

Got a ring from Sam on Wednesday saying they were rolling the park & shooting, I still had some work to do & went down to town a bit later, by then they were finished in the park & keen to roll some street, but the rain was on & off & Henri fell in the water & was soaking when I hooked up with them. We went to Mystics to wait out the rain & they had a fire going, so Henri could dry off nicely.

After a drink the sun came out & it was drying up nice & fast & we needed to do something before the beer gave the guys the lazy legs, so went to a lil driveway gap that Wian was keen to tre flip.
Was quite a tricky spot to shoot & had to flatten myself against a wall & use the 10.5mm & tried hard not to get myself in the shot. A hobo pitched up & was amped on the skating & was cheering Henri & Wian on & was some good entertainment. Henri got some nice BS shuvits & Wian was getting pretty frustrated with the tre, but landed it perfect eventually, but obviously after the tape in the vid cam ended & everyone was about to leave, so didn't get any footage of it.

As we were finishing up Mark G drove past & said that Bennet & him were gonna test out his trail in progress & I should come get some pics in a bit & so glad I took him up on that & went up a bit later & saw Bennet getting all his gear ready & went in search for Mark. Neither of us had been there before, but Mark kinda explained where it was, so wandered around & found him working on a berm & got straight to the action. The course is still under construction, but is looking sick! Not a steep track with huge jumps, just lil rollers & jumps & some really nice corners. Mark showed me the best one & I set up there with not much light left for them to ride in, but the sunset made a good BG for me & working with the flashes in low light is so much fun, so I was amped. They were just testing the track to see where it needed some adjustments, but were still hitting the corner pretty fast & was my 1st time using the 10.5mm on biking like this & was loving it. The light disappeared fast, so didn't shoot too long, but was a good warm up of things to come from that place... really keen to shoot there again. We chilled a bit & enjoyed the last lil bit of sunset colours before we headed down the track & Mark told me what he had planned for the rest & it sounds like it's gonna be good!

So after the rain looking a bit gloomy it turned out to be a good day with 2 nice shoots, so was amped it made a turn for the better.
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Henri - BS Shuvit

Wian - Tre Flip Attempts

Landed

Sam & his new friend

The Crew - Henri, Wian, Andrew & Sam

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Bennet

Mark

Bennet