Vimage Media joined forces with Shemei Productions to do modelling photos together. The owner of Shemei is Shaney Maharaj who was also the contestant on Miss India Gauteng 2009. She won the “Miss Personality” title in that competition. Just to kick things off, I went to visit them and hang out a bit and take a few photos. Shaney came with her Mom and brought her very cute 4 year old cousin, Jaiden. He stole the show quite a few times from Shaney. Posing is in the family no doubt.

Here’s a special just for Jaiden

This shoot came about when I had an idea of just doing a portfolio at the Emmerentia Dam in Johannesburg. This dam is at the Johannesburg Botanical Gardens and it was in ideal place to try out portfolio photography. I asked a friend, Ruby (Rubia Manuel) to do this using a fancy dress, a ball gown if you will. Unfortunately a ball gown was not available on short notice but none the less she took the effort, brought a fancy dress and did her hair up so beautifully as well! She brought a bubble maker, just to add to the fun. Good going Ruby! I won’t blame her if she uses this for her “Shaadi” proposals

I experimented with some colour filtering in these shots to somewhat match the dry grass we experienced at the gardens. It is winter after all, and thus we made full use of the dryness. Thanks to Emily and Smija for helping with the reflector lighting and the dogs! Here’s some of the photos from the shoot.

A shoot that I personally loved about a singer who also studies foreign relations. A singer named Sihle. His demeanour was of a person who is laid back and articulate. Thus a proper setting would be one of class and glamour.  In this one, the shoot was done in in a nifty cafe called Tribeca in Brooklyn Square. The setting inside was brilliant and made for a shoot with great ambience. The lighting was key to this one and tried a little variety with colour and black and white. It was pretty dark but the 5D Mark II camera with a wide aperture lens certainly helped me here and allowed me to be creative with low light glamour work. Two fantastic models joined us in this shoot, Portia and Sukena. The people were natural in their posing and certainly made my job easy. One only hopes his music is politically correct!

Our friend Sylvia wanted some photos of herself to use for an invitation. They were for her upcoming birthday invite to be hosted at Hartebeespoort Dam in May. I’m excited to do this portrait knowing we’ll be doing the birthday shoot at the Dam as well. So in order to get this going, we remembered from the previous party shoot,  where the lighting was necessary to make this work. Luckily for us, there were videographers who brought video lights and it helped us a lot too. So we thought, why use expensive photography lights, when we can use video lights which are a lot cheaper. Granted, it’s not as good, but for the price of R400.00 it was worth it. It came with a stand, what more do you need? Since these are “always-on” lights, it makes people hot and thus we can’t do it for too long. Our models, Sylvia and Marjoie, wondered how the professional models pose for photos day after day. Tough job they reckon. I agree.