David and Miné's Wedding - 2011-06-18

Hi everyone,

On Saturday 18 June I attended the wedding of my good friends David and Miné in Cape Town. The ceremony was at St. Georges Cathedral, which is spectacular, and the reception was held at Kelvin Grove. The professional photo shoot was in the city around the cathedral, which made for some fantastic images.

It was a beautiful wedding, full of happiness and a lot of memorable moments.

The Happy Couple

I wasn’t the official photographer for the day so I tried to stay out of his way as much as possible (I did have some serious lens envy though, he was shooting with a 5D MKII, 24-70 f2.8 and 70-200 f2.8, plus soft box and matching beautiful assistant). I was a groomsman, which meant that I was present for the groom’s preparation and got a few photos that he didn’t.

I spent most of the day shooting with my 50mm f1.8 once again. The reason this time being that I was doing a lot of indoor shooting and didn’t want to distract people with a flash. My 50mm is a very hard working little lens that has served me well over the years. Unfortunately the focus mechanism is getting a little warn and I’m starting to miss shots because of it… hmmm, might be time to upgrade to the 50mm f1.4…

Congratulations to David and Miné. I wish you all that is good in your life together.

The complete gallery can be found here.

The Groom Preparing

Last Minute Speech Writing

Austin 16/6 - The Getaway Car

Detail of Miné's Dress 

Epic Android Wedding Cake

The Dixie Swingers playing after the ceremony

Natal Midlands - Easter 2011

Over the 2011 Easter weekend I went down to the Natal Midlands with my wife's family and a few friends. It is a very beautiful part of the country and we all enjoyed some time to relax and unwind.

I used my walk about lens, the Sigma 18-200, for most of the shots. It doesn't have the quality of my other lenses but it make up for that with its extreme versatility. I also used my 100mm macro for some of the portraits and detail work.

For the most part post processing was simple levels/colour balance, sharpening and cropping. A few of the portraits proved quite difficult since the back ground was considerably lighter than the subject. The full gallery can be found here.

Glengarry Mountain at Sunrise

Sterling Wrought Iron

Goat at the Cheese Factory

Sibling Love

Giant Wind Chimes

Chandelier Detail

Irene Singers Recording 2011

I am part of a small community choir based at the Irene Homes.  Last year we put out a Christmas CD and enjoyed it so much that we decided to record another.  This year the theme is Africa.  We recorded the soloists in ManleyStudios on Saturday 28 May 2011.

Thanks to Sean for donating his studio and time to the choir.

For most of this shoot I used my 50mm f1.8.  It is a fantastic little lens with great image quality and DOF, especially at the price.  The lighting conditions inside the studio itself were very tricky, mainly due to the intense back lighting.

The complete gallery can be found here.

Barend preparing for Toto's Africa verse 1

Junior giving it all in Toto's Africa verse 2

Hugo getting into his part for Weeping

Junior looking pensive

Alet warming up

Barend and Annika enjoying the sun

Swartkops Air Show 2011

Hi everyone, welcome to my very first post.

I'm going to start off with a collection of photos from the Swatkops Air Show on Saturday 21 May 2011.  It was the first air show that I have shot and it was tremendous fun.  I should probably have researched plane photography a little more thoroughly before I went but over all I'm pretty pleased with the results.  Next time (probably at the Wonderboom Air Show in October) I'll try to get a little more prop blur.

For this shoot I used my 350D and 100-400L, hand held and pointed at the sky.  I used aperture priority mode, set to f/8 where my lens is sharpest, shutter speeds were between 1/640 and 1/1250 for the most part.  I was quite impressed with how well the camera tracked the planes and kept them in focus, even when I didn't hold them in the center of the frame.

I kept the post production relatively simple for the most part, just tweaking exposure, contrast and colour, but the two scatter photos have been quite heavily modified to give an old fashioned look, which I think is quite effective.

The complete album can be found here.

Gabriel Wings Soloist

 SAA Harvards

Silver Falcons - Scatter 1

 Silver Falcons - Scatter 2

 Vampire in the Sunset

I hope that you enjoy my blog, please drop me a comment and let me know what you think.

Bevan