We desperately tried to be back in evil Joburg before 08:30 on Sunday morning, but the Free State simply has a way of slowing you down to the point where time really doesn’t matter anymore. Now, once out of it’s grasp, a sense of longing has crept over me (once again) and I decided once for all that one day when I’m big I will go and stay in some small town in central SA. I got it mentally all figured out already…meetings with clients once a month at a coffee shop in Jozi somewhere, lots of couriers, Skype etc etc.
We were there on Saturday for Luzanne and Stephan’s wedding in a small town called Vrede (easy to miss). They are 100% Ben Viljoen type clients. Happy, warm, totally down to earth young people with the coolest parents ever.
They are the type of people where you could wish that they invite you to over to their place for the evening instead of booking you into a 5 star hotel (hypothetically that is…if something like that even existed in Vrede).
Always easy to shoot these weddings…
Just one pic for now as I feel this moment needs some space of it’s own. I just love the story and emotion here. Sure, Stephan is hardly in tears, it’s much more subtle than that. I sense a bit of doubt as to how to handle this big occasion, so real.
More Free State weddings
Our passion here at Ben Viljoen Photography burns heavily on the photo-journalistic side of things, and although I do realise that we create some kick-ass portraits, it is really capturing the actual, real, un-staged moments during the wedding day that gets us going in the morning.
I often get confused looks at meetings when I mention the term “wedding photo-journalism”, and to be frank, it seems like it can mean pretty much anything, so I will explain here what it means to me and to the studio, and ultimately what you can expect to see in your wedding album.
I am already married. I had my wedding day and it was totally awesome and I got the T-shirt and I have no intentions of doing it again. I say that because once I start to interfere with a wedding day as a photographer, it sort of becomes my wedding with the couple merely being actors in my own story, which is really the last thing I want to do. Wedding times are way too special to reduce it to merely a “based on a true story” film (btw, I am not a very good film director anyway).
I would much rather that the couple get married, have the (fill in the blank with whatever you want your wedding to be like) time of their life, and we as photographers will play the role of journalists, telling the real story of the day with our mega pixel monsters, and preserving one of the news headlines of your life by means of a book.
In years to come while strolling down memory lane, a welcome friend named Wedding Album will meet up with you and greet you with some honest moments from special times gone by, and usually so with a firm handshake of sweet nostalgia.
Farewell then, till later
…promise.
Next batch will be b&w photo-journ…promise
I found this image kind of by accident while browsing through this weekends wedding at The Michelangelo, also while listening to an interview by Kirsten (from Totally Rad Actions) with Bobby Earl. I seriously might as well be listening to an interview with myself. It’s more for photographers, but here is the link if you are interested, http://www.gettotallyrad.com/blog/bobbyearle.mp3
Cindy actually recorded this action…so cool!
Cindy and I started our journey together with our own wedding (obviously), but we also ended up celebrating the end of our first year together with another wedding. We decided that our meal at The Michelangelo while shooting Catherine and Graham’s was actually a date, albeit a rather short one, and we just enjoyed our time together. Sunday we were as lazy as lions after a Zebra meal and pretty much spent our first anniversary in bed with movies, Facebook and junk food.
Getting back to Catherine and Graham though (since this post is actually about them), the ceremony took place at the beautiful Greek Orthodox Church in Benoni, and from there everyone headed over to Sandton for a stunning reception party as only the Greeks can do it. The speeches were uber cool, everyone was happy, dancing happened and all the ladies got cool slippers which I thought was a rather nice way to honour the hard work of attending a wedding.
So many cool images to choose from for this post, but Graham asked me for plenty black and whites (never have to ask, you get them anyway) so I’ll be stubborn and post two colour images first. As always I will post more later in the week.
Some morning therapy for me…now back to work.
Alex and Andrew’s wedding in Parkview, Johannesburg
More Johannesburg weddings
