On hearts and other matters

I had a friend over for coffee today and got spoiled with some hearts! JIPPEEEEEEEEE!!

I've started making a few of them as well, over Christmas time in 2012, thinking how nice a Christmas tree would look with just hearts, but lost a bit of inters in it, or rather felt how my enthusiasm slipped down my legs, to my feet and then out of my shoes, when I've realized HOW MUCH hearts I would need to fill up my Christmas tree!

I was also stupid enough to make the hears VERY VERY small!! Which means a LOT AND LOT of extra work to get enough to make the tree look like something! 

Well, after receiving this wonderful gift I'm going to work hard on completing enough hearts so my Christmas tree of 2013 will be filled with lots and lots of hearts! 

May your heart overflow with love and generosity!

Imcke's Helpful Hints from a shoe-holick.

Shoes, however small, makes up part of your wedding day preparations. It's something (most of us) put on everyday to compliment our outfits, or in some cases it's use just to cover up our cracked heels!

Here are some helpful hints, tips, FYI's, call it what ever you want, for the perfect fitted shoe for your wedding or for that everyday comfort that a lot of us are looking for.

• Buy shoes that are comfortable and that you can walk in!! I decided that I'm going to wear flat shoes on my wedding day.A pair of pumps can be just as flattering to the dress than a pair of stilettos.  
• Break in your shoes!! Guys, this applies to you as well.  I always joked and said that my husband was the one who had blisters on his feet at the end of your wedding. Guys, you need to walk in those shoes for at least two day prior to the wedding to get all those kines worked out! Breaking in shoes is not just for the ladies!!

• When buying your shoes remember the following!! Try them on in the shop and WALK around the store for a few minutes. My mother use to tell us to do this when we were little, and I still do it to this day! When you do this you will quickly find out if they'll hurt your feet!
• Get creative with your shoes!! Shoes can make or break an outfit, but they can just as easily bring a fun aspect to your wedding dress / daily clothes. A pair of shocking pink stilettos of even a pair of funky rain-boots might do the trick... if that is too bold for you, try a pair of funky stockings!!
• Get more than one pair of shoes!!  this is for all the shoe lovers out there!! If you really can't decide which shoes to wear with your dress, do what my cousin did, have 4 pairs and rotate them during your wedding day. Wear the heals to the wedding ceremony and flats to the couple shoot. 

• For open toe shoes!! Painted toe nails always completes the look and compliments an open toe shoe. I'd recommend a bright or dark colour since it will show up nicely on photos!
• For those of you (like me) struggling with cracked heals!! Buy those dead skin remover booties at clicks, they work wonders!! Just don't use them 6 weeks prior to your wedding or event!! For those 6 weeks, wear closed heal shoes and put cream on your feet every morning and evening! ... or use your little finger to wrap your husband or boyfriend around it, and get them to give you a foot massage on a regular basis! 
• HAVE FUN with your shoes!!!!!!!!!  Surprise everyone by wearing funky shoes / boots/ stockings with your wedding dress. It will also make for great photographs!

In short, just be daring, full of fun and ENJOY THOSE SHOES! LET THEM DO ALL THE WALKING AND LET YOUR FEET BE COMFY :-)

Medusa

Photo Club Theme: Avant Garde.... Idea 1... well, you guys will have to wait for that one, still going to do it BUT the people that I want to use for this one was a bit busy, so we'll do it later this year....

Idea 2: What about Medusa? 

Problem 1: I don't really do the snake thing very well.... but hence, Medusa it will be.
Problem 2: I need a model
Problem 3: Will I have enough time and will they like it at the photo club?

Got rubber snakes, raided my mom's PC to get a photo of a real snake for the skin and got on the phone to ask a favor of one of her friends. 

I'll have to wait and see if the judges will like the photo, but at least I got it done in time!

It took about 2 hours to get the make-up and hair done, the snakes didn't want to cooperate with us, in the end paper clips did the trick to keep them in place.

We've spend about 2 hours in the studio (TIME SAVER TIP! Use your mother the day before a shoot like this to try out various lighting techniques and mark the spots!) and I've spend a total of 8 hours on the one photograph. 

I've firs did the basic color and contrast adjustments and some airbrushing. I then started to add the snake skin to the image.

Here I've started to distort the flair into a "sun". I've also added more snake skin, merging it into Debbie's hair and neck area.

Starting to add more snakes to the image, in the next steps I've merged the snake skin over her arm and onto the snake-fingers.

A bit more of a close-up image.

And who said assisting with a shoot will be boring!

A few days ago I've assistant for a photographer-friend of mine  while she was busy with a product shoot. OH BOY! What a day! Everything that one think is standard and can't go wrong did!

RESPECT!!! to all the people driving to Johannesburg and back each day for their work... 6 O'clock traffic is not fun! Luckily we made it there in one piece! OK, back from the detour to my story...

So, what went wrong?! Firstly we cracked the perspex of the infinity curve while setting up. DEAD silence (yes dudes, women CAN be as quite as a church mouse, you just need the right amount of horror inflicted on them!) doesn't even describe the room while we waited for the whole thing to collapse on us. NOTHING happened... at least not yet! The fun and games started out when we disassembled the thing. 

The top went up wrong way around, so the screws got stuck, hence the crack in the top! we finally got three of the four screws out. We were just about to get the last one out when the perspex slipped out of our hands, right between the support booms and with a load bang broke into three peaces. We stared at one another with huge eyes, I'm waiting for my fried to burst out in tears (building cost of infinity curves are expensive), she looks at me with the utmost horror on her face and then we both burst out laughing. It lasted for a good five minutes! We re-named the infinity curve "The Body", hiding it in a big black piece of cloth, almost suited for a body bag!

The next thing that went wrong was the studio lights, not firing when we wanted them to. OH MY WORD! If you are on a time schedule that is the last thing you want breaking on you, luckily that was sorted out fast!

One of the products was garden umbrellas... the roof was too low, so we ended up getting the thing stuck between a rock and a hot place, barley able to move the darn thing! I think the horror on my friends face was far worse here than when the infinity curve broke! We finally got it out, just to discover that the client has surveillance videos all over the place... luckily for us, not in the room where we were photographing the products!

At last we were done. All went well and we had sore tummies from laughter!

Helloooooo!!! I'm back! Sort of!

Oh my gosh, I've been away from blogger so so SOOOOOOOOOOO long that I can't even remember where or how to post a new blog! It took me almost 10 minutes to figure out what is where (OK, not really 10 minutes, I've been chatting with people in regards with a photos shoot so that took up most of the time!).

So what's new you might ask? A few exiting shoots in the pipeline (always nice to meet new people and families) and  some AWESOME themes at photo club escalating in some amazing ideas for photos that I want to do this year.

I've always wanted to do "Medusa" for a photograph and this coming Tuesday will be D-day for that project. Hold thumbs... I might just end up borrowing a snake for the pet-shop, IF I can get over the idea of touching them.... maybe I should just get some fake skin instead and work that into the "post production" of the shoot!!

Recycle fasion shoot

YEAH! for photo club. Having set subjects to hand in surely stimulates the creative juices! Unfortunately photography is a very subjective when it comes to taste, so though they LOVED the photo it did not completely comply with the theme of the month :-(

But I surely had a blast doing the shoot with my friend. Thanks again for helping out maaitjie!!!

Hope you enjoy the photos.

Kruger Park June 2012... and only posted now!

I have not blogged in a month of Sunday's.... I know, very bad of me, but hey! I'm writing something now, so give me a break!!!

I’ve joined a photography club  somewhere during 2011 and since learned a lot about wild life photography (still not my forte but working on it and improving on it every time!! OK, now I’m just sounding vain, but hey, at least I’m enjoying every moment of it!!)

So when my husband asked me what I wanted to do for the big 30 I told him lets go the Kruger National Park with the parents, BUT I want to leave so we can have Champagne (OK, JC Le Roux sparkling wine) breakfast in the park on my birthday. We left 14 June at 05:00...or that was the plan at least! As usual, we left about an half hour late, and since we’re driving the scenic route via Long Tom Pass we only got to our campsite in Letabah with about 15 minutes to spare before the gate closed.We literally have driven the WHOLE day to get to the Kruger Park!

Excited about the 10days in the park and what we will see we’ve set up camp. 4 tents for 3 couples… the one supposedly the “office tent” became the “storage tent” after we had a monkey raid through the camp (while my mom was sleeping about 5 feet away from our “kitchen”).

We saw the most amazing things, from baby hyenas, still black without any spot, to dwarf mongooses. Were spoiled with 6 leopard sightings in 10 days but yet again NO lions!! (And no seeing the butt of a lion or the moms mouth on a night drive DOES NOT COUNT as seeing a lion… ). But jealous about the people who have seen them? OK, I have to confess yes, I am a bit jealous, but hey, to get leopard 3 out of 4 times since my husband and I started visiting the park together…

I’m sure I have a lot of people turning green with envy!

Hope you enjoy my humble attempt at wild life photography!

NOT FUNNY!! This big guy decided he's in the mood of chasing a Toyota Landcruzer... luckily my dad was driving so I was able to get this photo! Later that aftenoon a 3 year old bull decided it's time to chase a Nissan Hardbody...  luckily the husband was driving... and NO! I didn't take photos this time round.  That evening we almost got stormed by another elephant while on our night drive.... LOL! This was the day of the elephants!

Elephants crossing the Lethaba river.

Playing with fire..... Ahhhhhhhhhhh, what I would give to sit around a camp fire again....

We saw this leopard 3 times. The morning when he walked over the road right in front of us, the afternoon we got him and his kill in this tree.  Why the leopard chose this tree to drag his kill into is still a mystery.... I still can't believe that the tree had hold the weight of the buck and the leopard! When we went back the next morning he was balancing on the opposite branch from where he is now.

I nearly died while photographing this leopard.... still get shivers down my spine if I think about THAT look.  We though he might jump in through the window when he got up, but he ran over the road just behind our car. We got him at the far end of the Lethaba bride about 20m of the road.... if it was that far!