Milk

Let's expand a bit. Since I don't have any pictures ready to post, let me do a movie review.

The other day I watched Milk, the story of Harvey Milk who led the gay movement in the 1970s in San Francisco. An amazing man, played with absolute passion by Sean Penn. But I like Sean Penn, and his brother Chris, so his performance is no surprise to me. James Franco, on the other hand, did surprise me with a very convincing role as Scott - partner of Harvey and also activist. 

What also surprised me was how easily people in Cape Town are still shocked. Years ago, I saw Anyway the Wind Goes - yes, it's Belgian and darn good. It contains a few mild sex scenes but some really good and honest party scenes with all the party ingredients like drugs, sex and loud music. Halfway through the movie, half of the spectators had left!! Why, I ask myself. Are people here really that quickly offended or do they just not read the review to find out what the movie is about and how explicit the scenes are. Darn! I hope they never showed Irreversible here! Imagine a senior couple thinking they're going for a nice French movie with the lovely Monica Belluci. 

Anyway, Milk.. The movie opens with Harvey Milk meeting a pretty young man in the subway, they kiss, they go home.. they make love. Already, the neighbors on my left were shuffling uneasily in their seats. But Harvey and his partner split up and Harvey meets the next 'first lady'. They kiss, go home... and make love (like many of us do when we fall in love). By now, the neighbors on my left are done shuffling and simply get up and leave... 

So I'm frowning now, did they not read the reviews and expected a movie about a little village that became famous because of its delicious milk, or did they just not like two men kissing (because that's all you could see, even in the sex scenes)

Maybe they just forgot to feed the dog..

Dear Blog

It has been ages and I kind of gave up on it.. my blog

But then I met this friendly woman on a course. She said she has a blog and wrote me down the address, to which I replied that I also have one. But for the life of me, I could not remember the bloody address of it. Now, my brain is a sieve (I've known that for a long time and have learnt to live with it) but it also dawned on me that it must have been ages that I wrote on my blog. And indeed, it has. My last blog was in October. What happened? No idea.. 

Guess I lost my drive a bit, also in photography. 

Let me make an effort and get it going again. 

Talk soon!

Sushi Shoot

So I have this friend who does photo shoots at his place, part of his living room he can change into a studio with proper lighting and reflectors. He invited me a while ago to join him during a shoot. He does a lot of nude photography and drawing, nothing freaky or sleazy, just art. He had a model coming in that day but we were still thinking of a theme when i remembered that scene in Sex and the City where Samantha had been slaving in the kitchen to make sushi, place it on her body and then wait for the boyfriend, who of course came late. It was a good idea, and my friend magically had all the ingredients in the house. I had no idea (veggie) sushi is so easy and fun to make. We placed the sushi on the model, took some interesting pics, chowed the sushi and had a good time.














The second time I made a curry which we didn't use on the model but ate. In stead of food we played around with light and shadows.. and some chop sticks.

Kalk Bay at six in the morning

The torture of getting out of bed at 4.30 in the morning, the crap mood until the first cup of coffee, falling over ones own shoe laces, almost dropping the lens cap in that darn ditch..
And then see this.. a beautiful sunrise over the harbour

No sleep

One good reason to get out of that warm nest
at six in the morning.














And another good reason to stay out late and
just look at the sky.

First discovery

So the First discovery actually happened before the second one (kinda logic)but I only finished working on those pics now so have to post it after the Second Discovery. Anyways, the First discovery was when I jumped onto my bicycle one sunny afternoon and cycled past the "Beach Hotel".


Nothing special at first sight but as I cycled on it occured to me that a Beach Hotel is usually at the beach... rarely next to a railway line. So turns out that this was an original beach hotel, originating from the days that there still was a beach in Woodstock. Thanks to the former regime there's no more lovely beach now but a harbour and a railway which is also cool but ofcourse not so good for business if you're running a "Beach Hotel". So the hotel is now a storage space and will soon be demolished :(




















This little piece of history was revealed to me by a very friendly man who has a blacksmith opposite the road from the hotel. Now, I've seen blacksmiths in movies and in the countless graphic novels with medieval themes I used to read, but I've never seen one in real life. Besides that, I'm an absolute sucker for buildings and places that have an old industrial feel to it, like blacksmiths :) So I was pretty exited when he showed me his blacksmith, took photos all over the place. They didn't turn out to great because of the low light, must practise more under those conditions. After a lot of "oooh"s and "wauw"s, a cup of tea and a chat with the friendly blacksmith I got back on my bicycle and left for home.

Now the gods were definitely pleased with me that day. After the discovery of the Beach Hotel and the blacksmith, they granted me the joy of witnessing an absolutely grand sunset.

















It was an amazing afternoon and a beautiful evening. And to top it of, there was a full moon over Woodstock that night! So I ran up to the pedestrian bridge over the N2 and took an amazing shot from there. (And yes, you can walk at night in 'gangland' Woodstock, preferably wearing a hoody that hides your camera and a rather large dog walking besides you though)

Good Night!

Seapoint stroll

For my second discovery tour I kept it simple, just took the dog and jumped into the Beetle. Off to Seapoint Promenade for a stroll with a take-away coffee in one hand and my camera in the other. I know, that's not a good thing to do, especially not with a dog jumping up and down thinking that she must go fetch one of the two. So first finished the coffee and had a stroll with the dog, then found a nice bench with two older ladies that didn't mind watching my bag and entertain the dog, and by then I had about 15 minutes left to take pictures before the sun set. Unfortunately my ISO was still on 400 from the previous shoot so the photos have some noise. Nevertheless, here's my impression of Seapoint.