One of my favourite themes to document is family. The opportunity to capture a family story always excites me. I love it when a family trusts me to enter into their world as an observer and photograph them as they interact in their own, familiar environment. My hope is to gift them with photographs that resonate with authenticity. These are memories of a family as they are, in a moment in time, to be cherished forever. I capture moments that are unposed and believe that this is what sets me apart as a documentary photographer.
I love collaborating with other creatives, recently I did a trade exchange with Anna Heydenrych.
A photoshoot in exchange for a blog feature:
Anna Writes in her blog,
“We capture images that inspire recollection of moments in time. Special days like marriages and significant birthdays are recorded so that we won’t forget. We want to remember the good times, we want to recall how we were at our very best.
But what about the ordinary good times? The days at home with our small children that seem so typical, the homes that are not perfect but represent the right now. A now that will one day be a ‘remember when’. With the passing of time, I feel like the ordinary might become our very best. The memories that we will forever hold dear are the ordinary ones. The living room forts, the busy breakfasts at the kitchen table, the unmade beds strewn with the remains of morning cuddles will be the images that we will long to recall, the feelings that we will never want to let go of.
We recently had a family photoshoot with a talented social documentary photographer who offers family sessions. Joubert Loots is a passionate story-teller based in Port Elizabeth who loves to capture his subjects working and interacting in their own social environments. He entered our home as an observer and with his natural ability to identify the magic in the ordinary, he captured a little bit of our story. The result is a raw, emotive and transparent depiction of us.
I realised that I am so used to editing and selecting images with the intention of showing off my best on social media, that I am failing to curate a gallery of images with meaning and depth. Joubert’s images of our family at home told a story, they showed our imperfection and they captured our beauty. I want to do it again. These are the photos that I want to look at, these are the ones for us.”
