3rd Place (The 3rd Part)

Here are a few more faces from our little community church in the heart of Hatfield, Pretoria.
I'll be taking a break for two weeks before carrying on with these headshots.

I'll be posting about my personal project I did; for the whole month of August in the next day or so, so keep an eye out for that.

Thanks for reading

3rd Place (Part Dos)

Good day

Here are the next bunch of portraits from my on going project at 3rd Place.
You can read about it here if you want. Nothing fancy. Just straight forward.

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3rd Place (Part I)

I'm part of this small community church, in the heart of Hatfield, Pretoria. It's amongst all the chaos of the city which is what makes it so special.

No fancy church building or anything like that. Just a small unassuming space surrounded by coffee shops, fast food joints and liquor stores. So like I said, nothing fancy, but it's "ours". Where we (the church) gather to talk about God and Jesus and loving people, regardless of, if you believe or not, you're still welcome and I invite you to come check it out for yourself.

For more info you can visit the 3rd Place here or here.

For the next couple of months I'll be documenting the faces that move through the space, whether you're a once off visitor or a frequent "patron". So, if you see a bunch of flashes set-up and a guy with a camera standing around (that would be me) come get your photo taken. I'll then throw it up on Facebook and you can tell us who you are and what you do.

Here are the first batch of photos.
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The Return

Well, hello there.

It's been a month since I've been here and I see not a lot has changed in the land of milk and honey, sex and sin; a.k.a. the internet.

It's been a good month. I finished my personal project. I have five shots or so left on the last roll of film before I take it in. Part of me just wants to waste those five shots, because I'm keen to see how the photos came out (if they came out at all).

When that's done I'll hopefully be able to share with you what the project was about and how it turned out.

On top of that I tried to partake in the Nikon "photo a day" challenge they had for August, but there wasn't enough time in the day between work and the personal project - and then somehow fitting that in as well I was stretched pretty thin, so I was selective about some days. If I didn't like the theme I skipped it. Some days I really did try to pull off the idea I had in my brain, but it failed and other days it didn't go to bad and I got something to show. The point of this for me was to at least go out and shoot regardless if I got "the shot" or not.

I take my hat off to people that manage to do 365 day projects in the craziness of our day to day life. And I don't mean random snapshots showing your hair growth. I mean thought out photographs or concepts. Someone going out everyday trying to get that one shot that separates it from the rest. That takes a lot of patience and time and and and...

Anyway, here are some of the shots of the photo a day thing that "made the cut".

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Day 1: Self Portrait

Day 5: Vertical

Day 6: Busy

Day 7: Water

Day 9: Woman ( Couldn't get a rad shot of a girl so I chose this shot. I mean how cool does this guy look?)

Day 12: Clouds

Becoming Part Of The Signal

Since I've started a regular nine to five (or in my case seven to four) job, my photography has kinda suffered a bit, but I realized a few weeks ago that I need things to keep me from what I love doing in order for me to push on and work at it (and hopefully end up doing it).

That being said it isn't easy! Not by a long shot!

I wanted to enter a pretty big art show/competition hosted by Sasol called "New Signatures". The concept was there, ideas for photos, but I soon realized I needed help first of all and that weekends have suddenly become much shorter. There's so much happening - from seeing friends to doing cleaning, washing and a bunch of other random things - that I ran out of time! I considered completely changing direction and doing something on film, but then I realized that had it's own set of challenges and with only a week left it's pointless in doing something and handing in half-assed work to represent myself.

I will however be starting on two personal projects. One, I'll need help with and the other I kind of see as a journey of self. Me, my camera and a "3rd party", which will be revealed when the project is finished. The latter will be on film and it might span over quite some time, coz I haven't even begun to learn the intricacies of film.

So, from tomorrow I'm separating myself  from the "noise" in order to become part of the "signal" in the wise words of Zack Arias. I'll be removing myself from the online world for the month of August, so that I can focus on my film project. The only thing I'll check are my emails and that will be limited to once a week.  I'm kinda nervous about it as I don't know what's going to happen. I'm going into this blind and I might emerge from it with nothing to show, which will be a damn shame. I'm kinda scared of committing time to this and if it fails I'll be f*%ing disappointed, but I'm going to do it anyway and from failure we learn right?

Hopefully I emerge from this a little wiser and with something to share with people.
I'll be back soon. If you want to reach me, just drop me a mail.

Thanks for reading