One Camera. One Lens. One Photo a Day.

The view from Constantia…

This morning I had a portrait in Constantia, one of the beautiful suburbs of Cape Town.

How would you love to have this view from your backyard?  The morning cloud cover provided a soft quality of light — by mid afternoon, though, it had burned off.

Franschhoek, South Africa

Karine married Rohan this afternoon at a beautiful restaurant in the heart of the Cape Winelands.

I’ve known Karine for 9 years — Nicki for much more from her days in Cape Town — and we’re both so happy for them.  We just met Rohan today and also his family (from Australia)…

The day was absolutely beautfiul…an early morning cloud cover that hung around Table Mountain, burned off just at noon and the wedding was about 30 minutes later.

Karine looked simply stunning in her gown and she walked down the aisle surrounded by a group of family and friends, including a couple of Yanks .

We then had the lunch on the porch at La Brassiere a restaurant managed by her friends Jo and Mark — great food, great fun and simply great people.

We arrived in Cape Town today on an early morning flight from Durban.

The kids are with Granny and Grandpa and we’re here for a wedding and a few portrait sessions.

The session yesterday took place at a fantastic hotel called The Vineyard which is literally two blocks from Kerry and Andrew’s beautiful home in Newlands, with a view of  Table Mountain from their frontporch.

This is a view from the Vineyard yesterday afternoon with hints of Table Mountain on the background.

I think Kate has been missing her gymnastics classes at Cal Elite…or she’s been watching the vervet monkeys a little bit too closely.

Actually she was trying to chase the cat, Fergus, who escaped from the clutches of the little girl by climbing up and through the door (and then found out she enjoyed climbing up the door).

A portrait of Sonny.

Sonny works as the gardner at Nicki’s parent’s home here in South Africa.

He has been employed by them around 7 or 8 years, working three days a week.

And he’s got a tough job.  The homestead is on about three acres and includes trees, bushes, hedges and flowering plants and Sonny takes care of it all.

During this afternoon’s portrait session of Murray and Lem’s kids (at their grandparent’s home), I was able to photograph this lovely animal in the stables at the home.

Even the weather was threatening this afternoon, we still had enough light to make a very cool set of photographs which I’ll post on Facebook and the other blog very soon.

Tomorrow will be a fun day for Nicki in the morning — Kate will be in preschool (yeah and she loves it!!) and she’ll drive down to have coffee with the girls.  I’ll stay here in the sudden quiet of the in laws’ home and prepare images from portraits.

Poor B.G.  Even though he thought he was pretty well hidden in the sink, Kate found him once she got back to Granny’s house around 3 p.m.

If you have ever read the Oliva books by Ian Falconer, you’ll know that one thing Oliva loves to do is to move the cat.

Well Kate loves the Olivia books and I think deep down she thinks she IS Olivia (and the truth of it is that Nicki and I kind of think she is too — but I’ll bet every parent does).  And of course if Olivia moves the cat, so should Kate.

But these cats are old and grumpy and don’t like all the attention, and the cat hair really irritates her eyes, but still she persists, just like Olivia would.

We had a warm visit with the Griffin family this afternoon, even though today was cold and rainy.

Murray is one of Nicki’s oldest and dearest friends and he and his wife Melony have 3 beautiful children.  They were kind enough to have us around for an afternoon playdate that extended into a lovely dinner with their family as an added bonus.

Kate loved playing with their oldest, Jenna, who is twice Kate’s age and you could sense Kate looking up to her as she followed Jenna around this afternoon.  It’s really sweet to see her play with Nicki’s friends’ children in addition to the cousins.  There’s deep deep bonds there and it’s nice to see them being passed along to the next generation.

Here the Griffin kids sit with the baby this afternoon.  He has been thoroughly spoiled by family and friends, I might add.  It’s tough to now get him to sleep in the afternoon without him being held but it’s the good kind of spoiling and since it’s only going to be for such a short time, it’s worth it.

Moira simply doesn’t take no for an answer.

Late this morning we headed up to Michaelhouse, a private, all boys boarding school that Tony attended and completed his studies  in 1957.  Sons Michael and Andy completed their schooling there in the 80s as well. Imagine Dead Poets Society and you’ve got the South African equivalent.

After loading up the car, kids and cameras for an hour and a half trek up to the area called “The Midlands” we got to the gate.  We would have a leisurely walk on campus and then find a nice shady spot for a picnic.  Or so we thought.

The attendant turned us away because a feature film based on the novel “Spud” was being filmed on the campus. Ironically Spud is about attending the private school in the 90s and was first published in 2005.

But Moira would not be denied.

We pulled over, she and Tony got out of the car, and after about fifteen minutes of chatting to the guard, somehow she was able to get him to let us onto the property, his orders notwithstanding.  Not quite a Jedi mind trick, but we’ll take it.

In this photograph Tony and Moira (pushing Sparky) pass by Farfield House the dorm where Tony lived, as did the sons all those years ago.

As we were walking through the campus I thought how cool would it be if Sparky attended Michaelhouse when he’s old enough and continued the family tradition.

Milestones reached:  sitting up, one more front tooth…

Yesterday Sparky was beginning to really grasp the skill of sitting up on his play mat.  You could really see him righting the ship as it almost toppled over.

Last night, the second front tooth popped through — the few days and nights prior he was in pain and we think it’s one of the things that kept waking him up during the night.  Well that and being transported to the other side of the world in the past couple of weeks, were perhaps the culprits.

It’s now 10:30 PM and he and Kate are both sleeping soundly in the room that they’re sharing.  We’re hopeful that we’ll finally have a full night’s sleep without waking up tonight.

In honor of those milestones I really wanted to share an image showing the boy sitting up.  Plus you can make out the teeth as well.  Here he was late this afternoon near the pool.