GA

About your local photographer

I started photography over 40 years ago in primary school, and in high school I built a darkroom under the stage in the school hall where I developed photos for the school newspaper and year-end magazine. From there I studied photography for 2 years at a college in Port Elizabeth and then for a year at the London School of Printing. I stayed in England for 3 years working and saving up to buy photographic equipment.
I have had a 25 year career in photography based in Cape Town where I built up many photographic studios under the name “STUDIO ONE”, the last and biggest studio was a 650m² Penthouse Studio space with 4 studios in the city centre in Bree Street. Under the
Studio One banner I had built up the largest equipment rental business in Cape Town, hiring film cameras of all formats as well as studio equipment from flashes to tripods. On the back of the Studio One brand, I had two studios running, as well as being a photographer and the equipment rental business, there was my production company called One Productions and a Coffee Shop Bar for photographers and models called: F STOP.

All the pressure of running so many businesses eventually burnt me out and about 10 years ago I gave it all up to look after my ageing mom and brought her out to Barrydale 7 years ago. Barrydale, is a tiny town in the small Karoo. My Mom passed away peacefully 3 years into moving out here, I then bought an old farm labours cottage overlooking a farm that runs up into a valley and started to build onto the cottage to create a lovely home for myself. I have built up many other people’s old buildings into studios over the years and then just walked away. I felt it was time for me to build a studio for myself where I could be creative again with a B+W Darkroom to play around in. There is little to no work out here and driving to Cape Town is a 4 hour journey and it's expensive to do the 500km roundtrip to find work, so I decided to build a STUDIO and a DARKROOM with the intension to invite photographers to come up for a weekend and do photographic workshops. I built my studio over the span of a year, out of recycled poles and corrugated iron sheets; I used mostly recycled wood and screws that I salvaged from Africa Burn.

I built two wooden cottages on the property, as well as a TP and two caravans to provide accommodation for guests, The ideas is to share my Creative space and darkroom with other creative like-minded people that would like to escape the crazy city life and relax out here in the desert. The Karoo is a wonderful, peaceful space to unwind and connect with the earth and nature. A space where you can take your shoes off and ground yourself, breathe in the crisp fresh air and unwind from the stresses of life and my idea is to incorporate the old techniques of B-W Photography with reconnecting with your own creative self in a way that you don’t just take a photo, but take the time to understand lighting and exposure and the creative process of CREATING A PHOTO.

I host workshops over weekends and holidays for anyone that would like to get away to a space where they have time to enjoy exploring the elements of the original photographic process. From judging your exposure and processing your own film, to the final part where you have a contact sheet to choose your images from and print and frame your images before you go home. I shall provide a platform for you to shoot with all formats of camera you like; from a pin hole camera to 35mm film cameras, ”6X6“ and “6X7” film cameras and “4X5”view cameras. I have a vast collection of Cameras of all formats and you can bring your own old film cameras with, or just your digital cameras as there will be classes in post-production on digital formats as well. Your B+W negative can be scanned to a digital format as well in high resolution of email size and you can bring your old B+W NEGS with if you would just like to print them in the darkroom.

Barrydale is a magical, undiscovered little gem of a town at the end of the lush Tradouw Valley. It is surrounded by a dry, unforgiving but beautiful desert with an abundance of unique plant life and landscapes that lends itself to unlimited photographic opportunities. I plan to set up an Annual Photographic Exhibition Festival in Barrydale with guest speakers, workshops and exhibitions over the next year.

I look forward to having creative and like-minded photographers come to share my creative space to produce their own magic and to provide the platform for them to enjoy the old traditional photographic processes that we have almost forgotten about. This could be a great opportunity for young photographers to experience the magic of film and printing, as they will be the ones to keep the tradition alive! I will be hosting Wetplate Workshops from Dec 2019
Thanks for reading all of this and I hope to hear from you and see you up here soon.