Archive: Author: admin

Yolandi Barnard

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I first worked with Yolandi during a collab with Ootrey. Despite me being fresh into photography, she opted in and brought her best. That’s trust right there.

I started following her work and among other things, the aesthetic and her consistency was and still is amazing. I mean, see for yourself.

Since the first time we’ve worked together, I’ve always wanted to have the opportunity to do so again and we finally made it happen.

Here’s some of the shots we got.

  • Nikon D750, 35mm F1.8, Godox off camera flash + softbox

GPB Battery – just as good?

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Spoiler – No it isn’t! Not even close.

While I’ve had my doubts about generic batteries, my experience with same discouraged me from buying one again.

I had a video shoot lined up for this passed weekend. Exciting times! I mean, it’s been a while.

I was confident that I could get it done with the limited gear I had, but I just couldn’t risk not having an extra battery ot two. That live-view will drain the heck out of your battery, even when setting the monitor to minimum brightness. Switching the camera on/off between shots also wouldn’t be a suitable power-saving solution as you need to be ready to capture important moments ALL THE TIME, AT ANY TIME.

All of this justified the purchase of at least one new battery. However, buying one turned out to be a little more trickier than I thought, with the main question being whether to get a OEM version or try out the lesser expensive generic ones.

At the end of the day, I settled for 2x generic, GPB batteries which I was promised to be “just as good”, when in fact, it just doesn’t hold up to the OEM version. Yes, it’s just less than half the price but it has a fraction of the capacity that the original (in my case, Nikon) batteries has.

My experience

We had a long day of shooting ahead – about 9 hours in total. I’ve shot the whole video, with the live-view on of course, for well over 4 hours with a fully charged Nikon battery before I managed to drain it down to 1-bar. I swopped batteries with one of the GPB ones and to my surprise, it only lasted me about 30mins, using the same shooting style I did with the original. That’s way less than I expected.

If you primarily do photography…. MAYBE… you’ll get some bang for your buck here, although I wouldn’t bet on it. The Nikon battery lasts me through a whole 3-4hour photoshoot with about 50-70% of battery life left, depending on how often I use my speedlight. I’ll try and lead with the generic batteries upon my next photoshoot to see how they hold up.

IMO, if you can afford it, save yourself some frustration and just buy the original. 

Camera and battery used -  Nikon D750 + EL-EN15a

Caleb, Still togging, Whereto from here…

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How do we do this again? JOKES!

I’m not here to bore you with reasons for not maintaining this blog as well as I’d like to. I’m here today for a well overdue update.

When I’ve started this I had no idea about the direction I should be taking. One day at a time as they say. If there’s one thing that’s for sure, it’s that I’m happy that I started though… very.

I picked up the camera because of how difficult it is to work on my first love, drumming, in my current living situation. With no obvious work around, I poured my passion into a more quieter craft. I’m dreaming of the day where I’d be able to combine the two. Sooner than later, I hope.

Life’s changed drastically for Deenah and I after buying our own place and welcoming our “boykie” into the world. It goes without saying that priorities have shifted a lot.

Caleb Maverick Coltman

That’s his name. It’s been decided when we spoke about the idea of having kids. Weird? Idk.

Unless you’ve met him personally, you’d probably only know him by the tiny hands or feet we post. It was just an unspoken agreement, even at the time of going for scans, that we won’t upload images of him to social media. I promise he looks like me though, with the exception of those dimples – that’s totes on his mom.

He brings us so much joy to our days just by being his innocent self. I’m sure many parents can agree that your capacity to love (sometimes fiercely) increases once you have a child. He consumes our thoughts. I sometimes catch his mom looking at photos/videos of him while he’s sleeping, lol.

We keep a diary of our thoughts surrounding this new journey of parenthood. Is that something you’d like to follow? Let me know.

Still Togging

With the exception of my 2 last posts, I’ve totally abandoned ship on social media. I’m still taking photos though, just not the ones I enjoy making a fuss about.

Matric Farewells issa thing, hey? I mean… it’s big. I’ve been afforded some opportunities to capture those along with other events. I must admit that I really miss portrait photography though. I hope to pick it up again soon. For now, hit me up if you need your event covered! *wink wink*

Where to from here…

Who really knows? If my life had a theme right now, it would be “figuring it out”. I do, however, have an idea about the blog and the direction I want to take with the content I post here.

First of all, I’m changing the look and I’m kinda excited about it. Secondly, we’re getting personal. If I’m opted to, I’ll be sharing more about my thoughts surrounding current affairs, my family and my faith. This will be a separate catergory to the blog.

I must admit that “lifeafter8_5“, along with some other things, took a bit of a back seat. (I mean, OBVIOUSLY, right?). However, I’m taking baby steps to getting back in there. All in due time.

Tarryn Lewis

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I came accross Tarryn’s work on Instagram and knew she was one of the people I just had to work with. Luckily we lived in the same city which made it easier to set up. 


She’s a self-taught make-up artist from PE, whose work speaks for itself. You can check it out on her Instagram pages. For personal work, @07tarrynlewis and for client work, @ivybeauty07


We had a concept in mind but lacked the props to pull it off as soon as we would’ve like to. So, we chose a look and did our own thing with what we had. Tarryn is easy to work with and so damn good at what she does. All of that and more is what made this one of my favourite sets. 

For those interested, I used my D750 + 35mm. We shot indoors so I used artificial lighting (Godox TT685 + 120cm octabox) which worked real nice. 

Here’s some of the images we got out of it. 


PS : No flowers were harmed in the making of this set. 

Deenah’s maternity shoot

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It was pretty much an unspoken agreement that I’d be the one doing Deenah’s maternity shoot. It’s not a service I offer, but I couldn’t refuse. Not that I would’ve.

With a little bit of research, I found out that the best time to do this kind of shoot is around 30 weeks. This was the plan until that little hospital incident clashed directly with it. We had to postpone, making Deenah around 32 weeks pregnant around the time of the shoot.

The plan was to do a shoot in natural light, around sunset/sunrise (although the former ended up being the better choice because of the cold winter mornings), at a forest-looking location. Then an indoor shoot in addition to that. A friend of ours was kind enough to help out with a dress, so we set the date and headed out to do the shoot.

Here are some of the shots. 

Gear used : D750 & 35mm lens

Dad life loading…

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There’s so much happening in life right now that photography is almost the last thing I think about…. almost. I did just purchase a sweet 120cm softbox for some moody looking portraits. More on that in a different post.

Backtracking to April, easily the most insane month of 2019 thus far. I thought I’d be inspired to write about it, instead it just revealed how much of an introvert I really am. “Do these people even want to know?” is a question constantly on my mind. If I’m being honest, it’s happening even as I’m typing this. Just me?

It’s been a good month since, so I can sum it all up. I’ve had a health issue that neccesitated a 2-week hospital stay. This happened shortly after my wife was admitted for an issue of her own. At this stage we’ve been in the new place for less than a month. If you were to visit our new home at that time, it would’ve been very apparent by the boxes that were still unpacked and piled up in the lounge. We’ve brought that down quite a bit, since. Because of that stay, I’ve had to cancel three shoots that I had lined up for one of those two weeks. Some latent defects starting showing face in our home, some that needed attention ASAP.

None of this, however, could overshadow the abundance of joy that comes from knowing that one of these days…. a month from now if all goes according to plan… we’ll have our little one earthside.

So far, nothing but love and support has been shown by those who knows Deenah and I. He’s been showered with gifts and neccesities that took a load off our backs and makes welcoming him to his new home a lot easier.

Now that the storm has seemingly died down (at least temporarily – because there’s also a supposed poop-storm ahead), we can focus on preparing for him.

I don’t think there’s “Dadvice” that could fully prepare me for his arrival, but like a lot else in life, I look forward to treading in the unknown and learn along the way.

Sidney’s Farewell Shoot

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Hey, Cyber Person! Between moving house and getting things in order for the little one, I feel like I haven’t done a photo shoot in ages. At least not just for the fun of it. I’m at work daydreaming about whipping out my DSLR, slapping on my favourite lens and just go trigger happy on everything around me.

I’ll have to settle for the next best thing for now, which is reliving my recent work. Which brings me to this awesome farewell shoot. When I look back at it, there were no shortfall of challenges. Time, location, weather… you name it.

We found ourselves jumping over a locked gate at one point and battling with PE winds at another. All of this while trying to move between 3 locations within a short space of time.

With that being said, I really enjoyed this shoot. Sidney looked stunning and they (her and her partner) just brought their best to the table in a very natural way.

Here’s some of my favourite shots.

Gender Reveal Party

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I’m still getting to terms with the reality that I’ll be responsible for someone’s upbringing when inside, I feel like I’ve still got so much to learn about life. Needless to say, the best way forward is to grab this bull by the horns. Or, this baby by the diapers… or whatever.

If you’ve watched my last video, you’d know by now that we’re expecting a little boy. We can’t wait to have him with us and are counting down the weeks.

We had a Gender Reveal Party at Stir Coffee Co. and I wanted to share some of the images with you. Fun was had and we’re so happy that baby’s already loved even before making his appearance.

I couldn’t really commit to taking pictures, but luckily one of our friends just took initiative. Not bad for a first time, Niven. 😉

I went with a cooler look by using my blogger preset on this one.

Hope, is that you?!

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We’re living in one of the most joyful and most challenging times of our lives at the very same time. One of my favourite authors references this as the line between order and chaos. Right there, smack-bang in the middle, wehre there are things you can control and things you simply cannot.

Joyful because of baby that’s on the way and because of our new place of course. 

With the new place, however, we’ve been sent into a debt spiral, fast. Baby’s on the way and we don’t have any apparent way to change our financial situation. 

Did you read that in a panicky voice?

In the midst of all this, somehow, my wife uttered these words “I just know that our situation won’t remain the same and that it will change“.

Maybe she didn’t realise, but at that moment she spoke right into my heart. It was godly, really. Words that I still hold onto while we’re seeing this through. We’re pressed, but somehow we’re at peace. 

I had the opportunity to speak at church one Sunday morning and I took a principle out of the book of Philippians. 

“…Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ”

This really ministered to me because what stood out was that emphasis is placed not on finishing, but on the continuance of this work.

If there was ever a challenge to continue… this was it. And we embrace it – fully. 

Blogger-like look.

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I might have a slight obsession with creating presets. I’d take anything that would streamline my post-processing and this definitely does that. 

I had a busy day yesterday…my kind of busy, where I do things I actually enjoy. Wifey and I spent most of the day together, hitting the malls early and running some Christmas errands. We stopped over at Vovo Telo for breakfast. The place is set up in a homey fashion, creating a warm and welcoming atmosphere. 


We sat outside and enjoyed the smell of the lavender garden, but not that bees that were roaming around it. Anyway… this is not a food post, because I’m kinda hungry as I’m typing this and might just go into a downward spiral if I continue in that direction.

Having planned to vlog a little, I took my camera with me. I took a few photos and decided to edit them a bit differently in post. First of all… PE was extremely cloudy on the day and the soft light was so flattering. I mean, the clouds were basically big, natural light diffusers. WIN!

The look I had in mind was “blogger like” (whatever that means…because bloggers are so versatile with their images). I think bright and soft would be a fair description, as opposed to the punchy images I put out on the regular. 
So, I created another preset in the process. Here are the results. Let me know what you think. Would you use this?