I am a proud member of the Little Hearts network.

Little Hearts is a network of South African photographers who are donating time and their creativity to help families with kids who are ill.  It’s just starting out, but the idea is to take photos for families who have got a child that is struggling with illness, whether that’s a life threatening illness like cancer, or a genetic disorder causing their precious child to be ill in some way.  Or in fact, in the case of a friend in Cape Town that I helped link up with a photographer a few months ago, use it to celebrate remission… in her case she wanted a shoot just before Wouter’s hair grew back after chemo.

Families with kids that are ill can normally not afford to get a professional photoshoot done, and that is where we come in.

And of course, this time of the year is perfect for planning something like this as a Christmas gift for example.

The network is mostly run through a Facebook page, and there’s also a blog that has been started.

If you know of a family that could benefit from this, then post a comment on the Little Hearts Facebook wall, or send an email to tanya@littleheartsphotos.co.za.

If you’re a photographer and want to get involved in this, please send an email to tanya@littleheartsphotos.co.za

If you can’t help in any of these ways, but do want to help kids with cancer… DJ Fresh is running a campaign to meet 100 000 people in 1000 hours to raise awareness for leukemia.  That’s quite a challenge!! And I see he’s already started. I actually think I want to do that too… but take photos of it   LOL!! You know me, right, can’t do anything without my camera

To get involved in that… go to the 1 in 100000 website and sign up to meet him… or donate some money to the Sunflower Fund.

First a little rant and rave…

There are a lot of photography bloggers that have said recently on Twitter and on their blogs that a photographer’s blog should only showcase client work.  In fact, they also say that you should only put photography on your blog if the photo session is the type that you want to get in future, for eg, only post weddings if you want to book weddings.  And if you add in personal photos and other stories it detracts from the style of photography that you’re trying to sell and people will lose interest as soon as they get onto the blog.  But here’s my two cents worth…

That makes sense if you’re a full time professional photographer and you have regular clients.  I’m saying that because your blog will only get good ranking and be searchable if your content is fresh and you can post client photos at least twice a week.

I’m not a full-time photographer.  I’m a mother and I love showing off my kids.  I work full time in financial services so I can’t afford to take on that many clients every week, no matter how much I’d love to.  I’m also a blogger at heart… that’s how my passion for photography began.  I’m also doing a 365 project which I could probably have put on yet another blog, but to be honest, 2 blogs is enough for me to handle right now.

And then, I get a phone call like I got this afternoon, and all my doubts about the way I blog disappear.

I got phoned by someone from New York… that’s right… all the way in the US of A.  She’d found my blog and read the post I wrote in December about the D Hani creche in Soweto.  The story and the photos touched her, and she now wants to send them some school supplies to I put her in touch with the fundraisers.

So there, I’m not your run of the mill lifestyle photographer… but really… this is my life and hey… I actually made a difference in someone else’s life today just because of a blog post and a few photos.

The photos that I take for myself, where I’m not being paid, push my knowledge and skills.  I’m more likely to take a risky shot and process a photo strangely for one of my own photos than a client photo.  The 365 challenge has again improved my skills, and I feel that blogging about it also shows that I can do more than one type of photography.  I feel that it does showcase my skills (feel free to disagree in the comments )

So no, too bad if it’s not the norm, I’m not planning on changing the way that I blog.

And now for today’s photo…

This school holiday seems endless to me already, and the kids are already bored… so this week we have a few plans up our sleeves.  They went to Madelein’s house today to play for the entire day, tomorrow they’ve got friends coming to play at our house, and on Thursday they’re going to play at a friend’s house again.

When I got to Madelein’s house this evening to pick them up they were quietly watching TV and eating popcorn… amazing… of course all hell broke loose when we got home again, but they did look like angels for those 5 minutes.

See the full set of 2010 photo-a-day photos on my Project 365 Flickr Set.

I popped out of the office at lunchtime today to take photos of the 100 Doors of Hope that are being displayed at Hyde Park Shopping Centre this week.

The 100 Doors of Hope is a fundraising initiative for Johannesburg Child Welfare

100 doors and a 100 people raising money for Jo’burg Child Welfare.

JCW has tasked 100 people consisting of artists, musicians, celebrities, authors, comedians, photographers, cartoonists and graphic designers to each take an old door and turn it into a piece of art.

These doors will be auctioned in September to raise much needed funds for Jo’burg Child Welfare.

Wow, I was blown away by them.  The designs are awesome, and the stories that the doors tell are just so so powerful.  I definitely have my favourites, which ones are yours?

LOVED the dress in this door by Abigail Betz

A very powerful story by Bevan and Justine Cullinan

Loved the detail around the door by Des and Dawn Lindberg


Very cool design by Evolver

One of the things I noticed right away was the way that each artist treated the door handle… and this one was the fanciest and definitely had the most detail. The back of this door by photographer Graeme Williams was also very detailed.

Just love this one by John Vlismas

Oh and you know how I love graffiti… so this door by Rasty just spoke to me

Loved the story behind this door by Senzo Shabangu

I would love to see more of the doors as they’re completed. You can follow the progress of the doors by joining the event on Facebook

When Dean contacted me a few weeks ago, asking me to take photos of the Amazing Race for Charity, I’d never even heard about it before.  What an incredible event it was, and I’d love to get involved in the next one too!

Dean from Brand Halo hosted the first Amazing Race 3 years ago, as a celebration for his birthday with 20 teams consisting of all his friends.  Since then he’s run one every 6 months in Johannesburg, and at some stage he started giving all the funds raised to the SOS Childrens Villages.

There were 150 teams of 4/5 people (all teams had to have a female driver) that took part in the 7th event yesterday. All teams have to have a name, and preferable have to dress to a theme… and that included dressing their cars!

Basically, there are 10 cryptic clues that all contestants have to unravel in no particular order, and the race sends them frantically driving and running around spots in Johannesburg collecting passwords.

Some of the awesome team costumes at the starting point at The Baron at 24 Central in Sandton…

Tinto grew up in a SOS Childrens Village. He’s an amazing man, who started school when he went to the home at the age of 8. Now he works as at Anglo Platinum after getting an honours in Finance at UCT!

All the movements on the race were tracked on a *120* number on Vodacom. At all times, you could track which position you were in, and you used the system to submit the passwords too.

Some of the amazing cars… the first one won the best dressed car award

Some teams took their time planning their route before they started using laptops and phones. You couldn’t finish all the clues without having a laptop.

Clue 1 took the teams to Ernest Ullman Park in Wendywood (although one team managed to misinterpret the clue and ended up in Soweto!), where they had to climb through the enormous jungle gym

The soccer fun at Sandown High was hoot!

Dean showing us his skills with the phone and the ball

At MiBar in Rosebank the teams had to down a shooter, before playing a little indoor golf and then they had to join the Amazing Race FB group

Paintball at Paintball Xtreme in Bryanston looked awesome with one team member trying to shoot another team member across a field (they had masks on)… even though it was raining by this stage.

The winning team… Where is Wally… getting back to The Baron in Sandton

The army men won the best dressed prize.

Celebrating the winning car…

Where is Wally… drinking their tequilas

And lastly, a photo of Dean with his friends after the prize giving. The really happy looking one is Alex, who’d just found out that his wife was in labour!

If you’d like to take part in the next race, or join as a spectator, then join the Amazing Race Continues group on Facebook, and all messages will be posted via that board.

I’ve really had quite a run of charity work lately.  This is the last for this year though.  A colleague told us about this creche in Soweto that was started by an amazing lady, and as a result of what we found out about it, we also collected toys and clothes for this school.  I went with 2 of my colleagues to deliver the goods and see the place for ourselves.  My car was so full of stuff, and the roads were so very bad that I actually almost rolled the car on the way to the school.  But anyhoo, that’s enough of me, this lady’s story is incredible!

I’m going to give you a quick recap of Nthabiseng’s history, because the whole story, especially the details of the abuse is too terrible to repeat on my blog.

Mme Dimpho (as she’s known in the area) was one of 3 children.  Her parents died when they were young and they lived in aunts and uncles home cleaning and cooking for them until her brother was old enough to look after them.  She never went to school.  He made her marry someone when she was 15 and she had 3 kids. She eventually got a job as a cleaner in Rand Mutual hospital and then started training as a nurse, until the hospital closed down when the mine closed.

One day she was at home, when a man came to her house with a baby who was very hot.  She tried to bring the fever down, but it didn’t work.  Eventually she took the child to Baragwanath where the doctors examined the 9 month old and discovered that she had been sexually abused.  The baby eventually died from her injuries and the father of the baby was never found.

That incident made Nthabiseng decide to start a daycare instead of just sitting around the house waiting for a job.

The daycare centre is in the area where she lived.  It’s in a low-cost housing and shack dwellers area called Doornkop which is on the West side of Soweto.  The centre cares for 130 children between the ages of 6 months and 6 years.

The school is not the only thing that she does in the community.  She runs a feeding scheme from the creche for 15 granny headed households where the parents have died and the grannies can’t get government grants because they can’t get ID documents (one of the households she feeds has a granny with 8 kids).  She also fosters 8 children at her house and she can’t get grants for them either.

It’s pity the school was closed for our visit, but she said that because most of the parents don’t work at Christmas time, she can’t get paid at all; so she doesn’t have the money to run the school and feed everyone once a day for this month.  And she needs to have the buildings repaired over this time too, as the kids have broken windows and there’s a lot of damp on the walls of the one classroom.  Let me take you on a tour:

This building built by FNB houses the kitchen, and then a room which serves as an office, sickroom and the guard room (there’s a guard that sleeps there at night), and also a room which is the nursery for 12 babies.

This classroom is the older kids class.  There are 35 kids in that class

This room serves as an office, a sickroom and at night it’s transformed into a guard house where the guard sleeps

Other than the 2 yellow buildings, and the loos, and one prefab building that serves as another classroom; all the other buildings on the premises are shacks that have been built as classrooms or storage rooms.

And finally her amazing veggie garden which stretched the length of the property.  She feeds all the children (and she teaches them how to grow them) and the feeding scheme households with her veggies.  She picked some spinach for my colleagues to take home.

These kids arrived while we were leaving, and were hoping for a bite to eat.  As you can see by the clothes, it was a crazy cold day today.. which is mad considering it’s the middle of summer.

And that’s it… I’m going to make a plan to get there when the school opens again next year to see this place alive.