Suren and Pooja got married yesterday.  It was an epic occasion, that started with their wedding ceremony at the Hindu temple in Lenasia South and ended with a reception at the Sandton Sun.

Suren and Pooja contacted me a few months ago at work, after someone in the office had told them that I do photography. I’ve been really looking forward to the wedding since then. It was the first time I’d taken photos in a temple… and then as the plans started unfolding I got more and more excited about it.
You see, Pooja was in the dark about part of the day. She thought we were going to do their creative shoot in Newtown… after she’d got her hair and make-up redone and she was in her evening outfit. Well, that was not to be. Suren’s friend had contacted him a few weeks ago, and offered the use of a helicopter to transport them from Lenasia to Sandton. So, between Suren, Shaun, the MC Carla and myself, the plans were changed.

As a surprise for Pooja, the helicopter arrived in the veld close to the lunch venue, and Shaun and his co-pilot Wessel, flew them and me to the top of a mountain in the Magaliesburg for their creative shoot. And then it zooted us to Sandton, where we were met by a driver from the hotel who took us to Sandton Sun for a quick change before the evening reception.

My second shooter for the day was Alana Meyer, who had the important job of capturing the heli leaving Lenasia with us on board.

But first, I need to show you the photos from the 2 hour ceremony at the most incredible temple.

I love the look that I caught Suren and Pooja sharing as they waited outside the temple.

Considering Joburg is experiencing a heatwave at the moment, the fire made the temple unbearably hot, and Suren must’ve been baking in his velvet jacket.

I took this photo while Suren and Pooja were circling the fire

Suren had to put toe rings on her feet

and then they exchanged their garlands…

And they played some kind of cute fishing game with the guru’s ruby ring…

… before exchanging rings

And then after a stunningly delicious lunch, it was time for the helicopter to arrive, and Pooja was still none the wiser.  She did however start asking a few questions when Suren was waiting outside with his friends… but he still didn’t say a word.  And it was only after the helicopter really came close that she realised something was happening.  But it took quite some time before she realised what was going to happen… and in fact, how many people kept it a secret from her.

LOVED that we even got flight tickets!

As soon as we were up in the air, Pooja started taking photos and BBM’ing her friends

and after about 20 minutes, we landed on top of the mountain…

It was such an incredible experience and so special for me too… a helicopter ride to take photos of a city was on my Bucket List… so I got to tick something off in the process

We landed at Inanda on the edge of the polo field, and the driver came up in his big black Merc with tinted windows to take us to the hotel.  It was so funny to watch the other people at Inanda trying to peer in the windows to see who had arrived in such style!!

As soon as we got back to Sandton Sun, Carla whisked Pooja off to the hair salon to have her hair done for the evening

There are a few more images from the wedding and the reception on Facebook, and if you were a guest at the wedding, you can tag yourselves in the images there when you “like” the page

I got an invite to attend the Sunglass Hut launch of their summer range that was held at Sandton City this evening.  There were some really stunning pairs of sunglasses available… and one of the pairs was a Bvlgari pair with 18ct gold and encrusted with diamonds worth close to R100k!!

If I wasn’t lugging my camera around I would have been trying on the shades like these ladies

The event was like a who’s who of Johannesburg…  Jennifer Su and Janez
The Bvlgari sunglasses worth R100k.  Only 10 of them have been made.
The guys from 2Oceansvibe were at the event and hosting their live radio show from a booth.  It’s a HUGE pity we couldn’t hear any of it from there, and had to listen to pretty music instead.

Aspasia Karras, the editor of Marie Claire who told us about the latest trends


No, they’re not shop window dummies… they’re real people…

Was awesome being invited to a style event… thanks so much to SunglassHutSA for the opportunity

I had such fun on Saturday, taking photos of the Amazing Race for Charity.  This event was the 8th one, and again, started and ended at The Baron in Sandton.

When Dean contacted me a few months ago, and asked me to take the photos again, I jumped at the chance… I’d had so much fun taking the photos at the event in March, and couldn’t pass up the opportunity again.

Almost 15o teams of 4 or 5 people competed  in the event (the rules are that the driver of the car has to be a woman), which saw contestants racing around the northern suburbs of Johannesburg.  All the money raised at the event was donated to Philimpilo Community Care.

First some of the teams before they started.  You may spot Telana, Melissa Attree and Leigh-Ann Mol in this first collage, although, you may not

The Lego men won the “Best Dressed” prize for these costumes that took them 50 hours to make!

And the cars were just as good!  The best dressed car was won by the Pigspotter team

Carcol sponsored the Zimmerframe Rabinowitz Sisters team with this gorgeous graffiti’ed car

Then it was time to start… the teams got their first clues before racing off to find Blue Bird Centre (based on the photo they were given) to get the proper clue sheet

The first clue led everyone to Mandela Square where they took part in a flash mob.  It was too cool!! They even had the patrons in the restaurants around the square chanting “His head’s too small”.  Then just as it started they dispersed

One of the clues led them to Parktown where one of the team members had to parallel park a Geely blindfolded! While I was there, the one girl that drove, and did quite well, had never driven a manual car before!

And another clue led them to a random street in Parkhurst where the contestants had to do chalk outlines of their team mates

At the Morningside Shopping Centre, they danced to Thriller

And at the Field and Study Centre in Sandton, they did pillow fights.  There were other places they went, but I didn’t manage to get there before the first time arrived back at The Baron.

But someone had to win… and this team did… arriving at 4:45pm.  They donated their R10000 prize (sponsored by Play Energy Drinks) to Doctors without Borders! How cool are they?!

Even Dean’s parents participated this year… they looked like they had a blast.  Their team was called “4 weddings and a funeral”

The team that won the best dance team for the thriller dance they did

… and then everyone partied at The Baron again

There are more photos that have been loaded in an album on Facebook, you just have to follow it to tag yourselves.

Hope everyone has got inspired by this post, and are starting to plan teams, outfits and cars for next year’s event   If you follow the Amazing Race Continues Facebook group, you’ll get to hear when the entries for the next event open.

I don’t often take on photo clients during the week, but tonight I did a corporate event at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Sandton (not the Gautrain one – it’s all so confusing with the 2 hotels being so close to each other… some of the guests went to the wrong hotel).  Anyhoo, I can’t show you photos from the event, but I did have fun with some “me” photos for my 365!

The conference rooms at the Radisson are on the 12th floor, and have the most incredible view over the city, and you’ll have to just believe me when I tell you that the group photos taken on the balcony against the red-orange skyline are just amazing!

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

I met Nicole at News Cafe at 24 Central in Sandton yesterday to have a spot of lunch and to give her my old Sigma 70-300mm lens to use for a while to see if she likes it.  I couldn’t resist walking across the road to RMB to take photos of their stunning World Cup flag display again.

Oh and that reminds me, if you’re in Johannesburg next week, there’s a march happening in Soweto called the One Million Flag march… there should be awesome photo opportunities there

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