The downtown area of Kimberley is quite small, no tall sky scrapers or anything like that.  It does have something in common with most large downtown areas such as that of Johannesburg and Cape Town, Street Kids.  They walk the streets at night looking for a fix, whatever drugs they can find to help them through their lives.  No parents and no home to go to, they sleep pretty much where ever they can.  We came acoss this kid that asked the security guard at the Post Office is he could sleep right there on the stairs.  She said she felt sorry for him so she gave him a piece of bread which you can see in the photos.  I have no idea how old this kid is but he had Tattoos on his leg and another guard told us that this kid had been into some of the heaviest drugs the night before…  Apparently he ran away from home and then ran away from the ‘safe haven’ as well, left to lurk the streets of Kimberley, steeling stuff to sell for drugs.  Quite a sad story.

Meet Bradley Goodsir, son to Richard and Carolynn Goodsir and subject of my first ever baby photographic shoot.  I was slightly nervous going into the shoot as I had never done something like this before and I actually had no idea what to expect!  Needless to say that Bradley was one of the easiest subjects I have ever shot photos of!  He smiled and laughed and seem to enjoybeing the subject of a photo shoot as much as I enjoyed shooting photos of him.  These are just a few of my favourite shots that I picked out this morning.  Enjoy.

I’ve always struggled with shooting panning shots of moving subjects!  I decided that a great place to practice this technique is at Nollie Faith in downtown Johannesburg.  The kids are constatnly skating up and down the street, all you need to do is find a good spot and wait for them to come zooming by!  These are 2 of my favourite shots taken at Nollie Faith while practising my technique.  There will definitely be more to come!

I noticed this kid while shooting photos of the kids skating at Nollie Faith, he just had the cutest expressions on his face as he watched everything goin on around him.  I had to shoot a couple photos of him!

I love using the Canon 15mm Fish Eye lens to create different images. It’s fun to use for portraits and distort the image and create a different feeling about an image that might other wise be pretty boring. These are some of my favourite shots from the skate contest at Nollie Faith last Saturday
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This is another shot I took at the Nollie Faith gathering on Saturday. I noticed this little kid sitting on the curb, all by himself while the other kids were skateboarding and having a good time. He looked like he’d been crying. I decided to approach him and try chat to him and maybe sheer him up and get him to enjoy the day with the other kids. I soon realised that his English wasn’t the best but he definitely understood the language of photography and when he saw himself on the screen on the back of my camera, he could barely contain himself! Just by taking his photo, I had completely changed his mood. I’m not sure if he was just excited to see himself on the camera or maybe it made him feel special that someon had taken enough interest in him to actually take a photo of him, either way, it made me feel warm inside. Viva la power of the camera!

The ‘Nollie Faith’ community is basically a couple guys that are helping street kids in the area of Maboneng, Johannesburg.  I’m not quite sure how the whole thing works but it seems the kids have access to skateboards and other cool stuff.  I went down there on Saturday to take a look… these are some of my photos.

I shot these photos on a recent trip to the Maboneng Precinct in the downtown area of Johannesburg.  This kid really enjoyed running up to the camera and then riding off down the street on his skateboard.

I recently went on Honeymoon with my wife Sarah to Madagascar, needless to say, it was totally amazing and very different to anything I have ever experienced!  I was totally humbled by the native people, living off approximately $1 per day and still, they are hardly ever without a smile, just doing what they have to do.  Oh, these are also the first pictures I have blogged so I hope this works!