Photographing interiors and exteriors of houses and old buildings is one of my passions.  Well okay, photographing pretty much anything is a passion for me…

Interior designers do not design house to be photographed easily, they design houses to be visually appealing.  When photographing houses, interiors and exteriors you have a few different light sources to keep in mind and balance.

Photographing houses is all about great lighting.  The best time to do these photos are in teh early morning and late afternoon.  (I know it sounds cliche and you have heard it a million times…  But that means there is truth to the statement)

You have to look at the lines and flow of the room you are taking photos of.  Do you need to use a slightly higher or lower angle to make sure you get every detail, or do you need to compensate with your White Balance because the flourescent kitchen lights are casting the room in a slightly green colour?

So yes, photographing interiors and exteriors are hadr work and it takes a little bit of thought, but all good things are worth working hard for.  These photos are visually very pleasing and they could easily be displayed as magazine quality interior photographs.

Riani

When you start getting into photography your style tends to lean more to one principle or the other like food or fashion or products.  It’s not that you try harder when you photograph that particular subject it is just your thing.  You don’t even have to think when you photograph it, everything just comes naturally better than everything else.  The trick is to make everything you photograph look that good.  To work hard at everything else that you become a well-rounded photographer.   As an “artist” you must always strive to broaden your horisons…

The Radisson Blu Hotel in Sandton was so kind as to allowing me to photograph food in their beautiful restaurant.  The food their chef’s prepared especially for my food photography looked absolutely divine.  When photographing food I think the lighting and styling is the two most important factors.  If your lighting isn’t up to par, your food will look terrible.  You need to catch the subtle highlights on the food and accentuate only the most important part of this equisite bowl of food.

I know people eat a whole salad but if you try to photograph this exactly the way it is served you might find that it all looks too busy.  Rather use a smaller plate with a smaller portion to make sure that you don’t visually overload the client’s senses.  Keep it simple and shoot from an angle between 40-60 degrees (this is the angle that people usually look at their food when they are getting ready to eat it) 

I cannot begin to tell you how important it is to keep experimenting with different angles and lenses.  The food photo may look perfect in the back of your camera’s little LCD display but once you upload them onto the pc you will often see that you prefer a different angle that what you chose in the beginning.

Riani

The monthly ladies networking function Woman at Work was held on the second Wednesday of this month because of school holidays.  Last night’s function was held at the promise grill in Meyersdal and it was really nice and cosy.  There was roundabout 80 ladies attending the function and the guest speaker for the evening was Marietjie Tame who owns the local Alberton newspaper called The Tame Times.  She spoke about marketing your company in these tough times.  A lot of people are in the frame of mind to cut out some of their advertising to save on costs and this is a fatal mistake.  Take a company like Coca-Cola for instance who spend millions on advertising.  One employee suggested that everyone on earth knows Coke and will keep on drinking Coke regardless of if they advertise or not.  So technically speaking Coke could save millions and decided to give it a try.  Within 6 months Pepsi had replaced Coke as the number 1 selling soft drink in the world and it took Coke 12 months and three times as much money to get back to the top again.  Which just goes to show you that everyone needs to advertise their company and get (and keep) their name out there.  There are millions of ways to advertise your business and not everything is going to bring you business immediately but the client might keep your business card and later on when they require your services they might pull out your card and give you a ring  

 The charity of choice is a new initiative called no regrets, reach for life. Margaret Janeke is the main driving force behind it, she was a lecturer at UJ when she got called upon by the Lord to serve his purpose.  She changed and modelled her thesis  and created lifeskills manuals (and now a DVD) on how to live your life.  (and what to avoid)  Basically BOUND is a lifeskills initiative which helps young teens to realize their potential and helps them to keep control of their freedom and to live lives which isn’t overshadowed and ruled by drugs or dangerous sexual activities.  It was very inspirational to hear Margaret speak as she has been through process of having the visions you have for your child shattered by drug abuse and has such a passion to help others.

As always there was lots of sponsorships and prizes to be given away in the lucky draw and this personalised “one-of-a-kind” sports bag was just one of many prizes.The whole idea of a networking evening like this is to support other likeminded women in the South that we can build our businesses, whilst having fun and a bit of social.  Sometimes we laugh so much that my stomach muscles hurt…

Riani

Coffee Table Photobooks are the new way to display your precious memories! It’s still very new in South Africa and make the perfect gift for Granny and Granddad or even mom.  Also very handy for displaying your memories from your trip overseas.  No more photos falling our of your album and photos getting a little dog-eared!  These books are created digitally (we can even scan some of your old prints and add them in between all the digital photos, no problem.    Photobooks are the perfect solution and makes for a great unique gift for evey individual.  Contact us on info@louisedieselphotography.co.za for more info about this affordable photobook!

Riani

As you know yesterday was the first Wednesday in June so we attended and photographed the ladies networking event woman at work.

About them: ” Woman@Work is a society for women who work or women who run their own businesses or women who just want to meet other people. We have a big get-together on the first Wednesday of every month. It creates an opportunity for all ladies to network and promote themselves and their businesses or products/service. The objective of these fun-filled networking and socialising events, is to create a platform where ladies are given the opportunity to meet like-minded women and are able to find out about and support local businesses.”

The event was held at Thaba Ya Batswana in Kibler park and let me tell you it’s an awesome venue, absolutely gorgeous.  Upon entering the hall they had drummers playing Djembe drums which just completed the atmosphere.  We even had a demonstration from these drummers and some ladies got chosen to play along on the drums, and let me tell you it’s hard work, but you feel totally destressed afterwards…

The theme for the evening was african winter (so animal print all around) and let me tell you these ladies we’re dressed to kill    )  Glynis from Glitzerati was even wearing her leopard print slippers!

The ladies drom Dianamix hairdressing were armed and dangerous with their limited edition GHD straightening tongs.  They did Tanya and Toni’s hair right there on the spot and they also straightened and curled any ladies hair who was willing to give it a try, and did they all look fabulous!  Their husbands will probably ask them something like : ” I thought you went to a networking evening…” 

Renate Landman was the speaker for the evening (she also talked a little bit at the diamonds and pearls event held at the Royal Boma in Alberton) so she was back by popular demand.  Seeing that we we’re an all women audience Renate chose to speak about realationships.  She talked about balance in your life.  About the five languages of love and negative and positive energy in the world (which comes back to balance)  For instance picture a family driving down to the coast from JHB for a vacation.  So the kids are continually fighting in the back of the car (negative energy)  and mom has to keep threatening them to quiet down and leave each other alone.  After that they keep bickering and fighting so dad pulls the car to a halt and says to them:’This better stop immediately or we’re turning around and going home”  So the kids end up huddling together in the back seat (suddenly standing together and telling each other it’s okay – positive energy) and mom looks at dad and goes:’  Sheesh, that was a bit harsh’ (so now the negative energy has moved to the front. Basically there is balance in everything in life and once you start accepting and working with that belief you will become a whole lot happier.The thing that I love most about woman at work networking evenings is meeting with other business women and moms, whom you can even just chat with and in the process I’ve made some great friends.  So come along  on the 8th of July to The Promise Grill and find out what the hype is all about

Riani

The fourth woman at work ladies networking event was held at The Boma Barnyard Theatre in Alberton.  The theme for the evening was Diamonds & Pearls and everyone wore white.  It looked magnificent from up there, like a gathering of angels…

There is just this amazing energy when having such a big group of women come together for such a lovely evening, almost like a sisterhood vibe which no man may ever understand (not even a gay one).   I’ve heard a wise saying:’ A man shouldn’t try to understand a woman, he only needs to love her with all his heart’ 

The chosen charity for the evening was St Mary’s Childrens home.  They are based in Rosettenville and look after kids who have no parents or family.  Their aim is to place these kids with a foster family who will love and support them, and raise them to be motivated individuals.

The Boma is known for its Barnyard theatre where many great singers and entertainers like Coenie de Villiers, Laurika Rauch and Barry Hilton have been entertaining guests for more than 6 years.  The Boma also has their own fully licensed reastaurant with buffet lunches on Sundays.  Both the Boma in Alberton and Boksburg have lovely wedding chapels and wedding facilities.  They also have a big conferencing hall so this makes The Boma the ideal wedding and conferencing venue.

Renate Landman was the guest speaker for the evening.  She is a trained Dr. Demartini facilitator trained by no one other than Dr John Demartini himself.  Her company is called The Learning Curve and what they basically teach is ways to improve your life based on science.  Basically for every negative action there is a positive action. Let me explain..  For instance if you have been in a car accident and is now paralysed from the waist up (negative event)  Now your kids need to learn to become more independent in organising lifts and so on.  You realize how many people care for you from the big support group you suddenly have.  You may start doing something youv’e always wanted to do like start piano lessons as you have realized how short life is and how important it is to live life to the fullest.  And so the positive and negative events create a balance.  See your life like this and you will become much more content and live a balanced life.

Included in last night’s woman@work event was the show Diamonds and Pearls – a tribute to Neil Diamond and Celine Dion hosted by The Boma Alberton.  I was so jealous of every person in that band…  All of them has got such amazing voices and instrumental talent.  It made me decide to go for proper vocal training.

The cast, musicians and singers of Diamonds and Pearl soon had all the ladies on their feet singing and dancing.  The way I see it is – any person who has the vocal ability to sing Celine Dion’s hits and make it sound good is a great artist.  I’ve never seen a pregnant lady singing and rocking like that.  Truly amazing I tell you.  Her little one will probably want to be a rockstar

Did you know that Celine Dion has had a show running in Las Vegas for five consecutive years and the tickets has been sold out for each and every performance?!  Now that’s what I call making a success of yourself!  It has been said that Celine Dion is the one artist who akes sure each and every note coming out of her mouth is pure perfection…

To the cast of Diamonds and Pearls you brought a true tribute to Neil Diamond and Celine Dion to the stage last night and for that I congratulate you.  I enjoyed your show so much that I’ll be bringing my father to see it

Toni and Tanya, once again congratulations on a very successful, fun and entertaining event!  I wish you all the best for the future!! 

PS- Good luck with the big move of Sinzinani Day Spa to Thaba Ya Batswana, I know you’ll make a great success of it!

Riani

How many times have you looked for one of your treasured photographs?
You think to yourself it must be somewhere in this shoebox or on that CD - SOMEWHERE being the operative word.
Louise Diesel Photography has the perfect SOLUTION for you!
Throw the shabby old shoe boxes and old cd’s away, you don’t have to start the computer up and crowd around the screen.
Create the ultimate coffee table storybook with all your memories and comments. Your imagination is the limit…..

We now also specialise in designing, printing and binding of storybook albums.  Each and every album is custom designed(you can do it yourself or we can do it) and hand crafted to guarantee that your memories will come to life in your personal one of a kind coffee table storybook.

We offer a unique value added service in printing two different types of storybook albums.  The first coffee table storybook that we offer is used locally as a personalised gift for mother’s day, holiday photos or just a family photo abum.  This album comes with magazine style pages and a personalised cover.

Our second album is used nationwide as a wedding album.  This album comes with 2mm thick pages an a bonded leather cover(cream or black)  It has metal corners in gold.

Both of these coffee table storybooks make unique gifts or table decorations.  It’s a quick nd easy method of making sure your photos will be around for your children and grandchildren.  Contact us for more info…