Postcards

In 2000 I found myself a job at a company that supplied, among other things, curios and tourism related products, including postcards, which they printed in-house. Their aging range needed some fresh photography and I was hired to produce the goods.

Simon’s Town Harbour

Cape Town Townships

Chiapini Street – Bo Kaap

The statue commemorating the iconic Just Nuisance near Simon’s Town Harbour.

Groot Constantia

Waves crashing onto the rocks adjacent to Kalk Bay harbour

Franschhoek Heugenot Monument

The emblazoned winglet of one of SAA’s Boeing 747s

Camps Bay and the Twelve Apostles

The colourful chalets of the False Bay Beaches

Lanzerac Hotel & Spa – Stellenbosch

A beaded South African flag

Sunrise on Fish Hoek Beach

At one point we embarked on producing a series of calendars, and had at our disposal numerous photographs taken by legendary traveler, writer, photographer and documentarian, the late T.V. Bulpin. Most of the images were taken on slide film in the 70’s and 80’s, as was the method then, and had to be viewed on a light-box (an actual light-box, or light-“table”!) through a loop.

I can remember looking at the photos and thinking about how dated they looked compared with the emerging digital technology at the time.

Yet, I was still delighted to look through them and share the photographer’s experiences of the wonderful places he’d visited in his life, and I was in awe of how many, and of how varied they were. They showed me Bulpin’s incredibly extensive travels that criss-crossed the Southern Regions of Africa countless times over decades! Through this alone, his dedication to, and love of his work was obvious.

Now, as I upload my own images that were shot more than a decade ago, I feel a similar sense of nostalgia. Most of the images in this album were shot on either the company supplied, 2.4 megapixel “FujiFilm FinePix 4900 Zoom“, or my own Canon EOS 5 film SLR, which produced high quality 35mm transparencies or prints, but were then in turn scanned on a flatbed scanner – a less-than-ideal (read: rubbish!) way of digitizing images.

So from a technical standpoint, when I see these images, and as time and technology moves on, I cringe with ever-greater vigor. However, from a personal and experiential point of view, I grow evermore fond of the memories that were created while shooting them, and I’m proud of the modest body of work that I was able to contribute back then.

Many of these images were used in the production of postcards, calendars, books, and CD-ROMs, etc. Some were not, but were shot while on the job.