We arrived Sunday evening and spent a relaxing evening in Summerstrand.
Monday started the whirlwind again. Four hospitals in three days. Luckily the weather is fine, the hospital staff are friendly and the accommodations at The Blue Lotus Guest House in Summerstrand are heavenly.
Staša Jordan
So exactly how many photos have we alredy taken for the Discovery Foundation Awards project? How many does it take to complete this type of project?
Well, let me tell you, it’s a lot! So far we have taken over 3000 photographs at more than 20 hospitals, and we expect that the final count will be somewhere around 10000 exposures. That’s not counting “behind-the-scenes” shots taken by Michelle, Marinda and even the occasional passing nurse or bystander.
To give you an idea of why and how the numbers get that high, let’s look at some typical photoshoots during this project.
There are over 50 awards, some of them awarded to organisations or teams, others to research projects or individual doctors. We usually set up the formal portrait shoot first. We photograph each doctor individually, typically taking anywhere from 50 to 200 exposures from different angles and using different poses. After the individual shots, any that received an award as a team are photographed together, generating a similar batch of exposures. Sometimes, there there will also be shots of the hospital management, depending on their involvement in promoting the projects or individuals receiving awards.
Once all the formal portraits are done, we follow the award recipient around while they carry out some of the normal activities involved in their work. This usually takes about 3 hours in the hospital ward, clinic or laboratory, sometimes with additional time in the operating theatre and again generates a bunch of exposures.
Finally, back at base, we put together a set of contact sheets with all the exposures for a specific recipient or project and this goes to the client - Discovery - to choose their favourites.
For a single award recipient - the South African Breastmilk Reserve and their Executive Director Staša Jordan - we took 270 exposures, shown in the contact sheets above, from which the client selected their 12 favourites for editing and publication.
The past week was another whirlwind, this time dashing through the Gauteng government hospitals to catch some of the doctors who had been away on seminars, exchange programmes and courses when we photographed their colleagues last month.
The staff of George Mukhari, Charlotte Maxeke and Kalafong, to name a few, were really helpful. Some of the patients were rays of sunshine too.
On a personal note - those big BMW motorcycles are not as easy to ride as the pros make it look!
It is cold in the Eastern Cape!
We are keeping Michelle far away from the doctors and patients we are photographing in and around Mthatha - don't want them accusing us of making anyone worse ...
With a large project like the Discovery Foundation Awards, you don't always have a chance to sit down in a quiet office or studio to do all the editing needed.
And believe me, there's more than you'd think. Even if you have the "perfect" image, there's still some work to do.
Contact sheets need to be compiled and sent to clients, so they can choose the photographs they want.
Chosen photos need to be checked and edited if required.
Some projects need deep-edged images or special colour schemes, some photos just need a small touch-up.
All this explains why I spent yesterday evening sitting at a restaurant table with my MacBook and tablet editing photos and sending emails, instead of just relaxing, kicking back and enjoying my sundowner while watching the ocean.
My assistant, Michelle had time to unwind after a long day of tramping through hospital wards lugging lights and camera bags, doing the make-up and taking the behind-the-scenes photos, but I still have far too much work to do.
No rest for the wicked ...
Today is our last day staying in Ballito. This afternoon I'm off to Margate. I'm going to miss Jakita's.
