Photography has the unique ability to capture different perspectives and tell stories, so what better way than to celebrate Nelson Mandela Day with a unique tribute: “67 Reasons Why I Love Photography” as quoted by professional photographers throughout South Africa. What’s yours?
Freddie Child-Villiers, FCV Photography
“A camera is an excuse to visit places one ordinarily wouldn’t. The enabler to see what others don’t.”
Mardo van Heerden
“Working with people gives me the opportunity to capture the essence of who they really are. Every single day is different and I get to live in the moment with my subjects and capture the beauty of God and man made creations. What not to love?”
Chris Hitchcock
“For me, it’s about the journey and the destination. Getting the brief, planning, scouting, 4:00am wakeups, running up mountains and across rivers. Then the excitement when editing of finding a great catch amongst all the images of the day.”
Liesel Kershoff
“Photography is a dynamic art form that is forever evolving the rules and pushing the boundaries of what you thought you knew. The challenge is to keep up with these changes or risk being left behind.”
Stella Uys
“Wedding photography is my heartbeat, I love it! I love the romantic moments, fun moments, touching moments, serious moments, silly moments, happy moments, quiet moments and most importantly…I love capturing special moments so they can be treasured forever.”
Jackie Badenhorst
“Wildlife photography is absolutely addictive and I can’t imagine going to the bush without my camera! Every day and every sighting is different, great moments are rare, they happen fast, you win some, you lose many. This anticipation and excitement has me coming back for more, allowing me to spend time in my favourite wild places doing what I love most”.
Laura Leigh
“Here are a few reasons why I love photography:
– I am able to capture moments with my family and create lasting memories
– I have travelled around the world to photograph people’s weddings
– Through photography, I have met some amazing people
– I am constantly learning something
– I can share my knowledge and passion with others
– I get to earn a good living doing something I love.”
Gareth Pon
“I believe that as we get older and we fill our heads with more and more knowledge we often forget the beauty of discovery. I love how photography compels me to value that discovery, how it keeps me curious and drives me to see the world with fresh eyes.”
Marleen Nel
“Photography is more than a picture you look at, it is more than a nice scenery or a happy couple. It’ s a story that can never be relived or captured again. As a photographer I get to tell those once in a lifetime stories one click at a time.”
Robbie Irlam
“As a surf photographer, nothing provides me with more ‘stoke’ than shooting the surf at sunrise or during the golden hour in the late afternoon. Much akin to shooting in a studio!”
Eben Olivier
“Photography is all about exploring our natural world, the experience to observe nature through a lens and ultimately to capture that memory for a lifetime.”
Craig Kolesky
“A photo can tell a story without speaking a single word, it allows me to travel and to explore our amazing country and the world, photography is not just my job, it’s my lifestyle.”
James van Hinsbergen
“Photos are more than just art, photographs should invoke emotion and that is what I try to convey in every photograph.”
Louise Pieterse
“After all is done and dusted, we only have memories left. Being able to capture those memories is the greatest feeling. Especially for a someone as sentimental as I am!”
Melissa Delport
“Why I love shooting – Every time I shoot I learn something new. It’s never the same thing twice. I also feel incredibly lucky that I don’t have to work in a cubicle at a desk job. My shooting is my freedom and that is everything to me.”
Blanche Burger
“Photography to me is an art of observation, its capturing moments to cherish long after their gone, it’s evoking emotions in others when they look at a photograph, but most of all, photos bring people together without the need to understand one another’s language.”
Hanri Human
“Because of photography I became a chaser of light, a lover of sunsets and a soul who sees the beauty in every little thing. I truly see the world in 10 000 colours now! How lucky can one be!”
Villiers Steyn
“Without photos, all the memories I make while on safari and travelling throughout Africa would quickly fade… Photography allows me to relive those adventures over and over!”
Ilse Moore
“I appreciate how it has the ability to close the gap between reality and fantasy. It can be very subjective and therefor a highly versatile and creative medium.”
Simon Stewart
“My inspiration comes from paintings rather than photographs. a painters ability to manipulate light, thus confounding the law of physics, reminds me that my role as a photographer is to use my instrument to capture souls, not images”.
Zaheer Ali
“I love that it’s a journey that travels with you. We are currently in a time where we aren’t writing and publishing stories, we photographing and sharing stories. Love it :)”
Mitchell Krog
“Photography has given me the ability to see so many amazing things in this world, from the tiniest creature to the largest mountains. It’s a blessing that photography allows me to share these visions with others who do not get to see them with their own eyes.”
Emma O’Brien
“I love photography because it enables me to make a positive contribution to the world, the images I take of shelter dogs secure them a second chance and often save their lives.”
Kobus Saayman
“It is an instinctive progression from nature lover to photographer, it opens up an intimate world where you experience the animal and their habits without invading their space.”
Brandon Barnard
“Photography gives me the ability to stop time, to capture that perfect moment. I am not a photographer, I am a time traveller. It is all about that human connection.”
Anton Kruger
“Wildlife/bird photography not only gives me the opportunity to experience a wonderful sighting over and over again…even years after the moment, but also experience it in so much more detail!”
Stuart Dods
“I love Photography because as an artist I love painting with light and cementing a moment in time and one people will look back on and treasure for years to come and I feel like I have left my legacy of art with the world too.”
Craig Fouché
“I am a very passionate, highly motivated and dedicated photographer, shooting professional film and digital medium, both locally and internationally. I love creating artwork and lasting memories.”
Andy Lowe
“My love for photography comes from being able to go out, anywhere, anytime and freeze a very unique moment to share with the world – and quite often when you look back over the photograph you discover new details you didn’t see before.”
Mark Harley
“I love photography for its ability to capture the mood of the present and the technical and creative challenges it presents to make the best of that moment.”
Peet Strydom
“Being recently retired, photography has been a wonderful passion shared with my wife, while we explore our amazing country, capturing our exquisite bird and wildlife! I especially love avian action photography and will sit and wait for hours to capture it!”
Gerrit van Zyl
“When I started taking photos I didn’t really know I was creative. My wife was a photographer at that stage and she needed me to help her with a Photoshoot so I did and loved taking photos, the rest is history. Thats why but I do get inspired from other arts like music, tattoos, paintings, coffee, architecture, clothes and texture.”
Claudine van der Walt
“Photography allows me to explore my imagination and creativity. It’s a journey where you constantly learn something new from every situation. There’s nothing like capturing that one special moment in time and freezing it for all eternity. We are storytellers.”
Deen Shroeder
“Photography is my passionate pursuit. During the week I work in Broadcasting and assist in integrating digital thinking into a radio context but photography is how I spend my weekends and most of my free time. I actually am from an advertising background and perhaps being surrounded by creative people, my own creativity was sparked or perhaps it goes back even further. Funnily enough, I stumbled into photography and realised that not only do I enjoy taking photos, people also like them. It’s taken me many years to find a passionate pursuit in life and this is definitely it. Whether it earns me money or not, I will continue shooting for as long as I can.”
Pieter Uys
“I love the challenge of taking mundane subject matters and transforming them into something beautiful.”
Charlemagne Olivier
“I love photography because… I can capture the fleeting imperences of time.”
Isak Pretorius
“I love photography because it is an instrument to experience nature in an intimate way through your own creativity.”
Christine Meintjes
“I love photography because it allows me to show the world how I see it.”
Fiona Ayerst
“Photography appeals to my aesthetic senses. I enjoy how colours, shapes and tone blend and harmonise and how textures mix and work together. I enjoy lines; shapes and forms. I see in pictures. I love the challenge of being a photographer and the thrill of seeing an image appear on my screen- it’s like opening up a present every time.”
Chris Preyser
“I love how photography can take me on adventures through parts of both my country and the people in it. It allows me to show a side of life people don’t always get to see.”
Shen Scott
“What I love about photography is the way it opens you up to the world. You see things differently, you meet wonderful people and you find beauty everywhere you go.”
Charl van der Merwe
“A photograph is just a poem without words!”
Roger Ballen
“Photography can assist you to enter places in your inner mind that you never knew existed before.”
Bev Meldrum
“I love photography because I get to tell the stories of NGOs and social entrepreneurs who are working with local people across our beautiful country, transforming communities and changing lives.”
Sivan Miller
“I love Photography because it lets me be free, and enables me to connect with people in a very unique way. From all walks of life, even to a point that the languages we speak are different, photography is the link for me, the universal language we all speak.”
Clinton Lubbe
“Beauty. The quintessential objective of this visual poetry is to bring joy to both creator and audience. Appreciating a great photograph evokes a smile, a simple emotion that is easily accessible.”
Alicia S Photography
“I love photography because it allows me to capture candid moments that people wouldn’t have otherwise had a physical reminder of. It’s also a wonderful, artistic way in which you can express yourself.”
Matthew Poole
“I love the thrill of looking through the camera and a wild animal locks eyes with you, capturing a rare moment that cannot be replicated and allowing each shot/picture to tell its own story.”
Natalie Field
“PLAY. In-camera techniques encourage the photographer to relinquish control and enter the world of the unexpected image. In this manner, the works and process itself take on a life of their own, leaving a sense of wonder in even the creator.”
Marcell van Aswegen
“Photography tends to challenge me constantly, and a great way to immerse myself in something other than everyday life.”
Macherez Yann
“Photography makes me comprehend who I am, as a human. I capture life surrounding me, to understand my own existence. The pursuit of fulfilment as a photographer is an eternal search of oneself.”
Landi Groenewald
“The world is fleeting. Stories once told by words cannot convey the true emotion and atmosphere from events – but visual images can. This is what makes Photography so real and so true. The way I can combine light and emotion to create art that envisions life.”
Paul Samuels
“Photography has allowed me to travel to places, and spaces within my own city, that would otherwise be off limits in a certain way. The camera has become my passport to these worlds, and for that I am forever grateful that I can not only go to these places, but take images that have a purpose in the greater world.”
Matthew Willman
“Through photography I have been able to deconstruct my own prejudice and reconstruct my humanity and creativity…”
Outdoorphoto’s 2 Cents
JK Zorgman
“I am a big fan of visual art in all of its fields and extensions. The visual arts, in my opinion, is the quickest way, relative to words and numbers, to transfer emotion from the author to the audience.
Creators of visual art have the ability to explain, describe and portray emotion very quickly to their audience and photography as an extension is generally understood easier than some of the other visual fields.”
Bernard Koch
“I have never been a very creative person. Painting, drawing or building magnificent sculptures out of scraps just didn’t ‘speak’ to me.
Photography Captured me in a big way. This was my own form of art, a unique expression of what I experienced at that very specific moment. Every shot was my own, from the good ones, to the very bad ones. Photography opened up this new world where I strived to better myself, improve with every shot, envision the next. I have met many new photographers on my journey, and was blown away by the many different genre’s of photography, how every individual has a different approach to each of them, the different emotions each image provokes. The possibilities are endless, I just couldn’t get enough of it!
A photograph captures a moment, each one unique and could never be replayed. I lose myself staring at a photograph, the details we do not notice in real-time, the essence of a person we grasp by one single frame, the world just seems to slow down and we get to appreciate the finer details. With photography I capture memories, events I can reminisce on and a form of artwork where I can express what I feel, what I experience and take who ever views that image on that same journey.
Everyone should do photography, whether it is with a mobile phone or a DSLR camera. The world has much more to offer once we start appreciating the finer details in a frame.”
Gerald Langton
“Creating a part of history with an image is the most precious part of photography for me. Knowing that exact moment will be etched in time forever.”
Gunther Swart
“I love photography for being able to create something. Creating something that is going to provoke different emotions in different people, all with one image. A story can be told in that one image and a memory can be brought back.”
Marike van Aswegen
“I love photography because you capture a moment forever that you will never ever experience again.”
Lappies Labuschagne
“Ek is lief vir fotografie want dit maak my happy, ek dink aan niks anders as ek agter my kamera is nie – dis net ek en my kamera niks worries nie.”
Alroy Willis
“To photograph an ordinary subject in an extraordinary way! It is the time my creative mind takes over and being able to capture a moment in time that can never be repeated.”
Estian Hough
“A good photograph can capture history. A great one can change it. I love photography for its unique ability to enhance how we understand the world around us.”
Niel du Plessis
“Fotografie gee aan my n geleentheid om met n ander perspektief en ander oë na alledaagse dinge om mens te kyk.”
Graham van der Merwe
“To capture emotion forever!”
Natasha Kotze
“I think that having a creative outlet is necessary for human sanity, imagine having all that wow bubbling up inside with no fireworks shooting out occasionally. Photography allows you to bring your firework masterpieces to life, to show the world what you have bubbling on the inside.”
Celeste van der Merwe
“Photography is a powerful skill. Used correctly it can call the entire world to attention, forces people to see from another’s perspective and documents moments our fickle minds seem to forget too easily.”
Steph Bonzaaier
“It is all about capturing that one moment in time, so you can show the world what it was like.”
Wouda Mc Micken
“It’s like walking through life with a magnifying glass that opens your eyes to life’s endless beatitudes.”
Interesting. Were photographers approached to give they’re views/comments/reasons or did these photographers approach ODP for this?
Hi Thabo,
There are such a vast amount of photographers out there that we’d love to hear from, so we decided to narrow it down and approached ODP Brand loyalists, or those who have grown to be part of the Outdoorphoto family. These photographers have supported us throughout the years by representing talks, writing blogs, interacting and sharing our content on social media or sometimes even coming in store to have a chat with and assist our clients. This was our way of saying thanks for their support and giving back in some small gesture of appreciation.
I have read your latest blog post and its celebration of Mandela day. It was a nice attempt to create a platform whereby photographers could voice their reasons why they love photography. Some of the stories are inspiring and would not only educate but uplift your readers to express their own views. As one of your readers I am pleased to express mine.
As a photographer of many years, this piece is deeply offending. Not only as a professional but as man who strives to change his surroundings. Mandela Day’s message has deep roots in the belief that, “everyone has the ability and responsibility to change the world for the better”. With our past in mind, it is very difficult to believe your positive intentions when 98% of the photographers in this piece are white. Your reason can remain your own, but was it not your intention to celebrate this day? To embrace the call of doing something good for all to prosper. As a man of colour, this piece looks self-serving and only speaks to a narrative you create and not the one that is celebrated on this day.
You might be oblivious to it, but photography is a tough industry. Even more so for people of colour. It follows the trend that many other industries do. White is right. So instead of creating ideas of change, your post places all those close to you on a platform to maintain the status quo. How are you creating change in a white dominated industry? How are you inspiring future generations of non-white photographers with this piece? I will leave you with this, “We need to know with a fresh conviction that we all share a common humanity and that our diversity in the world is the strength for our future” – Nelson Mandela. Try and remember the reasons why we celebrate this day. Avoid using it as a day to create traffic by playing on the egos of your “brand loyalists”.
Hi Luigi, we full-heartedly agree with your statement. Your comment gives great insight into the industry and we’d like to work on telling more familiar stories, so let this be a cornerstone for community engagement that challenges the status quo. We invite you to keep holding us accountable and soon we hope to engage with greater compassion that inspires a diverse nation.