Helping the special ones...

This young man not only crept into our hearts with his project but he is also such a soft spoken, big hearted child that became one of our best recipients of the Young Community Shapers Awards. Since he won the competition a while ago he has gone from strength to strength. Let me explain.

This is a young man with a heart as big as life itself. I met Lesego in a far-off rural area about 500 km from Johannesburg. In this rural village people, and especially children with special needs are left behind. Lesego has a sister that was born with brain injuries and as she was growing up he saw how poorly the community was equipped to deal with these kinds of people.

Lesego and his mother have no help from any official department and rely solely on donations from the very poor community. A local school made a small two-room building available in witch the day care center function. Lesego and his mom are currently looking after about twenty children with special needs.

Since they started the project an old couple joined the staff and cares for the children as well. They have been married for over 45 years I was told.

Apart from teaching and playing with the children these caretakers also feed the children one warm meal a day. With no kitchen available in the facility this all takes place outside on an open fire. Toys to stimulate the children are not plentiful and the special equipment that is needed to stimulate them are expensive. This does not stop Lesego and he continues to care and love each child in his care.

After the Gala Event where Lesego won the competition and was awarded the prize money I asked him on what he was going to spend the money first? He said without thinking that he would build a ramp for the wheelchairs to get into his care center!

Since then things have really improved for him and his care center.
After the exposure through our competition a French company got involved with them, he moved his care center to the nearby town where they can serve more children with better facilities.
Lesego himself went to France where he was taught special skills to help the children in his day care center!

All and all this have proven to be a huge learning curve for Lesego and we are glad to say he grabbed the opportunity with both hands!

Well done my boy...

I previously posted an image of my boy studying hard for his exams.
Here he is with the exams results just in.
He got six distinctions for all his subjects. He also received a Gold medal for being the best in his grade!

Well done my boy! We are so very proud of you.

Youth Club with a different outlook...

Just like any other country in the world, Africa has the same problem, - to keep children occupied after school and during holidays. We all know that idle hands are very often found doing evil things, and so it is that this Youth Club came to be. After seeing many young girls fall pregnant and many young boys turning to drugs, gangs and crimes, Lerato chose to start a Youth Club with the view to help each other.

During school semesters the group gets together to help each other with schoolwork. Older children are appointed as caretakers and mentors of younger children. They also take the initiative to the streets, - they do clean-up operations in their area over weekends.

Some of the young ones have asked Lerato to start doing exercises in the morning and so the fitness-club of the activities started.

In order to keep the creative juices flowing, the Club participates in drama classes, poetry, drawings and modeling classes. During the modeling some participate as designers and some are the models. In this way both boys and girls can participate and it helps each child in developing self-confidence.

The Club boasts members of all ages and everyone is welcome. With initiatives like this the youth are realizing that they have to start making deference themselves and should not sit around and wait for someone else to help them.

Street photo in Istanbul...

As long as we are posting people sitting on benches around the world I thought to keep it going.
These three ladies was sitting on a bench outside the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

                                                            Just chilling in Istanbul.

Prague, the city of music...

When we visit foreign countries I love to walk the streets and see and hear the street musicians. Maybe it is because they are playing instruments, creating something beautiful from nothing, maybe because they are artist, like photographers, creating something in their own minds beautiful, or maybe just because, in secret, we all want to make music?

In Prague the street musicians are everywhere, - with preference to the Charles Bridge as this is where the most tourist are. Some goes to extremes to show their talents, - like this Australian, playing more than one instrument at a time.

This guy told us he is touring the world and through his instruments he is paying the way.

You cannot go past such a fellow traveler/artist not dropping a few coins into his hat.

Some are more friendly than others, but who are we to judge, - after all, are we not all travelers on the same road?

And then you get the ones were all you can do is stand in amazement, - not so much as of the music they make but in awe of the creativity that is the "musical" instrument!

And what would a visit to Prague be without a visit to one of the cathedral's where the "professional" musicians make music?

No matter what you prefer, street musicians are entertaining, where-ever they perform, how friendly or funny or sad they are and as fellow travelers we owe it to them to drop a few coins into their hats. Never let the music dies.

Cycling through the Cradle of Humankind...

Today I had to dig through my archives to retrieve an image I took a while ago for a client. Needless to say I saw a lot of images that have been forgotten about.

I found a few I made at a cycle race not to long ago. It was a 24 hour race at the Cradle of Humankind, - the actual place where the remains was found of the oldest, and thus the first humans on earth.

The race was between teams that raced through the night. What made this race so special was that part of the course went through the underground section where the exhibits are. During daytimes visitors was coming and going through the various sections of the exhibits with the cyclists speeding through!

I took all the normal images of cause, outside, at the start, at night, over hills, through water etc, etc. However inside the exhibits section various slogans, posters and exhibits was against the wall, and here i made some of the best images of the race. I also played with the shutter-speed a lot and wanted to share some of the images with you.

Always look for different angles and places to put your subject in and the result might just be the one the client, family, friends like the most. Be different.

In the end it was these images the client used and not the regular, "normal"cycling images.

Street photo in San Francisco...

I caught these two old timers resting/sleeping in the winter sun on a bench at the pier in San Francisco. It was quite cold and the winter sun was welcome. Again as we said before, with age comes more sitting around on benches, - and why not?

They looked dressed for this morning out, like it is the highlight of their day. I liked the way the old man had the newspaper on-top of his head to shade the sun.