photo-models – Herman van Bon Photography

Nearby our house is the pre-primary school Buzzy Bees next to the primary school Okkie Smuts and there is a nice flow from one to the other despite that Okkie Smuts is original an Afrikaner School which pre-Mandela was not allowed admit children with another skin colour than ‘white’. But times have changed for the better in a way although both schools are not state schools (parents have to pay for it). People from The Scheme (the area where most ‘coloured’ and ‘black’ people are living -designated by the past) who financially can afford to let their children have a more appropriate education send their ‘kiddies’ to this school. The Buzzy Bees, as I understood, started up as a kind of community project.

Pictured (opalotype processed) are children on their way home with and without shoes…. And they love to pose (natural gifted photo models)

My first photo-model

In a small village like Stanford it’s not easy to ‘persuade’ people, especially women, to photograph them. Whatever the reason it took a while and against all odds (even her mother said that she would “never ever” do it) Karuna didn’t even think twice. She admits that she hates to be photographed but this time she challenged herself.

I prefer making pictures as natural as possible without artificial lightning and if I use a model I prefer him/her to look natural. The only compromise I make is the use of photo-processing software which I’ve done extensively with Karuna. I’ve been cropping a bit and processing in RAW I shifted the buttons for exposure, black, white, highlights, saturation, contrast, shadow, etc. numerous times to get the desired image. While taking these pictures I tried to emphasize on reflection with the use of windows and a mirror.

But before I really started to work with this first time model I made several snapshots of her and together discussed them. After that I made a serie of approx. 300 portraits and this is what’s left.

BTW: Karuna does not like bananas….