Shootfest!

This past weekend I went away on a shootfest with Arroia, Pyke, Kohana, Jeckyl and talamia to Parys in the Orange Free State along the Vaal River. It was awesome to spend some time with everyone again <3

The trip started with me waking up at 3:30 am. 3am is an ungodly hour but it was worth it. When we arrived at the place this is what we saw:









The venue is called The Last Tango in Parys which was really cute too.

We were also accompanied by my make-up artist friend who makes me pretty for most of my sets. After trying to convince her for a while to do SG she finally has joined the naked. Take a look at this lady:



keep a look out for her she will be on the site shortly! <3 I have been hoping she would shoot for ages and I was so happy when she decided to give it a go!

Of course nothing ever goes perfectly streamlined and just as we entered Parys the speed limit changed super quickly and a crazy metro cop ran right in front of us in such a way that we almost took her out. There were threats of arrest and general surly lawenforcementness but after a while the cop chilled out but still slapped us with a hectic speeding fine. There always has to be on bit of drama. Fortunately that was it for our trip.

Parys is a tiny one horse town filled with little arty type shops and interesting little eating establishments. A lot of it seems to have remained in a time warp, including some of the residents. We got some incredibly strange looks doing perfectly normal stuff like buying groceries in the most mundane way. It was rather amusing. I picked up this book for next to nothing in one of the shops which of course made me really happy



After wandering through these stores we visited a bit with Visara and Kathearsis, they are awesome for putting up with me being a little bit drunk. I am really glad I got to meet them!

Another interesting thing about the place was that we had to drink bottled water. It was really weird for me because in South Africa our tap water is fine to drink in most places. I was also surprised to see how much water six girls could go through in a day.

I really enjoyed watching the sets being shot. I love seeing the creative process and even in some instances being able to lend a hand or give a suggestion. I didn't manage to get a load of pictures, for a few reasons: 1) I was busy doing other stuff 2) the unglamorous truth is when we weren't shooting it was a lot like a pyjama party and we were lounging about cos we were on holiday and I think we earned being pyjama hobos. 3) I don't like posting too many pictures of the upcoming sets so the suspense is heightened and surprise is not ruined.

Having said that:



On our last night once all the sets were shot and we had dined all fancy like with candles and so forth, we went to trespass on someone's field and lit paper lanterns. I was nervous that I was going to set myself or the grass or someone else alight but barring two lanterns that decided to combust rather than float up into the air, I had reasonable success. No flaming friends, fields or foolish Lumo's. Sadly I couldn't take pics but talamia was playing around with her camera so when she does blog you can check it out there.


Here are pictures of my hawk moth friend:





Some pictures of my friend friends:









I began to get a cold though and on the trip back in the plane I thought I would go mad with pain as the pressure in my ears tried to equalise through my poor swollen Eustachian tubes, Eventually Arroia accosted the air hostess to find some gum. It took a little while but it did help. I tolerate pain well but not when it comes to earache, it was really embarrassing but I couldn't help the tears streaming down my face. Arroia said it looked like my head was going to explode. This is not what I was talking about when I refer to developing head explody powers!

So this little lurgilicious one is going to go take a few more hippie meds and try recover a bit before I must away to do the work thing without sneezing on or in fact collapsing on anyone.



Xox L