Professional Photography in Cape Town

  Winter daisies on the farm Dwaarsrivier, Cederberg. 

  Dusk - after sunset Noordhoek Beach

Understanding digital photo quality and file size: A ready guide for publishing - Magazine print, newsprint or digital medium.   Photo and content copyright Gareth Griffiths As an editor and professional photographer, up to 50% of the images Safrean Gareth Griffiths gets sent for publishing in print are of the wrong resolution. Here’s how you can be sure you get it right next time. Resolution Resolution means the size of the photo in pixels (very simply, these are ‘dots’ of digital information relating to colour and tone) that are expressed in a horizontal and vertical medium. When you multiply the horizontal by the vertical dimension, you get the digital resolution of the image, expressed in megapixels (what you camera ‘takes’). This should NOT be confused with print resolution, which is the dots per inch analogue equivalent of digital resolution. The trade has adopted two slang terms for the presentation of images. They are ‘high res’ and ‘low res’. Be warned that these are subje...

  My Martial Eagle from Etosha many years ago! Pics still in demand.

AS AN ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHER, I often cover outstanding architectural projects for print and digital magazine purposes, in addition to social media. My high note was covering the launch of the Zeitz MOCAA - Museum of Contemporary Art Africa when I was stationed in the media area right near the Arch. As usual Archbishop (Em.) Tutu charmed the crowd in his normal unassuming way. Just take a look at the faces of those girls! This was my shoot for the magazine at the SILO Hotel - part of the Royal Portfolio Group where Liz Biden does much of the interior design herself. Most recent project: The Ridge - V&A Waterfront. The best green or sustainable building ever! Interior design was by Paragon Interface - for Deloitte SA. And here is Claire D'Adorante, the fantastic designer and workplace strategist who made it all happen.

STADSAAL ROCKS - CEDERBERG WILDERNESS Stadsaal close to sunset - height of summer. If only these rocks could talk, what a rich history they could unfold.

  Apparently, it's a Black Sparrowhawk. Camera: EOS 6D - 100-400 f4.5-5.6 L lens at 400mm ISO: AUTO - camera selects 5 000  1/2000 second  Aperture: f5.6

  Wotyathink? A rhino ambles across the road after sunset.

Hey, happy couples, the wedding season is coming with the first peak of spring and organisers are busy planning ahead. A word of advice about booking your wedding photographer: Choose carefully. It is more about pointing a camera, as you will note from the advice offered in my posting above. BOOK NOW!

Are you in the middle of organising a wedding and are looking for a great photographer? I'm an experienced photographer who has invested the right amount of time in developing my skills and I have made right investment in good equipment. As a busy commercial photographer, I undertake a few weddings each year. The brides, grooms and families are never disappointed.  A word of advice. Book me early, since my calendar is filling up. Shoots are custom made to your wedding programme and your budget. No standard and boring service offering when you hire Gareth Griffiths Imaging and Photography! I would love to help you. Want more advice: Click here and check out wedding photography advice .

So what does it mean to get married? Hopefully, a lifetime commitment with fantastic benefits to bride and groom that hopefully leads to children and family ....... These are lifetime memories, which is why it is so important to preserve them. That's why it is so important to book a photographer and, if applicable, a videographer who knows what they are doing. There are many wannabees who offer services and who sport low end digital cameras and who offer services at bargain basement prices, yet don't know the first thing about photography and working with light. Often they are not so good at working with people either. For a start, ask your photographer what their backup plan is if their equipment fails. Do they carry a spare camera or two and spare lenses? Ask your prospective wedding photographer what professional bodies they belong to, what their qualifications are and what their investment is in photography.  Its also advisable to check how your photographer is wi...

Sutherland, just inside the boundary of the Northern Cape is an interesting place especially if you are keen on astronomy. The level of science being practised at the SA Astronomical Observatories is fascinating, where South Africa is making a real contribution to the scientific database of the world, especially with the Southern Africa Large telescope (SALT). But there are some interesting lo-tech highlights also. See Pic!

T he refurbished Grain Silo at Cape Town's V&A Waterfront is full of striking 'interstitial' spaces where grain used to be stored but now have been converted into elements of the though provoking Zeitz Mocaa (Museum of Contemporary African Art). These spaces have been polished by master polishers of their trade and provide the camera with some interesting eye candy.



Beautiful early summer day at world famous Buitenverwachting Wine Estate. In the photo, Chief Chef Edgar and maître d' Diego check the quality of some of the estates famed red wine prior to serving lunch.

 As THE EDITOR OF  TO Build magazine , I  was one of an elite group of magazine editors and international journalists to be invited to cover the developers’ gala evening, the official press launch and the grand opening ceremony and ribbon cutting a week later.        With the opening of the Zeitz MOCAA (Museum of Contemporary Art Africa) in the second half of September, South Africa entered the super league of countries that host contemporary art collections from across a continent and its diaspora globally, all protected by Category A climate control inside its 90 galleries. The technology has been endorsed by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and is used in internationally renowned galleries such as Pompidou Metz, Pulitzer and Paul Klee. After four years of repurposing and construction, the V&A Waterfront’s R500-million project to transform the historic grain silo into the world’s largest museum dedicated to...

Hey visitors and valued clients! In case you did not know, you will find me on Facebook also at:  www.facebook.com/GarethGriffithsImaging/ I update my Facebook page more regularly with a photo narrative of the work I do. Please Like my page!

Here's a selection of some decor and foods that were published - typical of the interior and cuisine shoots that I do. 'Pacfic Rim' Cuisine Shoot Fireside Shoot - Cape Cuisine on a Chilly Day Bulthaup - Exclusive German Kitchen System Manufacturer As Published in To Build Magazine.

Anyone with an interest in the famous rugged mountainous areas of South Africa may be interested to read my new blog, based on a near lifetime of experiences in the Cederberg of the Western Cape. To view my adventures, click here.

For photographers who learned their trade (or hobby) in the pre-digital age, the camera and its film were everything. While you could get very clever professional film that added colour pop to your images, high contrast or low light, you had also a degree of control when the film was being developed. For example, it was better to slightly overexpose your photograph when shooting on film. Due to the high density of layers of photo sensitive chemical in film, that recorded extra detail. Nowadays with digital, the opposite is true. If you 'blow out' your image by letting too much light past the sensor in a digital camera, the detail is gone - forever. However, what you do have today is the availability a lot of 'post production' computer software that allows you to do everything and much more than film processing could do. There is even software available for handheld devices, including smartphones. We have photography in RAW format today. ( See my earlier article ...