In August of this year, my family and I returned home to South Africa on holiday in order to celebrate my Father In-Law 80th Birthday. It was the first time back to Cape Town for us as a family for many years, and the excitement of a long overdue family reunion to one side, I was really looking forward to some great photographic opportunities.
One of the things on my to do list photographically, was to hook up with an old contact of mine on Instagram, a chap by the name of Thoban Jappie (Please visit his IG Stream, not to be missed!).
I met Thoban through Instagram a few years ago, and after some facebooking and a few texts and a phone call later I had the pleasure of connecting with this guy when visiting the Mother City in person. He took time out of his busy schedule to take me on guided photo-walk through one of the old districts of Cape Town called Woodstock. Woodstock holds additional sentimental value to me, as my mother and Grand Mother were Nursing Sister's at the Woodstock Hospital many years back now. We spoke in depth as we walked around and one thing became apparent, that some aspects of Woodstock have not changed for generations, however now nestled amongst the thriving local community and associated characters, and general quaintness of the area - gentrification is starting to creep in with old family homes being modified and redeveloped into modern city living, and entire blocks knocked down and demolished, to the likes of Google pulling in and setting up their Cape Town HQ here.
The images on this post are all portraits that were taken by me on our photowalk. In addition to the portraits, I took some photographs of some great street art and other urban themes.
In addition Thoban knows I am a keen car street photographer, and the first place we visited was full of vintage and retro cars waiting to be restored - he read me very well as this was like manna from heaven for me. More will follow on these auto's of Woodstock in a later blog post
What an opportunity, and what a pleasure to have been in Thoban's company, a truly memorable experience.