Article - Rocking the Daisies Festival Review

Published by: The Event, SA’s leading business and tourism industry newspaper.

Please double click on the article to enlarge it for easy reading.

Photography: Magical Western Cape

Photography: Sushi Sushi

Photoshoot for Sushi Zone Restaurant

I was commissioned by Sushi Zone, a chain of Asian style restaurants, to shoot a range of photos for their menus, flyers, brochures and website. The photos were taken in the restaurant using only natural light and a slow shutter speed. The best part was eating platters & platters of gorgeous sushi afterwards.

Article: Rocking the Daisies - Unrated

Published by: www.reporter.co.za

On a Saturday morning in spring we loaded two tents, every blanket, duvet and pillow in the house, two cooler boxes full of beer, wine, sausages, two headlamps and three good friends into our van. Our Destination was the Rocking the Daisies festival in darling. We arrived around noon to the sound of rock and the sight of hundreds of tents scattered across fields of green. Colourful crowds were lazily strolling, laughing and swigging at plastic containers filled with toxic looking liquid. A dam of blue water glistened invitingly in the sweltering afternoon sunshine. A few pale bodies bobbed on makeshift inflatables. We popped up our tents in record time just to discover that we had left the fly sheet at home, and sent up a quick prayer for no rain. Then it was off to mainstage and entertainment area. Foodstalls (empty at this stage), a wine tasting area with the sweet hippy dippy staff from Darling, a tented hotel , Daycare facilities for kids, and bars (full at this stage) awaited us. We missed Goldfish and Max Normal that played on Friday night but Rastame and the warriors belted out chilling Reggae, and the lazy, mostly white, crowd managed to get to its feet and shuffle about in ragga style. This was followed by the Comedy hour filled with the usual load of toilet humour which did not go down well with most of the crowd. A lot of South Africans actually don't find jokes about body fluids, bad sexual experiences and abusive relationships funny. Now if only the stand ups would catch up. The all girl JacSharp stood out like a fresh Daisy in the searing heat with great vocals and tons of passion. Things started getting fuzzy at around seven-ish - I think. We had imbibed all our beer and wine and were aimlessly stumbling around making friends and influencing people. Striking was that most people at the festival were really on the upper end of the attractive scale: perfect bodies in nano shorts with life long legs ending with pretty daisy wellingtons, sculpted torsos and suspiciously white teeth covered by plum lips. Also present where the usual tie-dyed hippies blowing soap bubbles with blond children on their hips and scruffy dogs at their bare feet. As I said, things got a little blurry from here on. After a dodgy chicken burger we started a spot of spontaneous arm wrestling in the straw, followed by more beers, dancing wildly, making more friends and eventually the big stumble back to the tent that took hours because there were just so many people along the way to get along with. The following morning a twisted girl scout next us woke before dawn’s crack and chirped away like a Bulbul on acid. The contrast between her and about 3000 people or so is too vast and far too ugly to describe here. It did not rain but our tent mysteriously sagged and I woke in a sauna with half the tent stuck to my face and arms. After a cold shower and visit to probably the most horrific toilets I have encountered in Africa, it was back to our spot in the hay for Chinese noodles and yes, more beer. The popular Flat Stanley ended the Festival at two with a brilliant performance. Despite the heat, sore heads and sleep deprivation, the crowd actually managed to get back up on its feet and rock - hard. I noticed the gorgeous blond girl in the orange bikini with the pink plastic flower wreath around her head, and purple sash around her bottom. She was dancing on a bale of hay when we arrived Saturday morning and by the time we left she was still in the same spot – grooving to her own beat.