StillVision Abroad - The Wedding of Sizwile & Gathoni, Harare, Zimbabwe.

Another important part of our February trip to Africa was a wedding booking in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare. The happy couple were Sizwile who is Zimbabwean and Gathoni who is Kenyan. Although a little apprehensive about photographing in Zimbabwe (we didn't want to be seen as British media) the wedding was planned and executed to perfection and in all seriousness we could have been photographing in Cambridge! Zimbabwe is a country riddled with problems so we didn't expect to get away without encountering at least one. Our major problem was that the bride's parent's flight was cancelled by Air Zimbabwe on the night before the wedding spreading mild panic throughout the wedding party (the groom was so nervous he fell asleep). All was ok and the parents arrived within two hours of the wedding ceremony!

We thoroughly enjoyed the day and felt as much a part of the evening celebrations (and drinking) as anyone else so we got some rather interesting angles during the conga dancing towards the end of the night... enough said! Here are our favourite images:

StillVision Abroad - MaiKhanda Project, Malawi.

So... 4 countries, 1 month and 14 flights later and the StillVision studio has re-opened! There is just the small matter of the 38gb of photography to edit from our mammoth trip abroad! Expect plenty of BLOG entries over the next few weeks including photography of our wedding booking in Harare, Zimbabwe and our photo coverage for the Cambridge based charity Aquaid.

Most importantly and the primary reason for our trip to Africa was a photography commission to produce a comprehensive PR portfolio for The Health Foundation in London. Malawi has one of the world’s highest rates of maternal deaths during childbirth with recent figures showing that 984 mothers die for every 100,000 live births and that 27 babies die for every 1,000 births. The foundation has launched a £2.7 million, three year programme dedicated to improving the quality of healthcare for babies and mothers in Malawi.

The project that was photographed is called 'MaiKhanda' and we had the privilege of seeing everything that has been done to reduce maternal deaths. It was an eye opening experience but a very positive one (not to mention a hard working one too).

Below is a selection of favourite images processed in a more photojournalistic style to those produced for The Health Foundation.

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HOSPITALS

The New Year For StillVision Photography

Happy New Year Everybody!

First of all please download the first StillVision Photography newsletter of 2009 and enjoy some of our highlights of 2008!

2009 takes StillVision Photography into a third year and what a third year we intend to have! We've already got big plans for our portrait work in 2009 having upgraded the studio equipment (we can now take 21 megapixel photographs which sounds a bit overwhelming)! A very busy summer of weddings is already in the diary but if you are getting maried in June 2009 and are still looking for a wedding photographer then you are in luck as we do have some dates free.

February 2009 sees us take our first trip abroad with StillVision. This means that the studio will be closed throughout February. We are off to Africa photographing for a charity and are also doing our first wedding of the year in Harare, Zimbabwe. We expect this to be nothing less than an amazing experience both personally and photographically. It's amazing to hear stories of joy and hope from a country that only ever seems to talk about suffering. Expect many blog entries in March when the studio re-opens!

The Wedding Of Rob & Cath

Congratulations to Rob and Catherine who were married on Saturday 15th November at Burwell Church. Their wedding was our first and only winter wedding this year and the weather was predictably 'November'! Having said that it could have been a lot colder (it's freezing now only a week or so on)! The wedding reception was held at Tattersall's in Newmarket and the wedding party seemed to take over the place! There were 30 children having loads of fun, a magician and wedding toast master not to mention a lot of yellow and black, Cambridge United themed details. I guess you would be hard pressed to find another excuse for sunflowers at a wedding! Our wedding photography highlights are below: