Written by Lewis Seymour

#MyPhotoJournal

1

“Where everything started”

This is one of the photos that symbolises the start to a journey which changed the way that I see the world and a journey which gave me a purpose when I needed it most. Those who know me well will know that I had some extremely tough encounters with sports injuries in high school, which is a whole big story by itself which I will tell one day, but not now. Nevertheless, not being able to play, I wanted to find another way to contribute, so I started taking videos and photos for my rugby team, which quickly evolved into me taking videos and creating tributes for the first team and for the boys who needed videos to send through to scouts, these videos helped boys get scholarships and into rugby programs which completely changed their lives and that was very humbling for me.

It wasn’t long before I got approached by the schools marketing and sport department asking me to get involved with projects which took me on a journey that I will never forget. And before I could realise it, I had fallen in love with the art. It’s crazy how you can go from being lost and not knowing where to go, too, by chance, falling on a path which fills you with so much passion and light.

So I guess this is a tribute to Moshate, the rugby field that inspired me to start helping and inspiring others.

The photo is of St Alban’s College 2017 Head Boy Orateng standing on the field with literally the whole school behind him as the 1st team rugby side get ready to kick off against St Stithians.

2

“The Catalyst”

Whenever I look at this photo I’m always amazed by how cool it turned out. This is the first photo I ever edited with professional software, without really knowing what I was doing, but I managed to experiment my way into making it look like this. This is also a photo from the first festival I ever shot. It was a Plett welovesummer event at the end of 2018. At the time I was still 17 and wasn’t even legally allowed to enter those events, but it was still one of the craziest experiences I’ve ever had.

This was where I started to test my skills, learn how my camera really works and where I started falling in love with the art of photography. I was so intrigued by how much I didn’t know about the art of content creating that it was a catalyst for me to learn and improve my skills. This was also the place where I started to shoot manually and really learnt the ins and outs of what it’s like to take photos and videos.

In order to make festival content intriguing you more often than not need to focus on making it as fast paced as possible in order to try and create the same hype feel that the audience had at the actual festival. The crazier the better. Through editing the footage I took at these events I realised how to create content that is able to grab the attention of some of my viewers. Although I don’t edit this type of content often anymore, it was still a major learning curve for me and played a huge role and worked as a catalyst for improving my skills and my love for the art.

3

“Your mind drives your creativity, not your gear”

Everyone has the ability to learn, grow and improve themselves and that thought alone is so powerful. This photo put an extremely powerful realisation in my head: your mind holds the power to your creativity. Your ability to inspire yourself by accomplishing something you didn’t even know was possible is what will drive you to keep improving your craft tomorrow.

I was scared that I would lose my camera on Rage, so I made the decision to rather leave it at home, but what I didn’t know is that I had a very powerful camera in my pocket. This is a photo that I captured with my iPhone 6 and then edited with Lightroom on my phone at the end of 2019.

Here I was sitting with the need to capture some of the craziest moments I’ve ever experienced and in my head I didn’t think I had a way to capture it, yet by chance I found a way to do it with a phone. That’s the power that photography has for me, the power to inspire me to want to keep improving my craft tomorrow.

It really doesn’t matter what gear you have, the best camera is the one you have with you. The realisation that it isn’t my gear limiting me but rather my mind blocking me from reaching my full potential with the gear I have is exactly what I needed to break that mental block.

On rage I did this thing where I would take photos of people and edit it within a minute. This was one of the first photos I captured and edited on my phone and it completely changed my perception of cameras in general. Very often it’s less about the gear and more about your ability to capture the right moment.

Featuring Somila #modelsigenu, one of the firsts of my one minute photography challenge, the photo series where I turn my friends into models.

4

“The Beauty Of nature”

It’s ironic that a photographer is going to tell you the following: Sometimes you just need to sit and enjoy what nature is blessing you with. Sometimes it’s more important to capture the feeling with your heart than it is to capture the photo with your lens.

My creativity is stimulated by taking the photo, looking at it afterwards and seeing how cool it came out. My soul is stimulated from simply sitting and enjoying the view, enabling my thoughts to run around and allowing me to absorb what I see, hear, smell and feel without thinking about it too much.

Too many times in the past I’ve found myself loosing touch with the beautiful view because I’m so worried about capturing the perfect photo. I’ll be so caught up in the process and completely miss what’s happening in front of me.

This specific photo takes me back to a time where I realised the power of nature. The overwhelming beauty that the world creates by itself through itself is an occurrence that I feel is so self empowering to witness. This was our last sunrise on rage in 2019. I remember we got to the beach and on my way to the beach I was so focused on getting there so that I can get some good photos. When we eventually got to the beach I think I took 2 photos. This was one of them. After that I found myself sitting on a rock with Mfumo for about an hour just sitting and looking at the view.

After the hour I felt so energised, as if someone had flipped a switch and I was suddenly at peace with that. Looking at the sunrise that morning it felt like I was having a reflection conversation with God. I have had these 12 years of amazing experiences in school which helped shape who I am and it was now time for me to enter the real world. This photo symbolises the mental switch where I signed off the chapters of years 7-18 so that I can go into the next years with a unique perspective given to me by those years.

Sometimes it’s good to just put down the camera and let nature inspire you. After all, nature is seen as the face of God.

After this reflection I was able to come back to reality, enjoy my last few moments with some of my mates I made at school. This was a great time to get out the phone camera again and capture some special moments that we will be able to cherish for a lifetime.

Moments captured by photographs aren’t always as they seem, some photos come out better, others come out worse than what they actually were. I don’t take photos because it “looks nice”, I take photos because there is a feeling attached to every photo. The feeling that the photo embodies might only be unlocked years after the photo was taken, but every photo has a feeling. By taking a photo for the purpose of its feeling rather than its looks will always have a much bigger significance for you and for those seeing it.

NATURE WILL ALWAYS BE ONE OF MY FAVOURITE THINGS TO PHOTOGRAPH

ANOTHER SIGNIFICANT MOMENT THAT I WAS LUCKY ENOUGH TO CAPTURE WITH MY HEART AND MY LENS.

5

“The power of portrait”

There is something about a portrait that inspires me. It’s such a simple style of taking photos but it has so much power. A portrait photograph is special because it allows you to see a part of someones personality, not just because you’re able to capture what the person was feeling in the moment, but also because you get to capture a part of that person. And if you look close enough in some photos you get to see someones soul.

A portrait is a unique photo, not only for other people viewing the photo, but mostly because it’s a unique opportunity for you to get to experience how the world sees you. Show a person a photo of the world and they’ll appreciate it for a second, show a person a photo of themselves and they appreciate it for a lifetime.

A large part of our social media posts are portrait photos and I feel this is because this is the most pure way of taking a photo. The best way to capture a special moment by yourself or with your friends while creating special memories is by using a portrait photo to capture that moment in time. Although many portraits include posing which could be seen as faking the moment, but I feel there’s always an aspect of truth in a portrait.

You’ll often see when I’m busy photographing people specifically I very little tell them how to pose, because I feel a pure natural photograph brings across such genuine beauty. I’ll very often tell the people that they must imagine that I’m not there, go socialise and enjoy your time. I’m there to document their genuine memories, I’m not just there to take photos. I’ve realised these genuine photos are the photos which always come out the best and they always mean more to the people I’m taking photos of than the posed photos. I feel photos are so much more real if you photograph someone being as natural as possible, their purest form of beauty is who they are when they are themselves.

For some professional shoots it’s a completely different story because that’s a different art, but for event photography this above paragraph that I’ve shared is a golden ticket to taking more meaningful photos.

This photo was also taken at my first paid photoshoot. At the time I was busy with Matric prelim exams when I got a message from Diphenyo asking me if I would be able to come take some Matric Dance photos the next day because he didn’t have a photographer yet. Even though I was busy with exams I ended up going anyways.

This photo was taken as Diphenyo was busy talking to mates in the field and I caught a perfect moment of him turning around after I called his name.

This photo is special because this is where I decided that I want to be someone capturing genuine moments and I found a powerful way to do that and I’ll keep that lesson with my forever.

6

“Stellenbosch“

My journey in Stellenbosch was short, but full of valuable lessons and experiences.

Originally I was accepted into my first choice res, which was Huis Marais, but due to complicated circumstances they were not allowed to have 1st years in 2020. So I was placed into Simonsberg Mens Residence, and what a blessing that turned out to be.

All of this had a knock-on effect on my journey. It allowed me to meet an amazing group of mates, giving me a special place to get to be a part of something greater than myself. It allowed me to have incredible conversations with people that gave me more hope for humanity and it gave me an opportunity to create special memories.

Other than the memories I’ve made down there so far, this photo also takes me back to some special experiences I had. I had the privilege to take part in and to record the Simonsberg Met as well as getting to climb Simonsberg Mountain for the first time. I created videos of both of these amazing experiences and it was so special to be able to capture moments that we will be able to hold close to our hearts forever.

This photo was taken on the day of the Met. I was taking drone shots of the sunset and then the colour of Simonsberg Mountain grabbed my attention. So I decided to turn the camera around to look at the mountain and I was completely in awe. Sometimes the beauty doesn’t always lie towards the sunset but also on the side where the sunset shines.

This takes me back to a beautiful message: We have to overcome so many mountains, many ups and downs, in our lives. But don’t forget to look back and see how far you’ve come, because that is where the true beauty lies.

This is a special photo of a special place, which symbolises valuable lessons and amazing friendships as well as unbelievable experiences. And it made me realise how far I had come as a content creator since I started in 2016.

Look back and reflect, it’s good for you.

7

“The Last Sunrise”

Looking at this photo gives me such a nostalgic feeling.

If you couldn’t tell by now, this is one of my favourite places in the world and thus this is one of the most special photos I have ever taken. I don’t love this place for it’s facilities but I love it for it’s people, it’s tradition, it’s values and I love it because of the memories and friends it gave me.

The opportunities I received allowed me to transform my outlook on life, develop skills I didn’t even know I had and be involved with life changing experiences.

This photo was taken on my last sunrise at St Alban’s while I was in the process of creating my final goodbye videos for St Alban’s. I remember that I got the idea for these videos in an Afrikaans exam and this was probably one of the best ideas I’ve ever had. These videos transformed me from a guy that makes videos into a storyteller.

I woke up at 4am in order to get this shot and I feel very privileged to have captured this special moment. One lesson I learnt from capturing this photo is the following: You will never regret making an effort to capture a special moment, because it will be worth it in the end.

This is where my journey as a content creator and storyteller started. I was involved in creating content for and running some of the school’s social media pages from my grade 9 year and I spent around 2200 hours of my time here improving my skills as a creator. This work was often unnoticed but it was so worth it to get where I am today. This is where I learnt to work for the cause, not the applause.

The lessons I’ve learnt at this place far outweighs the word limit on an instagram caption and I hope to one day continue this conversation again.

So for the lessons, memories, conversations, bants, friends, teachers and scars I thank you.

“I wouldn’t trade my worst day at St Alban’s for a better day anywhere else.”

8

“Every golden sunrise has a golden story”

One of my main goals of my Matric year was to build relationships and make memories. That is mainly what these photos symbolise. The story behind why these were big goals goes a lot deeper into things that I have experienced in the past, but that’s also a story for another day.

The power of photography is the power of a story, a memory, an experience. But what makes these photos even more special to me is that behind these photos are relationships with a group of boys who gave me a sense of purpose without me even realising it.

Go into every conversation and relationship with the realisation that you are going to learn something from that person. I learnt so much from these kids, not only about myself, but about them and the world. No matter how young or how old, don’t allow your ignorance blind you from experiencing something magical, the power of learning.

These were both photos that were taken during the shooting of a cultural week short film competition that we had at school, the films name was “Every Golden Sunrise Has A Golden Story.” This was the first time that I had actually fully planned a film. I learnt so much about how my creativity is driven and how powerful the art of storytelling can be.

This project allowed me to push through major barriers into places I didn’t even know I could go and I entered a completely new dimension of filmmaking and storytelling. This all played a massive role in me falling even more in love with the art.

An important lesson I learnt while making this film is that it doesn’t always turn out exactly like you envision it to be, but don’t let the small setbacks take away from the story because that’s what’s truly important.

This project wouldn’t have been as good as it was without the help of these amazing kids, just like my Matric year would’ve meant a lot less to me without my relationships with them.

Personal growth is an important part of reaching your full potential. There are so many paths of life that there are to take that it’s quite scary needing to choose the right one. As long as you focus on what makes you truly happy and shy away from that which causes you doubt then you probably still won’t know your exact path, but you’ll be a lot closer to the right answer.

9

“The Truth About Golden Hour”

A lot of my favourite photos tend to be taken when the worlds beauty is at it’s finest. When the world turns into a landscape which make you feel like you’re seeing a piece of Heaven for the first time. This time is know as golden hour.

Every morning the sun comes up and every evening the sun sets and these times are arguably when everything looks at it’s best. The emotions of the world are happy, warm, kind and fulfilled. Sometimes it takes an extraordinary view for you to realise extraordinary things. That’s what these views and these times of the day give me a chance to do, to reflect.

Although the sun is always there, we don’t always see it. There are times that a beautiful day can be transformed into colourless by the appearance of dull grey clouds. This is where nature can create a brilliant metaphor for life.

Our lives constantly move from bright skies to dull and grey, it’s a randomised unpredictable cycle which we don’t always have control over. Not every day is going to turn out bright and sunny. Some days are there to test you, but they are also there as a testament to show how strong you are.

Have you ever seen an imperfect cloud? Clouds are not imperfect because although they seem unpredictable to us they are all there for a reason. Our stories are written in nature, the stars and the CLOUDS.

Just because you can’t see the sun doesn’t mean it isn’t there. The sun is always there, it always rises in the morning and it always sets in the evening. You can’t always see it, but it’s there. The clouds influence our emotions and our lives, it diverts our focus to the dull and we tend to lose track of the bigger picture.

If every cloud is a lesson, every sunset is an opportunity to reflect on that lesson. Sometimes it seems like the clouds take away colour from the world, but it’s only because it’s adding colour to the sunset.

The day this was taken it was dull grey day, but there was a small gap in the cloud as the sun was setting and the sun was able to shine through to create this natural masterpiece.

The most beautiful sunsets need cloudy skies.

10

“I am the CAPTAIN of my soul.”

Your life is a book made up of millions of photos, constantly adding new frames yet never removing any. No ONE photo defines you, but they all play a role in telling your story and forming who you are. Every photo represents a memory, maybe even a lesson. Not every photo makes sense, and that’s ok too, but it all plays a part.

Many people that know me know that this photo has a huge significance to me. When I need a distraction, it’s there at my desk waiting for me to look at it. The reason the photo is always around is because whenever I look at it, it reminds me to just take a breath and reflect. Reflect on my memories, relationships and lessons I’ve learnt.

You don’t need to look for meaning in every frame of your life, because how can you enjoy a moment if you’re constantly looking for something to learn. The current frame is always the most important. But it’s also important to look back at your photo book and reflect, in order to make sense of the complexities of life and things that happen to us.

It’s only when we reflect that we truly see the meaning and beauty of the photos telling the stories of our lives. Without yesterday, there is no today, without today there is no tomorrow. That’s why living in the moment and reflecting on past moments is so vital to enjoying the frames of tomorrow.

This photo helps me unlock all the relationships I’ve built, memories I’ve made and finding the passion through what I’m doing. All because I’m able to reflect on the things that are truly important.

This photo was taken by chance when all the props we had on a shoot fell to the ground. And now it’s my favourite photo. Sometimes things fall into place exactly when they need to. But if you are so focused on getting the shot without reflecting, you might just miss out on something special.

Without this photo there wouldn’t be any other storytime posts because I would’ve never learnt to reflect on the photos I have taken and the frames of my life.

We don’t know where we’re going or what’s coming. We can’t control the wind of the seas but we can adjust the sails.

I am the master of my fate. I am the CAPTAIN of my soul.