#Photography

Dear Instagram,

Yesterday I reached 50,000 followers on your app.

I don’t want to focus too much on that number because what do social media numbers really mean, anyway? My large Instagram following has something to do with my photography, sure. But it also has a lot to do with luck and being in the right place at the right time. There are lots of great photographers with far fewer followers and lots of crappy photographers with more.

As mentioned previously, I spent 72 hours in Soweto as part of a campaign promoting the Soweto Wine Festival. It was an epic journey.

Before this trip I thought I knew Soweto, kind of. I’d been there a lot, doing a lot of different things. But #72HrsSoweto held many surprises. Almost everything we did over the course of the weekend was new (or at least partially new) to me.

It was the first night of the #72hrsSoweto campaign, the day before the start of the Soweto Wine Festival. It was freezing cold, raining, and I was ridiculously underdressed.

We had just finished a home-cooked meal – lamb stew, pap, spicy chakalaka, steak, and vegetarian curry – at the legendary Lebo’s Soweto Backpackers, followed by live music and poetry around the fire. Our group was preparing to leave. I shivered, thinking about burrowing under the covers back in my room at the Soweto Hotel.

As previously mentioned, I recently visited Mauritius courtesy of Constance Hotels. This was one of those trips in which I spend the whole time ogling everything around me and marvelling at the blogging miracles that have led me to get invited to things like this. Anyway, it happened.

Today I took my American friend Bob, who is in Joburg this week for work, to the Maboneng Precinct. Bob passed through Joburg a few times before, back in 2010 and 2011. But this is the first time I’ve had the chance to properly show him around the city, and the first time he’s been to Maboneng.