By Matthew Sterne
Instagram often comes in for a bit of stick due to some influencers overly curating their posts and creating false representations of the lives they lead.
My response? Don’t follow those pretty fools. Fill your feed with brave adventurers, talented photographers and accounts that show you the beauty and magic in the world. South Africa is home to all three.
If you’re looking to see the wonder of our country from the comfort of your couch (or even toilet), these are some of the accounts worth following.
1. Graeme Holliday (@graeholiday)
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Based in Durban, Graeme’s love for travel and storytelling sees him exploring his homeland, with his feed mostly made up of epic Drakensberg shots. A self-taught freelance photographer and enthusiast filmmaker, he first picked up a camera in 2010 and has cut his teeth in real estate photography over the past five years. ‘I know that beautiful imagery is the key ingredient to catching the eye of the viewer, so seek out to get the best perspective, to lead the eye in and tell the story,’ Graeme says.
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2. Janik Alheit (@janikalheit)
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Janik is often one of the first mentioned in the who’s who of landscape photographers in South Africa. His love for the outdoors is rooted in childhood memories of time spent on his family farm in the Klein Karoo, where his fascination with vast landscapes and the night sky started. After a long career in the wine industry and practicing photography in his spare time, his love for photography eventually started to take over his life and, at the age of 30, made the decision to pursue his passion full time. He’s never looked back and always tells people that sometimes he can’t believe that his job description is to, ‘capture beautiful things and places.’
3. Kyle Goetsch (@kyleinCPT)
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Kyle thinks he has the best job in the world – travelling around Southern Africa taking photos and teaching other like-minded photographers. His passions lean toward astrophotography and seascapes, but he’s also always up for a hike in the mountains. As you may guess from his handle, Kyle lives in Cape Town with his wife, daughter and three dachshunds, but views the whole of South Africa as his photographic playground.
4. Shawn Ogulu (@shawnogulu)
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Shawn Ogulu is a travel and adventure photographer and filmmaker living in Durban. He’s also a director whose body of work includes projects for tourism boards and brands from across the world. Much of his content features the outdoors, although he uses a variety of photography styles, such as landscape, portrait, product and street photography. ‘That’s one of my favourite parts about being a travel content creator,’ Shawn says,’in that it incorporates almost all other styles.’
5. Dania Pea (@daniapea)
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Dania grew up in the forested bowl of Hout Bay, surrounded by mountains and oceans, which initiated her love of nature. A co-founder of the Hiking SA website, she works in the field of climate change training and research for an international NGO – putting into action her desire to conserve this precious world of ours. She’s also a qualified mountain guide and spends her spare time exploring the wild. ‘The aim of my photos,’ she says, ‘is to spread the appreciation of the incredibly sensitive, unique and stunning natural landscapes of South Africa with others, and inspire others to protect these places. Future generations, and our own mental and physical wellbeing, literally depends on it!’
6. Jóvan du Plessis (@justvon09)
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Jóvan is from Mossel Bay and his love for nature and the great outdoors stems from his dislike of being in the office all day. He’s a supply chain professional during the week but, come the weekend, yearns for the outdoors. He fell in love with photography as a result of wanting to capture his hiking views and describes his style of photography as, ‘adventure landscape’.
7. Hougaard Malan (@hougaard_malan)
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Ever since Hougard can remember, he’s been obsessed with beautiful natural scenery and dramatic weather. Growing up, Hougaard’s parents made sure he saw the country and all its most beautiful landscapes. His father’s passion for indigenous flora instilled a great appreciation for pristine wilderness and certain experiences left a profound mark, such as seeing the sun set over Namibia’s desert coastline on a perfect winter’s day and experiencing a supercell thunderstorm in the Drakensberg on a summer night. Hougaard believes the essence of a landscape photograph is allowing the viewer to experience that place without ever being there. Witnessing such moments unfold over earth’s most beautiful landscapes is, for him, one of the highlights of living.
Others worth following too: Kabelo Malela, Gerhard Jordaan, Annéne Maré, Jacques Crafford, Jay Caboz, Jon Kerrin, Mujahid Ur Rehman, Matt Bouch, Gavin Pickford, Mike Eloff, Mark Dumbleton, Heinrich Knoetze, Roelof Louw, Amelia Jane Pallett and Karl Beath.
Picture: Graeme Holliday
