I had the pleasure of photographing Matthew Day, the winemaker at Klein Constantia.
Klein Constantia dates back to 1685 and has been described as one of the world’s most beautiful wine estates. They produce some of South Africa’s top wines, including one of the world’s best natural sweet wines, Vin de Constance, which is made from vine-dried Muscat de Frontignan grapes.
The wine has an interesting history and was a favourite of Napoleon while in he was exile in St Helena. Jane Austen and Charles Dickens both mentioned Constantia’s wines in their writings, and in Charles Baudelaire's (Les fleurs du mal) poem XXVI entitled sed non satiata Baudelaire compares the charms of his beloved to the pleasures of the night and Constantia wine.: “Even more than Constantia, than opium, than Nuits, I prefer the elixer of your mouth, where love performs its slow dance.”
It is wonderful to experience a place with such history and heritage and to be able to photograph the chief winemaker who has the responsibility of continuing to produce such excellent wines as the Vin de Constance. Matthew understands the significance of this history and is thriving in his role.
I love Constantia too and my father used to live just down the road on Strawberry Lane, opposite what used to be the Old Cape Farm Stall. I remember it like yesterday and I have some of the fondest memories from my childhood from those times.
Matthew is a great guy and I had spent an afternoon with him driving all over the vineyards scouting for the best. Matthew actually drives up here occasionally on his quad bike early in the morning before starting his day, to soak in the incredible beauty of the Constantia valley and Klein Constantia. It’s heaven being up there when the sky starts lightening up and the first sun rays of the day arrive over the distant mountains. The vineyards come to life and it’s magic!
I must also thank Jacqueline, Klein Constantia’s Marketing manager, who drove me around the farm in their 4x4 and helped tremendously coordinating the whole shoot. Craig Harris, the viticulturist, was very kind and generous with his time too, driving the Jeep up the mountain for us before sunrise.
The shoot.
I spent a lot of time scouting the vineyards to find this spot, which is what I had envisaged for the shoot. I had also noticed, on a previous visit to the farm, that they had a wonderful vintage Jeep, which would be a perfect prop for the shot. My idea was for Matthew to be up on the mountain amongst the vineyards at sunrise enjoying a moment by himself, before starting his day. I wanted the sunrise to rake across the vineyards below with its beautiful warm early morning light and give the landscape some beautiful texture and dimension.
Unfortunately on the day of the shoot Mother Nature was not cooperating at all and it was a very cloudy morning. To make matters worse, there was a lot of smoke on the horizon because of a veld fire up the West coast. Cancelling and rescheduling the shoot was not an option because this is Matthew’s busiest time of the year and they were mid-way through their harvest. I also had two assistants booked and we had arranged for the vintage Jeep to be up on location at 5:30 am and Matt was due to arrive at 6:15 for the 6:25 sunrise.
Here is a photo with Stephanie and Anton, my assistants, taken after we packed up after the shoot. The light is not very inspiring at all!
Finding solutions… quickly.
The show had to go on and we had to use what we had. I decided that all I could do was to shoot Matthew and the Jeep, fake the sun with a strobe (and colour corrected gels). The beautiful background and sky would have to wait for another day.
Fortunately I travel with one of my Profoto 1200w battery packs and I rented a second unit just in case I needed to fake the sunrise, which ended up being the case. Matthew was there, the Jeep had been delivered to the top of the vineyards before sunrise and my team had been up waiting at the farmstead since 5:15am. We had to produce something very good! The shoot went incredibly well and probably lasted no more than about 45 minutes. All that was missing was the beautiful landscape which I would have to come back and shoot another day. I made all the necessary notes about my setups and was confident that we could still pull it all together, even though I was flying back to Munich the next week. I ended up waiting about four days until the weather eventually opened up and I was blessed with the magic sunrise that I had envisaged for the shot.
I am very happy with the results and the final image really captures the mood, tone, feel and beauty that I was after. It's a wonderful portrait of Matt in his element.