Hello friend,
Welcome to this, a picnic spot on your journey through life.
I am so glad you came along. So glad to meet you. So glad to spend some time with you.
So often we hurry past these little spots. I know.
I’ve done it too.
Until I was forced to pause.
By passion.
Now there’s a concept, paused by passion.
Want to hear more? Well, take a seat. Let me introduce myself. My name is Igno van Niekerk. I am on a quest. I look for the picnic spots of life. And then I invite fellow travellers, like you, to share a mug of life’s finest coffee with me.
Life’s coffee? Why, I am glad you ask. It’s stories you see. Stories and pictures. Blended and percolated. The aromatic caffeine of plot which fills your cup and awakens you to the invisible treasures so many travellers never find.
Why don’t they find these treasures if they are scattered all over the road of life?
Too many questions, I know.
So let’s see.
In a world governed by the race for material goods, where money often becomes the prize in a mad but dispassionate race, there is something I would love to share.
It’s an attitude to life. Something which cannot be bought, and, for which, one cannot be paid. It has to do with the fact that one does it for the love of it. Let me start at the beginning. I see, I’m confusing you a little. Here, here’s your coffee, drink with me, while I tell you my story.
For more than 20 years, I have been an amateur photographer. Getting up on cold winter mornings when others prefer the soft silk of the duvet and the treasured few more minutes granted by the “snooze button.”
So why do it?
Why do it when no one pays you, why spend time crawling through thorny bushes in the dark early hours of the morning, rushing to catch the right light, when there is not a single cent’s worth in it.
Well, I have learnt some great things from being an unpaid painter with light. The first thing I learnt was that if I am looking for beauty, for greatness and for awesome things, I merely have to get up and go find them.
Like that early morning at Zebra Lodge, North of Pretoria, in my beloved country, South Africa.
After a late night, I could have stayed in bed, but there was the inner voice that calls the amateur. Come, see what you can enjoy...
And then, after driving around a while, it suddenly happened. On a dam I had passed in the early hours, the sun was choreographing a scene which I could capture. It was just there. And I found it. Because I was there. I believed it would be there, and there it was...

So where does passion come from?
Well, I can merely find clues, and maybe make a few suggestions. Let’s take a trip down memory lane...
A trip to our own childhood days.
Remember when you were young, when the road of life opened up ahead of you, as you were walking along?

Well, we'll talk about that next time! :-)