nikivanvelden

I have in the last three months travelled the 1700km of road between Durban and Cape Town three times. Because of Lesoto sitting in the middle of the country one has to drive half way to Johannesburg before turning down towards the Cape. Starting in Durban this road winds up through the spectacularly beautiful rolling green hills of Natal to the Drakensberg mountains and the winding misty high of Van Reenen’s Pass at 1768 meters. Not long after that one has to exit the main freeway and travel across the Free State to join the freeway that will take you to Cape Town.

Natal with its summer rainfall is lush and green then almost immediately after leaving the freeway one hits the wide open spaces of the Free State. Large expanses of golden grass, fields of sunflowers and big blue cloudless skies. Over the years the Free State has gained a reputation for being ugly. Personally I find those big blue skies and golden spaces refreshingly beautiful.

Eventually this road meets the N1 and so begins the more than 1000km of pretty much straight road through the Karoo. It is almost impossible to imagine that the Karoo covers nearly a third of South Africa given the size of this country. The vastness of this space is overwhelming.  Mile after mile of desert scrub and skies so big they almost seem impossible. When one first sees this the heart cannot help but expand as it takes in the views of this incredible part of our world.

Finally after many many hours one comes over another mountain pass and before you in breathtaking contrast lies a lush green valley of vineyards, so in contrast to the harshness of the Karoo, ones breath is taken away once again.

So you travel this road for the first time and are mesmerised by the size and variety of what lies before you.  Every mile travelled produces yet another gaspingly exquisite scene and so the heart swells and the spirit lifts.  Then you travel the road again.  You know now that it is long and you are not seeing it all with fresh eyes and so the heart closes a little along with the eyes that prefer rest now rather than wide eyed wonder.  Then you travel it a third time and now you are used to the beauty that lies around the next corner and think only of where the next coffee stop is.  You close off to the wonder of it all.  You forget to look.  You forget to see.

We do this everyday in our lives. We live in a place and become so accustomed to the beauty there we forget to see it.  We forget to see the beauty in the people we know. We stop looking at the roses in our gardens and stop inhaling the scent of the coffee before we drink it.

In art we must not do this. We must see the beauty in everything, even the mundane. We must always look with fresh eyed wonder as if we are seeing it for the first time. Shooting stock for Getty forces me to do this. How can I make the ordinary beautiful and interesting. How can I use the light to enhance the most simple everyday scene.

Perhaps though we should not do this just for the sake of art. Perhaps we should do it for ourselves.  When you travel about your world today look about and see it all with fresh eyes. Look at the way the light falls as the hours pass and how it changes what you see.

Do yourself a favour and look again so that you see the beauty in your own world. Don’t close your heart and eyes to this. Open them as if your were seeing it all for the first time and then be grateful for that.