Des is an award winning advertising automotive photographer / videographer based in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Cape Town, South Africa. It is renowned for its varied locations and of course the beautiful light, as Des believes photography has always been and will always be about the light. Des studied photography at the Pretoria Technikon where he earned his diploma specialising in advertising photography in 1978. Upon graduation, he began his career by apprenticing to 3 of South Africa’s top car photographers in Johannesburg. After 18 months Des was transferred home to Cape Town to open up their Cape Town car studio. 3 years later he purchased the Cape Town business and he has been shooting cars and trucks for the local advertising industry and internationally ever since and he is still loving lighting cars in the studio or on location. The industry has changed greatly over the past 35 years and as a photographer, Des has had to evolve along with the industry and he is still enjoying the evolution. In the early days Des co-developed his own carbon fibre rig, that extends up to 10 metres, for his 10’’ x 8’’ Sinar camera which was quite daunting as he had never seen one and “Google’’ hadn’t been invented yet. In 2000 Des made the huge leap of faith at the time, to digital, which was a whole new learning curve with the odd bump along the way in the early days. Des now shoots on his Hasselblad, PhaseOne and Canon 50 megapixel systems - he chooses the system based upon the brief. In 2008, Des visited Photokina in Cologne and came across the CGI hall where he was invited to attend a seminar on CGI vs Photography. Along with 80% of the car photographers in the audience, he found it almost impossible to tell which were real photographs and which were CGI and he was hooked. Des is loving blending traditional stills lighting skills with CGI to produce award winning stills and multimedia campaigns. Of late, Des shoots video and 360º VR video which complement his traditional 360º exterior & interior virtual tours of cars and hotels. Due to Des’s passion for lighting the curves of classic cars and the chiselled edge lines of exotic cars, he has embarked upon photographing car collectors' collections on location or in a studio and producing limited edition, signed coffee table books for them - celebrating their unique collections. If the occasion call for it, Des light paints the collectors cars with a single light wand in studio or in situ on location, often in quirky, really cramped single garages and sometimes in opulent man caves. Des is a regular contributor to Moofe CGI in the UK shooting backplates & HDR Domes worldwide for their stock library. Des’s other passions are shooting abstracts in nature, landscapes and seascapes. Numerous awards over the years including New York Festival, Ilford and Fujifilm Photographer Of The Year and AOP CGI awards. Des is of German heritage so his EEC passport is conducive to shooting overseas assignments. Link to Des’s fine art www.photographic-artists.com