By Andrew Mkize

Days leading to the shoot!!

So I think it was a Friday or Saturday,I was randomly flipping through Instagram stories, then came across a friend's story who works at Shelflife in Rosebank. At first glance I didn’t pay much attention to the story and just zoomed past it, but then the tags caught my eye as the screens changed so I went back and saw her standing with two other guys with the tags “ @geepatta & @patta_nl”. Knowing the official Patta handle for their IG account, the other handle in the frame I didn’t recognise caught me - I was curious as to who the other tag was. Clicked on it and saw it was the Gee himself - one of the co-founders of Patta, Guillaume ‘Gee’ Schmidt, and I was shocked he was in town.

 I had the ringing thought that “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” just swirling in my head, so I said F* gwababa, and shot him a message straight to him asking when he might be available during his trip to meet up and afford me the opportunity to capture him. Surely he responded after a few hours saying he would love to, but had a busy schedule leading up to his departure on the Monday but said we could try make something work on that day before his flight. An encounter of a lifetime was being operated by the Universe.

Day of the shoot!!

Monday comes and I planned to spend the whole day in Rosebank waiting for that “you can come through “ text, because he’d mentioned the hotel he was staying at was in Rosebank area. After spending my day there I ended up landing in Greenside with a few friends when he texted around I want to say 18:30pm. I didn’t waste any time, urgency was a thing so immediately left heading to Rosebank with friends. They dropped me off by the hotel and I went in, and waited by reception for what felt like an eternity. Moments later the O Gee arrived, I greeted him nervously but then eased into the energy and conversation as we settled in a cozy space. We spoke about the beginnings of the brand and near future plans, during this I managed to capture some film shots within the conversation.

I was very pleased with the results of the images as I was really nervous about developing them as I used a technique i don’t usually use for this one could say “ once in a lifetime moment “ and if they didn’t come out as phenomenally as they did, I would’ve felt like the earth just crashed on me, but skilfully we succeeded.

I want to say these are abstract shots and the motion picture resonates with the rush and fast pace of how the shoot came about and kind of tells a story within an image without it being naked to the eye.

images captured by

Andrew Mkize.

Stay Bless, Stay Broke.

Johannesburg, South Africa