Agricultural photography

Going for Green Fuel...

I was contracted by Green Fuel Zimbabwe last year to visit their sugar cane plantations on their Chisumbanje estate in Zimbabwe's South Eastern region to create a photo library of their Agricultural, Plant and Community developments. Green Fuel currently harvest about 9000 hectares of sugarcane on both their Middle Sabi and Chisumbanje estates which is then processed at the plant to produce ethanol that is blended with Zimbabwe's imported fuel. 

My brief included showcasing the various agricultural developments and activities around the estate, their processing plant as well as their various community development projects. As usual I used a good mix of on the ground pictures as well and aerial shots to showcase the size and scale of the agricultural operation which you can see below.

Green Fuel have invested a lot of time and money developing the community surrounding their estates with investments in small scale agricultural projects as well as the rehabilitation of the local library and learning centre. Green Fuel also created a sewing project were men and woman from the community have been trained to make the necessary safety garments required by the companies' agrictural and plant workers.

Lastly to the plant; its architecture is visually appealing and well light at night which lent itself to well to being photographed in the 'blue light' after sunset. A good amount of time spent observing the operations in the plant resulted in some great detail images as well as of staff working. I always make mention of the invaluable use of my drone in conveying the size and relative perspective of such a large structure and it was no less applicable here, with some great aerial images being captured.

All in all Iw as very happy with the results of my visit to Green Fuel and look forward to my next assignment for Green Fuel, I would like to thank the management and particularly the marketinfg department at Green Fuel for their continued support.

Capturing Prime Seeds...

I have been lucky enough to work with some of Zimbabwe's biggest agro-businesses and for the last three years have been having a lot of fun shooting a wide variety of images for Prime SeedCo. Initially Prime Seeds and now part of the SeedCo group Prime SeedCo provides high quality vegetable seed for sale in the Zimbabwean and African markets. I was engaged several years ago to help build up Prime Seeds' image database for use across all of their marketing databases and have photographed their products in the field and studio and from the air. You can see a selection of the images I have created for them in some of Prime SeedCo's marketing materials below.

Being a sales based company its essential to have a good selection of well shot product images and we have photographed all of Prime SeedCo's brands in our studio over the years, some of which you can see in the above posters.

Prime SeedCo also operates a substantial demo plot that farmers who are interested in their products can visit to see the veggies in the field as well as ask any of the knowledgeable staff any technical questions. Due to the seasonality of the different veggies I spend a few days in the field throughout the seasons in order to capture all the varieties on offer.

Prime SeedCo also hosts farmer field days throughout the year where both large scale and small scale farmers from around the country are invited to the demo plot to learn all about the varieties of veggies on offer and to learn best farming practices and the development in current agricultural trends. These field days are a great way of educating the local farming industry as well as showcase all the seasonal veggies at the demo plot.

Prime SeedCo also have a variety of commercial outlets around Zimbabwe and before the rebrand from Prime Seeds to SeedCo was completed I photographed one of their larger stores in Harare.

I thoroughly enjoy all the shoots I have done for Prime SeedCo over the years and look forward to the assignments I will be commissioned to carry out in 2018!