The Long Version

Hey! We're Shanelle and Gita.

We met online in 2018 when a dating app glitched. We both knew instantly, the way you just know, but then your smitten gut is not always the most reliable narrator. Soon after, Gita disappeared for two weeks, returning with the unlikely story that she had been working in Putsonderwater, which is basically the South African version of Timbuktu. Shanelle, who was at the point of deleting the app entirely, took some convincing.

It was true, as it turned out. Gita, who is also a registered nature and travel guide, was working as an ornithologist at the time, collecting bird species data for an environmental impact assessment, alongside her commercial and editorial photography career. Shanelle had a thriving career as a wedding photographer in Cape Town, and had shot hundreds of weddings of couples from all over the world while holding a demanding full time corporate job in Occupational Health and Safety - a great example of her ability to stay cool and function under pressure.

Plain Blue was born in April 2019 when we shot our first wedding together in Prince Albert and our separate careers, dating from 2008 and 2011 respectively, merged. At the end of 2019 we packed up from Cape Town and moved to Prince Albert in the Karoo, kids and dogs and all. Good thing, too. While the world was in lockdown, we gardened our hearts out, sat on the stoep playing guitar and writing songs, and baked extraordinary amounts of rock hard sourdough bread.

When restrictions lifted, we started travelling, and Shanelle began training as an ornithological field surveyor and started working with Gita. She was so good at it that she lead her own teams within a year. The kids were homeschooled on the road and in the field. We travelled full time over the next two and a half years, living what felt like a continuous Nat Geo episode. The boys learned about birds, plants, snakes, and bugs with the freedom of genuinely feral children in nature, while getting to know their country.  We wildcamped on remote mountains and showered under windpumps in icy water with no soul in sight. We fell asleep to the sound of jackals and the wind. When laundry became urgent we booked an Airbnb with a washing machine.

We finally got married in February 2023, under a tree, with our closest people present. It was perfect.

For a while we based ourselves back in the Karoo so the kids could join sports programs at local schools. Eventually, Cape Town, our favourite city in the world, called us home. With the kids settled and thriving in school, the mountains and dog-friendly beaches on our doorstep, the hiking trails, the culture, and the particular beauty of this colourful city, we couldn't be happier. We still go camping whenever we can. The wilder the better.

Shanelle is a football fanatic who tells truly terrible jokes on purpose and has made it her mission to make Gita laugh at them. Gita is the pragmatic bohemian, practicing fine art photography to stay sane. Shanelle is the "technical department" and writes profound lyrics and songs which hopefully will see the light someday. Gita has an uncanny ability to figure out chord progressions and believes cooking is like writing music. And yes, you guessed right if you caught onto the literary and fantasy references! We're a bunch of bookworms, all four of us.

We have three gorgeous cats, Osiris, Judy and Whiskers, and a border collie boy called Blake, who incidentally is the MOST GOOD boy ever to live.

We're both real coffee snobs, and slap tjips connoisseurs. There's always a little pot of something interesting from a random farm stall somewhere in our cupboard. We collect rocks and books and records and plants and stories and experiences. Our music tastes overlap only somewhat, but we feel like we complement each other, not only in our private lives, but in our professional capacity too, bringing a wholesome package to our services. 

If you resonate with any of this, we'd love to hear from you!