‘We’ve always travelled the world extensively, but our true passion began the day we took off into the deep blue African sky’
AS TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHERS WITH THEIR OWN PLANE, JAN AND JAY ROODE ARE LIVING THE DREAM: THE HUSBAND-AND-WIFE DUO BEHIND AERIAL AFRICA FLY ALL OVER SOUTHERN AFRICA CAPTURING THE DREAMSCAPES OF OUR ENIGMATIC CONTINENT FROM ABOVE. IS IT AS INCREDIBLE AS IT SOUNDS? WELL, YES. YES, IT IS.
Imagine this. The mottled turquoise ocean is just metres below the belly of your plane as you lazily drone up the northern coast of Mozambique. The beach is pearly white and tourist-free. As you lean out of the window, you spot a blurry speck out to sea; what could it be? You swerve towards the speck and are surprised to discover a fellow voyager, miles away from civilisation, patiently casting a fishing net off his wooden dhow. The green net bleeds into the water like a butterfly’s wings. You lift your camera. Click.
This is one of the daily scenes that Jan and Jay Roode describe to me over a Skype call one rainy morning in September. They’re based in Johannesburg, but live from one picturesque moment to the next, exploring the skies above the remote regions of southern Africa. Jan flies a specially modified plane that allows his wife, Jay, to take pictures from any angle that strikes her fancy. Together for 26 years, they have been flying for 11, and are self-professed ‘sky hippies’.
‘Remember that ’90s sitcom Dharma & Greg?’ Jay asks. ‘That’s what we’re like. Jan was originally a chartered accountant from the mielie belt in Bloemfontein, and I’m an eccentric Joburg girl.’ To me they simply look happy. They laugh easily, sharing their story with a warmth that comes only from being truly fulfilled. In an age of Instagram travellers and quick-fix drone pilots, it’s reassuring to know the real deal still exists.
The result of their collaboration is an extraordinary collection of photographs that
display the vastness of southern Africa’s landscapes and the life that teems on this colourful tapestry, from South Africa and her bordering countries to the southern reaches of Angola.
Their photographs have appeared everywhere, from National Geographic to BBC Wildlife magazine. Jay and Jan have done philanthropic work and contributed images to organisations including UNEP (United Nations Environment
Programme), The Endangered Wildlife Trust and the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation.
But how did this envy-worthy journey begin? ‘After I got my pilots licence in 2009, we went on holiday to Mozambique,’ says Jan. ‘At that stage we were already enthusiastic photographers. So we packed our cameras, and thank goodness for that, because as we were flying over the Bazaruto archipelago, we were lucky enough to spot dugongs, a close cousin of the manatee. The people we were staying with had lived in Mozambique for 20 years and had seen dugongs only once!’
When they saw their first aerial shots, they were hooked. Everything, from the flight itself to looking at the images they’d captured, felt exciting and addictive. ‘It was a complete obsession!’ says Jay. ‘The moment Jan got his pilot’s licence, we gained this freedom to explore and see the world from
a new, mesmerising perspective.’
They fell in love with aerial photography to such an extent that they gave up their property development business in Joburg to take to the skies permanently.
So began a life of adventure, although Jan admits to making some rookie mistakes as a novice pilot: ‘African airfields are often deceptive and, despite precautionary runway inspections, can produce some hair-raising surprises such as warthog holes, thorn bushes, termite mounds, unsuspecting goatherds, wildlife and the sudden appearance of dust devils. The surprises don’t end once you’ve landed, as we soon discovered, having been almost flattened by a charging hippo in Khwai, surrounded by a pack of wild dogs in the Moremi, having our aircraft tyres devoured by hyena in Damaraland and our wooden propeller chewed of by an angry zebra in the Kalahari.
‘Once I landed on a salt pan in
northern Namibia where there were goats, thorn bushes and termite hills. I don’t know what I was thinking, but somehow we got through it unscathed. These days I make sure to do everything by the book,’ he says.
Jay is most moved by the friends they’ve made on their travels. ‘In these incredible, remote places in southern Africa, you have to rely on people’s hospitality and kindness, because when you land, nobody is waiting for you,’ she says. ‘We don’t over-plan our trips, so often we simply wait to see if somebody comes past. We’ve been given lifts in donkey carts, old trucks and on the handlebars of rickety bicycles, and were once guided by a San Bushman who insisted on sitting on the roof rack of a beat-up old Land Cruiser as we battled through the camel thorn scrub veld in Damaraland. Those connections are what remain rewarding for me.’
That feeling of (literally) being part of the bigger picture has made the pair philosophical about life’s greater questions.
‘With our photography we endeavoured not just to document scenes but to capture the poetry, the art of nature, the soft flow of space and time as it passed beneath us,’ they say. ‘We didn’t want to portray just the surface of things
– we also wanted to express a reverence for the unifying relationships between man and animal, and the vast natural world that holds us all.’
‘Only when we revere something do we care About protecting it.’
‘Aerial photography allows us to see the landscape in all its glory,’ says Jan. ‘You getasenseofevery changing space. Conservation awareness campaigns are often spearheaded by the face of a specific animal; and while these campaigns are essential, aerial photography allows us to start seeing whole ecosystems as organisms in their own right, ecosystems that hold within them hundreds of thousands of varied expressions of life that need to be conserved.’
‘Southern Africa has some of the last remaining great wildernesses left in the world,’ adds Jay.
All of it boils down to one simple philosophy that the couple live by: they hope to cultivate a deep sense of reverence for these natural spaces by connecting people to the beauty of the African continent through their photos. ‘Only when we revere and love something do we care about protecting it,’ says Jay.
But regularly flying over remote country leaves you vulnerable, especially if you crash… ‘About three years ago we were photographing the Quirimbas archipelago in northern Mozambique and staying on Ibo island,’ Jay begins. ‘A few hours into our flight we sprung a fuel leak.
‘By the time we hit the tree, the plane had turned right over.’