Category: flickr

Day 150 – Flying things

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A quick trip just up the road to Kirstenbosch this morning yielded some decent (by my standards) photos.

Mainly of flying things, it seems.

A pair of Cape Sugarbirds entertained us for a while, flitting between proteas and aloes and there were plenty of Southern and Greater Double-collared Sunbirds around.

And then this little guy, lime green and hidden amongst the lime greenery:

He’s a Forest Canary. He’s rightfully very proud of those eyebrows.

Who wouldn’t be?

And then, as a bit of fun, an exhibit from the Cycads and Dinosaurs exhibition. I’m not a huge fan – I don’t think the gardens need this sort of… “gimmick”(?) – but the little kids love it and I suppose it’s just a one-off thing and it’s educational so [shrug emoji].

The flying dinosaur is very unrealistic, mainly because dinosaurs died out tens of millions of years ago about half the metal used in the sculpture are quite clearly big fat scaffolding poles propping it up into a gliding position.
But take those out with photoshop and apply a bit of a dated filter, and…

… just a bit of fun, but I might try and get a better, more threatening angle next time – difficult because you obviously have to stick to the pathways. (Have a look at one slightly different effort here as well.)

A nice morning out before it got too busy and too non-social distancey. Yes, even in the wide-open spaces of the Botanical Gardens. Back home for a blog post, an afternoon nap and a Sunday evening braai, I think.

And we’re already a third of the way through that already.

[photos here]

Day 139 – More from Muizies

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Instead of doing the jobs I should have been doing yesterday, I had a play around with one of the images I took on Monday at Muizenberg.
I quite like how it came out, although I’m now quite a way behind with the jobs I should have been doing.

My only real issue (other than those jobs) is that it looks like the sky was added later. The sky wasn’t added later: that was the sky that was there when I took the shot. But – for me, at least – it would have been better (with hindsight) if there wasn’t that unfortunate natural gap between the rooftops and the drama.

But maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh on myself. I think I’ve turned an OK shot into quite a nice image. And I’ve learned quite a lot while I was doing it.

Day 138 – UFO

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Remember when I saw a UFO over Cape Town back in 2012?
That was all happily explained as being an experimental NASA/Space Force/USAF high altitude plane.

And so we happily went back to mocking those people who insist that they see these sort of things on a regular basis.

Well, that was until I glanced through some of the photos I took while out at Muizenberg yesterday. And I saw this:

It seems that the literally thousands of people illegally on the beach yesterday were not alone. Check out that traditionally saucer-shaped object, traversing across the azure skies above False Bay. And I promise you that I haven’t photoshopped it in there (like I have that sort of skill anyway) – this is a genuine image taken with my camera and all I’ve done is cropped it ever so slightly to centre the object.
Here’s the big version so you can have a closer look.

It is – quite clearly – a flying saucer. And weirdly, I’ve lost all my memories of the rest of the public holiday and I have a bit of a sore backside this morning.

But that’s probably down to the copious amounts of Milk Stout I enjoyed while braai’ing in the afternoon.
After all, there can’t be any other reasonable explanation, right?

If anyone else in Cape Town saw anything weird in the skies yesterday, please get in touch.

 

 

 

 

 

Or… I mean… you could just glance at the uncropped version, featuring a Cape Gull dropping a white mussel onto the beach to break it open. And why not? It was about lunchtime.

 

(sorry)

Day 132 – Yeah, so…

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…about that weekend away.

Partly because we needed to get down there and check everything was OK. Party because “intra-provincial travel for leisure” was allowed again. Partly because we just needed escape from Cape Town. And yes, partly because there was a family birthday.

We couldn’t really have wished for a better weekend. The weather was incredible, prompting walks along the shore, photography and late night braais. Not bad for the middle of winter. And the fact that our place was built to withstand the worst that the South Atlantic could fling at it meant that it had done exactly that: it was all in good, ship-shape condition. In turn, that meant that we had plenty more time than we thought to just relax and chill out.

We used it wisely.

Even as the weather closed in on Monday evening, we stayed out and about until the very last minute, grabbing every last bit of sunlight:

And even when the weather was scary, stormy and windy the next morning, I still managed to get out and get a PB for 10km, despite being off road and on shore for much of the distance. Chuffed. (Spoiler: the World Record is still very much intact and in absolutely no danger from me. I are not fast.)

More photos (you may have seen a few of them over the previous few days on here) are now up on Flickr. Some decent stuff in there, though I say it myself – remind me to tell you about my epiphany at some point.

Day 129 – Baby Beach QP

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The braai is lit and we’re back from a wander around the village and down by the sea.

There’s a fillet steak inside ready to go, there’s a 2013 Uitkyk shiraz in my glass and there’s Tori Amos on the ever-reliable Sony speaker.

So I’m giving you this – a quick point and shoot effort from our walk – and getting back to the important stuff at hand…

 

Have a lovely evening.

I plan to.