I’ve finally got around to uploading some recent photos. Garden stuff, some birds, some from our trip to Yzerfontein.
Stuff generally. Like this Karoo Prinia (Prinia maculosa) watching me prep the braai yesterday.
Here’s the link to Flickr and the latest upload. Knock yourself out.
A brighter day on this little bit of planet Earth today. Sure, we’re mopping up a bit after close on 100mm of rain yesterday, but the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the pool guys are back. It’s looking really smart. I’m very hopeful of a finish today.
I took some time out to watch a Starlink mission launch this morning. Just for the record, I’m not saying that Starlink is a Good Thing – the pollution of our night skies is worrying to me. But equally, the principle and the technology amaze me. I can’t impress upon the kids enough the incredible privilege and opportunities that they have these days, to be able to just click a button and watch history unfolding in front of them. And I love the watch the satellites going over whenever I can: it makes something so fantastical, actually real. Yes, I completely recognise that this doesn’t tie up with the pollution worry above.
And then there’s the Perseverance mission to Mars, which is sending back some unbelievable images:
236,000,000 kilometres away. 13 minutes for the data to get back to us here on Earth. And yet it could even be the view from my bedroom window. Absolutely amazing.
Right. More jobs to do. This house isn’t going to mend itself, is it? (Ha! I wish!)
The beagle may have (mostly successfully) cleared the garden of the neighbourhood cats, but there are still visitors that she is powerless to defend against. We are regularly visited by several (or more) Hadeda Ibises.
The beagle will stalk the birds from the patio before going full speed (it’s not much, but full marks for effort) at them until they are vanquished to beyond the city boundaries move to the other side of the garden. At which point she gives up.
But that’s when they are in plain sight on the lawn. When they are in incognito mode in the flower beds, they can go about their foraging with complete impunity.
The Hadeda is much maligned in South Africa, but these particular guys are usually pretty quiet and completely harmless. They can be a bit messy around the pool from time to time, but I’ve not got to the point where I want rid of them.
Yet.
It’s been busy recently. I haven’t taken any photos in ages. It’s still busy, but sometimes you need to take your chances. And after yesterday’s rubbish day, I had some English muffins drenched in butter for breakfast and decided to blog early as well. Good start.
Mist – the photographer’s friend – is fairly unusual on the side of the mountain here, so when it arrives, you need to get the camera out and get going. Sadly, today’s episode was very transient – the descending and then disappearing within 10 minutes – and coincided neatly with the requirement to get the kids to school, so some some degree of balance was required.
I got a couple of shots. And the kids got to school on time.
Everyone’s a winner.
This is actually not a monochrome image, but as well as softening everything around you, the mist also drains all the life and the colour from the scene, which works nicely when you have vegetation at various distances from your position.
There are actually three layers here, but only two are really discernible. More time and less private property would have been really helpful to fine-tune this shot, but as mentioned above, sometimes you just need to go with what you’ve got.
And it was just nice to get something.
I got an email from Flickr yesterday.
My Flickr is here, btw, and desperately needs some new additions. But that’s not important right now.
The email in question was the announcement of the winners of the Your Best Shot competition from last year – an opportunity for the photographers in the community to share… well… their Best Shot from 2020 in an effort to win prizes, fame and fortune.
But mainly prizes.
I didn’t enter this time around so as to give someone else a chance to win.
Same as every year.
I was actually a little disappointed with the overall standard of the winning entries, but it (quite literally) isn’t for me to judge, and so well done to those whose images were selected.
One thing I did like was “the photographer’s words” bit under each photograph, describing why or how they took it and what they were aiming for. It’s cool to have a bit of a story and some context while you’re looking at the image. For example:
“This bottle kept floating into my shots… and I decided to make it my subject matter. It’s very tough to see what you are capturing when the sun is shining hard, the waves are lapping, you are treading water, and you have a snorkel mask on. The phone has a plastic case on it (all giving off reflections making it hard to see properly), so I was pleased when I got back to the beach and reviewed the images that a couple of them were just what I had hoped for.”
That’s for this one, by the way.
Or, for Inside and Outside, this:
The photo was shot on my trip to Kathmandu, shortly before the Covid crisis made these kind of trips difficult or not possible at all. On a walk in the old city of Kathmandu… a man appeared and stopped some meters away, unfolding his newspaper and (possibly) reading what is going on in Nepal and the rest of the world.
Lovely.
But then I scrolled down to Morning Fog Over Copenhagen:
As I impatiently listen to the coffee machines gurgle, a hazy somber morning observes me through the old windows of my apartment building. With my trusted bike on my shoulder, I head for the stairs. As I pull the door open, it’s clear that my windows made no illusions. My neighborhood’s Covid-infused streets are shrouded in a fog so thick it turns every light source around me into beautiful living organisms. I mount my bike, and a green light appears ahead. As it pulls me into the unknown known of my hometown, I reach for my camera.
[Puts away thesaurus; closes adjectives dot com webpage; hands in Year 6 English homework assignment]
Alright, Shakespeare. Take it easy. This is the literary equivalent of #RBOSS. No need!
Look, I’m not saying that I could do any better in Danish (and I’m not saying that for very obvious reasons), but Jesus, Henry: please just stick to the photos in future.
More ‘togging, less blogging?
Incidentally, I think his photostream has some wonderful pictures. But their descriptions are thankfully much less verbose.