mountains

Mountain Photo of the Year

Posted on January 10, 2023

Yep: does exactly what it says in the title.

Here are the finalists, and here is the winner:

This is going to sound a bit moany, but while there are some pretty good photos in there, there’s nothing that jumps out at me as being particularly special. And I just think that if you are going to have a competition like this, with such a grand title and such a huge range (no pun intended) of potentially incredible subjects, then the ones that get through to the final stage should be amazing.

Bit disappointed with these. I’ll be looking to up the standard next year (T&Cs apply).

Day 157 – Distant vistas

Posted on August 30, 2020August 15, 2022

I filled the car with diesel for the second time since March, chucked in the family and a camera and headed North East. I wanted to see snow on mountains. Not snow on the ground: I’m happy to leave that for the locals – who didn’t have the privilege of having it on their doorstep every winter – to queue for.

A quick trip over the Du Toitskloof Pass gave us some ok spots, but I have to admit that I was a little bit disappointed. I wanted a bit more snow, a bit more drama. And that seems a little greedy given some of the views:

We could have gone much further inland towards Ceres, but that wasn’t really the plan, so we headed back through the tunnel, towards Franschhoek and then over Helshoogte to Stellenbosch.

Yeah. OK. Not bad.

From there, down to Somerset West via the (absolutely terrible) Mooiberg Farm Stall and a hope of some easy pickings on the Helderberg. But no. Horrible grey clouds hanging just around the snow line. Very disappointing. Coffee and home then.

It was a nice trip around our little corner of the Western Cape. But – photographically, at least – the whole thing could have been a bit more lucrative.

Some pics here.

Editing

Posted on June 4, 2019June 4, 2019

I’ve been playing some catch up with editing photos. Not that they weren’t edited previously, but it’s always, always worth revisiting them with fresh eyes. I made so many changes to images that I already thought were just right. You can get so involved in fixing bits of the image that you lose (no pun intended here) the bigger picture. I found and corrected several examples of this.

One particular favourite image from the set was this one:

Five bracketed shots merged in Lightroom to ensure some semblance of decent exposure throughout. Bigger on black here. Picturesque.

There are at least one or two others which I really like from my recent expeditions, but they are part of a project I’m doing, and I’m not sure that it would be right to share them on here just yet (or maybe, in fact, ever).

The one above doesn’t have any such restrictions, as far as I’m concerned. Those mountains are fair game to anyone with a camera (or, in this case, a drone) and it’s really not my fault if they choose to be so very striking when I’m trying to take specific photos of specific stuff.

I mean, honestly, who could resist?

I spy

Posted on October 10, 2016

No, not Busisiwe Mkhwebane the new Public Protector with her allegedly questionable alleged links with the Chinese.

Something much cooler (although arguably less important for the well-being of the Republic of South Africa), this:

At first sight, it’s just a signpost in the Swiss mountains, with lots of tubes attached to it, and that’s because that’s exactly what it actually is.

But brilliantly, those tubes are so arranged, that when you spy through each of them, you see a different mountain.

Then look on the side of the tube in question, and you can see exactly which mountain you are looking at.

This makes mountain identification – previously rather tricky, one would imagine, looking at just how many tubes are attached that signpost – much, much easier.