I won’t be able to see Devil’s Peak. Or my favourite Cape Town sunsets.
If you look carefully, you might just see the plane I’m on right now, flying somewhere in this picture. Or not.
The 2009 Kids in Tow Tour has begun and I may already be drunk.
This post was written on 1st July 2009 and pre-programmed to appear on 2nd July 2009 through the magic of WordPress.
It’s been a great afternoon. About half way through the Bulls versus Crusaders Super 14 semi-final, with the score a tantalising 27-23, Mrs 6k decided that it would be a good time for us to take the kids up to the local school field, let them run around and let me not watch the end of the rugby. Her plan was extremely successful on both counts.
But I’m glad we went. The kids enjoyed the mud on the churned up fields after the morning school rugby games and I booted a properly shaped ball around, chased Alex and took photos of the sky and the mountains.
I was even allowed to look up the Bulls score on the way home. Result. Literally.
I was working hard on the first Peroni of the weekend when I glanced outside to see a completely orange sky. Now, I’m very used to blue, quite used to black with tiny white dots in and sadly, becoming used to grey again, but orange is still a bit of a novelty.
Quickly grabbing the point-and-shoot camera – mainly because I wanted to take photos and it’s the only camera I own – I ran outside, climbed on top of the braai, pointed and shot. I should probably inform readers at this point that we have a built-in braai and it wasn’t a Weber or one of those rubbish disposable things. That would have taken a monumental amount of balance or made absolutely no difference to my overall height whatsoever. Or both.
No, our braai is pretty big.
Fortunately the sky is also pretty big and I was able to not miss on a number of occasions. This probably being my favourite hit.
Although I quite like this one too. You can see the whole lot of them on flickr and make your own decision.
And once again, I must remind you lovely people that taking good photographs in Cape Town isn’t difficult. Most of the work is done for you. So yes, despite the fact that I think some of these are “good”, once again, none of them are exceptional. And, once again, I’m left wondering if I can at least partially overcome the paucity of my talent by buying a better camera.
The alternative, of course, is to spend that camera money on beer, and then see if my creative abilities are augmented by imbibing (what I calculate to be) about 1,000 bottles of Amstel. Being a scientist, I am tempted by the idea of exploring both possibilities as fully as possible.
No time, no time. And off to play football, so a quick pair of South African sunsets: one from the parkade at Cape Town International Airport and the other from the veld in the Madikwe Game Reserve in the North West Province, both thinned down for your delectation (and so my sidebar doesn’t go AWOL).
Same sun, same country; but a world apart, I’m sure you’ll agree.
South West [bigger]
North West [bigger]
Ideally, I would have lined them up so that the suns were directly in line. But I didn’t. And now I don’t have time. Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. As long as you haven’t been looking directly at the sun.
It’s not difficult to take good photographs in Cape Town. Decent subject matter is nearly always available, all you have to do is point and shoot. But because of that, the bar is raised and because good is the norm, exceptional becomes the goal.
Having only wandered outside to fix a drainpipe (what else do you do at 8pm on a Monday evening?), I grabbed the camera, pointed and shooted, Micklethwait-style. Result:
I don’t claim that all these Sunsets & Skyscapes are exceptional, but I do think they’re mostly at least good. However, as I said, I can’t really take a huge amount of credit for that. Even the sky seems so much more photogenic over here.