Tag: sunset

One last day

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Getting this written early, because it’s clear that even the local cell network is not coping with more than 10 hours without power each day. The batteries in the towers run down during the first lot of loadshedding, never fully recover before the second, and simply die before the third session has finished. And it’s only going to get worse because they’re starting from progressively lower percentages each time.

It’s not good.

Thankfully, there are other distractions here, like the beach, the braai, the dunes, and several (or more) family games to play.

Oh, and the sunsets – very pretty stuff last night (unedited):

After yesterday’s run, I managed another wander this morning on the very soft sand and into a hellish headwind to get a few snaps of Mrs 6000 on her beach ride (horse, before you ask).

And now, another gentle day before a walk round to the local lighthouse and a decision of whether to braai again this evening or head to the local pub. Both options have their merits, and for the moment, I’m completely undecided.

Long live pretending that this sort of thing being the most taxing problem I have to face.

Drone sunset

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I’ve sat in my car park many, many times this year. In all sorts of weather (but mainly wet):

And I was there again last night for the team’s final practice session before the World Cup.
Last week when I was up North, I wished that I had brought my drone along. The sunset was incredible, but I was surrounded by ugly buildings and tall trees, which didn’t make for any decent photography.

So this week, rather than miss out again, I did take my drone along. And predictably, the sunset was completely rubbish.

Initially…

I’d actually packed the drone away and was settling down in the back of the car to watch an episode of Only Connect when I spotted the first tinge of pink in the sky. And while I didn’t think it was going anywhere, I knew I’d be pissed off if it did and I missed it, so I unpacked and set up again and by the time I got flying… well…

First things first: this is a stacked image of 5 bracketed shots, given that the sky was BRIGHT and the mountain was DARK. I’ve already been accused of RBOSSery by someone on the family Whatsapp group (wow – et tu, Brute?), but in fact, it’s actually UN-RBOSSed:

Look at that! And that’s just because there was far too much going on in the sky for the teeny, tiny sensor on my aging drone to handle. So no, definitely no RBOSS or hypocrisy here*.

I think this image would have been better with a bit more Table Bay in the mid-ground, but I was just down the road from Blouberg (aka “Blow”berg), and the South Easter was pumping. I was getting wind warnings even just up at 30m, so I decided not to risk much above 50. A bit irritating, but there are some things that you just can’t control, and hey, I still have a drone this morning, so that’s nice.
Always look for the positives.

Because the World Cup is coming up, I’m not going to be in my car park for a while now, and when practices do start again, they will likely not be 4 or 5 times a week, so I think this was a really good way to sign off for a while.

* Add a bit of Whatsapp compression and I can maybe kind of see where he was coming from, but I’m still rather hurt.

I… I have no words.

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Thanks to the work of the Ramsey Bay Over Saturation Society and their insistence on pumping up the Lightroom sliders to unbelievable levels, we’re now all painfully aware of the #RBOSS phenomenon.

Using software to make shots look better than they actually were is fine. Of course it is. It’s when you go WAAAYYY over the top that it gets silly and ugly and then when you have the audacity to suggest on social media that “it came out of the camera like that”, well, then we’re really heading way down the road of RBOSS wankerdom.
It’s just deceitful karma-harvesting and it pisses me (and a lot of other people) off.
Quite reasonably.

I’m talking about stuff like this, this and this. It even spread to Bergen, which really doesn’t need assistance in looking good in photos.

But all of that (literally) pales into insignificance with what I saw on a Sheffield Facebook group this morning. Because… I mean… even when a sunset is spectacular, you can’t claim that it looked… that it looked… like this:

What in the ever living fishcake has happened here?

This isn’t “Tonight’s sunset over the village” as the protagonist claims. This (I think) used to be Aston on the border of Sheffield. But this isn’t a sunset. This is the actual star crashing into our planet. This is thermonuclear detonation. Billions of megatons of raw explosive power blasting out streams of plasmatic energy across the rolling hills of South Yorkshire. Every atom right across the Western sky exploding in perfect synchronicity, creating an ultra-electromagnetic shockwave that instantly kills everything in its path.

And it’s not helped by comments such as “Absolutely gorgeous!!! [several heart emojis]” or “breathtaking!”. The only breath that’s being taken here is your final one as the blast of hyper-energy – having melted your eyeballs in a nanosecond – sucks the very last molecules of oxygen from your lungs, leaving merely a smouldering pile of desiccated remnants where you once stood.

What makes it impossibly worse is that this guy sells images from his drone. It’s his business. He wants you to pay for this kind of thing. Money. Real money.

To be honest, this is beyond RBOSS. No-one could have known that the technology to over-saturate to these sort of levels even existed. We simply didn’t think it would ever be possible, but this guy has unashamedly gone multi-Sharples.

End times are upon us.

Day 214 – Next project

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From one project to the next. A seamless transition. Apart from the seams.

I need to sit down and share my thoughts and photos from an incredible couple of days, but my feet really haven’t touched the floor since I have been back. Some of tomorrow afternoon is looking worryingly clear though, so please expect some kind of recompense for the neglect that I have been heaping upon this godforsaken blog for the past week or so.

It’s not my fault. It’s not anybody’s fault. I’m just really, really busy.
It’s so frustrating.

It’s just sad that you have to suffer a dearth of quality writing, all while knowing deep down that there’s some really poor quality writing coming. Double jeopardy.

Anyway, I did just take 2 minutes out to grab a photo of tonight’s sunset:

Completely untouched and unedited (because I actually don’t have time to touch and edit it right now).

More – and I mean more – tomorrow.

Back to the grindstone.

 

Day 21 – Mildly delayed

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I have been trying to get these daily posts out at 8am, but this one is slightly late.
I’m pretty sure that no-one will notice – is there really anyone frantically hitting refresh at 7:59, like they’re hoping to be the first in line for concert tickets on some underprepared concert ticket website that will then crash 10 seconds later?

Remember going to concerts?
That was fun, wasn’t it?

Anyway. I digress. Often.

Yesterday was a flat, dull, calm, grey day. Horrible for photography, but great for taking the drone up for the first time in ages and having a quick spin out of the back garden. It needs some work on the camera (the drone, not the back garden): the lens plate is slightly damaged, but apparently fixing that is not an essential service, so it’s not going to happen for a while yet. So I was left having to do a  little bit of fiddling in Lightroom, which did at least give me a different image for my photo-a-day Lockdown album on Flickr.

And then, after a quick rain shower, and just as it seemed that all hope of any colour was lost, a watery peach sunset, which I togged from the top of the braai chimney while the braai was in use.

I would not advise this approach.

This photo really is nothing special, but as a symbol of hope and optimism after a miserable grey day, it’s still nothing special.

Today is also grey. Hold tight for the sunset.