Invited back

Just a quick note to say that I am delighted to have been invited to help out with the school tour to Robben Island again this year. I must be fooling someone doing something right.

Let’s celebrate with a quota photo from the prison museum there:

Looking forward to more amazing learning and bonding experiences, and yes… maybe another traditional solo run around the island in the misty, murky early morning hours.

Day 678 – AGM tonight

I have an AGM to attend tonight, and I’ve had a frustrating day in the weird (but welcome) Cape Town drizzle. The AGM is online, but still requires my time, and dinner isn’t going to cook itself (because we’re ordering burgers).

So… quota photo time.

This one is another from the top of the mountain. I was trying to sleep when some of the others came back from an (alleged) trempette maigre and told me to get out of bed, find my camera (and tripod) and shoot the moon. I clearly wasn’t going to find any peace and quiet until it was done, so I just got it over with, thus:

Go look at it here too.

You have to wonder who designed and built the monstrosity of a second house next to the original Victorian cottage, but in its defence, it’s got amazing views over Cape Town from the deck, and it makes for an OK silhouette on moonrise photos.

Day 275 – Boxing Day QP

As ever, I’m writing a few posts in advance over the holiday period (such as it is) so that I can have a little bit of break as well. And because I don’t want to be using up all my words in one go, here’s a quota photo that I took on our recent trip to the Cederberg.

Star trails for dayz (or… er… nightz).

This was the result of 2 hours (and one second, because why not?) of exposure, then an automatic noise clean up on the camera (I won’t be using that feature again – took another 2 hours!) and a bit of tweaking in Lightroom. Bigger and darker here.

I quite like it.
It was almost worth fumbling around in the pitch darkness of the bush in the early hours.

Almost.

Day 206 – Tree QP

I’ve had a busy day, and I’ve got no plans to do anything but chill out this evening.

Have a quota photo of a dead tree (I knew you’d be impressed):

This was taken at Theewaterskloof last week. I liked the juxtaposition of the two bright colours at the top and bottom, the mute stripe in the middle and that angular tree pushing through all three layers.

Bigger here, if you want.

Day 121 – Cableway QP

Not much time to blog today, but for all the right reasons. We walked up to the old Sanatorium above Simonstown: 160m ascent in just 700m was quite a test, but on the plus side, there were great views and we didn’t get mugged.

It’s the small things.

This is one of the trestles for the old cableway that ran here in the first half of last century. Quite an amazing sight running right down to the harbour from the top here…