Day 214 – Next project

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

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.

End of the century

(The one from 1919-2019, anyway…)

It’s been an interesting year, but it’s nearly done now.

There were plenty of highs, several (or more) lows, and quite a lot of average kinda stuff, as you might expect. But all being well (as this post was written over a week ago), we’ve made it this far – 364/365ths or 99.73% of the way through. And 2020 beckons. A fresh start, a new opportunity, but still with the same old arseholes who helped make the last few years so miserable. (You can choose your own arseholes here.)

Happy days.

A watery autumnal sunset, punctuated by Swift Terns and anticrepuscular rays seems appropriate. Not one of my best 12, but it fits quite nicely here, and reminds me what I need to improve upon in 2020. Aiming the camera 10° further upwards would have helped here.

Untouched

Sometimes, you take photos which you need to edit a lot.
Sometimes, you take photos which you want to edit a lot.

But this isn’t either one of those sort of photos.

I was actually running through the fields of sugarcane near the Mozambican border to take a photo of a tractor, leaping gazelle-like over irrigation piping, because that’s the sort of thing I apparently enjoy doing. But then I glanced to the left and there was this, and I stopped because there are just some moments you simply have to record.

It’s the sort of point-and-shoot nonsense that always looks amazing at the time but never quite makes the grade when it comes to actually reviewing  the image later on. Except, for me at least, this one does. And yes, it did go into Lightroom as a RAW file, but it came out the other side without being touched at all, because I couldn’t find a way to make it prettier: even with my new Sharples #RBOSS™ preset.

Sadly, this is one of very few images I took this week that doesn’t need editing. And that’s why I’ve already spent quite a lot of my Sunday in front of the computer. And there’s plenty more work to do.

So let’s leave this here and get back to it, shall we?

Homework can be cool

One of the assignments for my son’s photography lessons this term was to take a sunset photo. And where better to do this than at the Southern Tip?

That’s why we spent a couple of evenings over the weekend at Rasper Punt. The first one wasn’t ever so successful, thanks to a sudden bank of cloud diving in on us, but conditions – while not perfect – were certainly better on Easter Sunday.

He had a very set idea of what he wanted to achieve and while I was there to offer hints and tips, he wanted to experiment, so I left him sitting in the bushes, went along the beach and togged a bit myself.

Like I said, nothing spectacular, but it was just nice to be out and about on a pleasant evening. And a couple of extra shots for the Adobe Stock library along with it. Double bonus.

I don’t know if I’ll be allowed to share what he got, once it’s been edited and is ready for submission. But if I can, I will. #NoRBOSS