Magichour

Dawn breakfast walk in my little urban village.

I can’t remember if I posted one of these pics from Punda Maria restcamp in Kruger in Jan 2018. It’s far in the tropical North of the park. The waterhole you can watch from inside the camp is full of amazing visitors. Without having to be worried about gate-closing times, you can also catch them in the best evening light.

Eland are pretty spectacular. The second-largest antelope (after the Giant Eland of West Africa). They’re recovering their numbers in South Africa after being nearly wiped out through hunting by the end of the 19th century. Gotta say, I found the operation and layout of my Fuji XE1 much more understandable from the get-go than the Nikon Z50. It’s really great for us olds who grew up on film gear that Fujifilm makes cameras that use film-camera control layouts as a starting point. Very lucky.

I also brought my little Fuji XE1. We arrived at the park pretty late and got to see the Karoo turn gold in the evening light. Course with the Fuji there’s no autofocus and no image stabilisation. So I felt I was pretty lucky to get anything close to sharp pics as these were all handheld grab shots.

Streaking folded upthrusts reach North into the Indian Ocean.

This was the second leopard posing on our drive this afternoon. We only stopped for a few minutes for this one because it was 20 minutes to gate closing. The other one that @withoutaleaf photographed was even more amazing.

I’ve been taken with a real hankering to use my Pentax 645 again. Such a great camera. This was in 2012 at the little airport outside Beaufort West that was a bnb at the time. Hence @withoutaleaf hanging out on the air traffic control tower. When we were next there a couple years ago the runway was in action again training Chinese pilots for their indentured servitude in China’s commercial aviation industry. Worse jobs to be enslaved to, I guess.

I don’t know the name of this, but there’s a lot of it around near our new place. Sure looks good against the blue skies first thing in the morning.

Lovely light on the way up to coffee in Obz this morning. Winter in Cape Town is not the non-stop downpour many imagine.

@withoutaleaf at sunset.