Nikond600 on The Singemonkey

November 20, 2024

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 16:09:38 +0000

@awesomemeerkat told me about some nesting owls at Kirstenbosch and a friend helped locate them. My dad and I went and took some pictures and just enjoyed being so close to wild owls. I didn’t get any good ones of the chick. But we’ll go back.

November 16, 2024

Sat, 16 Nov 2024 19:11:15 +0000

Karooveld

November 16, 2024

Sat, 16 Nov 2024 19:06:56 +0000

Not too much call for mowing the lawn in camp at The Karoo National Park. This is a big old Mountain Tortoise about the size of a medicine ball. It let me take a few pics before it started to feel it was infra dig, hissed at me and then trundled off to continue harvesting.

September 19, 2024

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 21:21:58 +0000

Tiny critters in a big landscape. Almost every pile of boulders (ancient magma chambers exposed by erosion and then crumbled by weather, plants, and time) has a pair of resident klipspringers (rock-hoppers) - an adorable, agile, and feisty little antelope.

These plaques on the rocks are the kind of memorialising that used to be de rigueur in the old days. Now such things are usually confined to camps and gates rather than forced onto the landscape.

September 19, 2024

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 17:39:38 +0000

Kruger is about landscape as well as beasts, birds, and trees.

September 15, 2024

Sun, 15 Sep 2024 21:51:42 +0000

The prettiest kitty. Dozing on a branch over the Sabie just like her ancestors have probably done for thousands of years.

September 12, 2024

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 06:29:53 +0000

The smallest hyena I’ve ever seen. Its ma is obsessed with it.

September 06, 2024

Fri, 06 Sep 2024 20:30:34 +0000

Three days on the road and now we get to relax. We’re not going to be go-getters tomorrow. We had to go through the park pretty swiftly from Malelane Gate to Kruger Gate and, although we saw tons of great stuff, I only took a handful of pics.

A Steenbok is the most delightful little animal. And those terrapins are showing us the way - basking on top of a fully alive but very sleepy hippo.

August 13, 2024

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 11:52:38 +0000

First getaway in about 18 months. Sorely needed and graciously offered. @sophdex and @ezlemoen have been putting us up in Brenton on Sea. It’s just been lazy nonsense - building stupid hard jigsaw puzzles, eating and drinking and visiting the free living primates at Monkey Land.

August 01, 2024

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 17:39:54 +0000

My dad playing the role of 🍌 for scale next to a big tree. Most of the oaks in Cape Town are in bad shape when they reach this age because their health suffers from not getting the months of dormant cold they’re evolved to expect. But apparently the care of the gardeners in Kirstenbosch kept this old stick in good nick. Can they also save it from the shot-borer beetle that’s going to wipe out the rest of Cape Town’s oaks?

August 01, 2024

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 17:32:07 +0000

Another flower that looks like a frozen space explosion to me.

July 12, 2024

Fri, 12 Jul 2024 15:32:04 +0000

First self portrait in nearly 4 years. I think the last time was towards the end of the great plague year.

I’ve finally got some flash triggers and can begin getting back into doing some stuff with lighting - having forgotten nearly everything I knew. I’m not very good at it at this point but, as Jake the magic dog said, sucking at something is the first step to being kinda good at it.

June 26, 2024

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 15:53:58 +0000

Took another crack at the sunbirds. There were so many. I took more decent pictures of them today than in my entire life up until. Trying to think how to post a few more without it being boring.

June 20, 2024

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 09:24:38 +0000

I had a lovely experience with this little character. It’s a Cape Spurfowl - a common little ground bird that starts life as a fluffy golf ball on spindly legs. I was struggling to focus as it got nearer and nearer until it was right next to where I was lying on the grass - inspecting me at close range for signs of edibles. They’re lovely up close with their intricate patterns.

June 20, 2024

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 08:18:32 +0000

À propos first thing in the morning? The Cape Town Valkyrie, the Hadeda Ibis. I recently read that they have a sensitive organ in their long beaks that can detect the tiny vibrations of prey wriggling beneath the ground.

June 19, 2024

Wed, 19 Jun 2024 08:57:02 +0000

It started to drizzle now as I got back from my run and we got another spectacular rainbow.

Auto white balance let me down here in the camera and my phone’s warmth control couldn’t get it all back. This is also where I realised that the default Apple photo editor has no perspective controls - at least none that I can find.

Edit: doh! @ezlemoen pointed me to the perspective controls and I realised I’d seen them before.

June 15, 2024

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 12:37:46 +0000

Last one for a bit, I promise.

June 15, 2024

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 12:25:31 +0000

Another from the rainy day in Newlands Forest. The D600 is just young enough to have live view for composing but old enough that it’s awful at it.

June 15, 2024

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 12:18:05 +0000

More ferns. But this time from a walk in Newlands Forest a few weeks ago during the rains. I was having a great time out there until the eyepiece of the camera dislodged my hard contact lens - sending it tumbling to the endless complexity of the forest floor. It might as well have fallen through a wormhole into another dimension. An expensive mistake.

June 15, 2024

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 12:04:55 +0000

@kanesnaps and I trying to get back into regular mountain walks. We started small with the popular Constantia Neck walk to this ferny cliff with its ever trickling water. I felt these steps coming down here had a Lord of the Rings feel.

I walked up to here in my new hiking boots - a completely traditional all-leather, stitched sole type to replace my high technology Zamberlans that have finally worn out after a literal quarter century. Thing about traditional leather boots though: wearing them in is a painful trial. But experience says that once that’s done they’ll be more comfortable than any off-the-shelf synthetic footwear. I swapped to my ancient trail running shoes - a hand-me-down from @jason66c - for the second half.

May 30, 2024

Thu, 30 May 2024 17:44:06 +0000

@withoutaleaf heading off to work the whole night through. Night shoots are pretty brutal.

We’re finally getting some rain and cold weather after our Indian summer. It was beautiful yesterday when I went to vote 30 years after my and South Africa’s first time voting in a democratic election. While we have many political problems, our electoral system isn’t one of them - it’s far more robust than those in many lauded democracies. Hopefully its strengths will eventually lead to better governance.

May 28, 2024

Tue, 28 May 2024 18:44:15 +0000

Another one. Can’t get over how sharp this Nikon 1.4x teleconverter is on the 200-500mm. This is a heavy crop (I didn’t get any stunners today) and I could have gone further because all the detail is there.

May 28, 2024

Tue, 28 May 2024 18:37:59 +0000

Today was another perfect winter’s day in Cape Town. The end of May had absolutely no business being this hot and sunny. My dad and I went to Kirstenbosch for lunch and lugged big lenses to photograph sunbirds because - to top it off - the aloes were flowering in blazing Technicolor, making a feast for the wee nectar suckers. It was simply too hot… in May… to stay long photographing them in the sun.

May 17, 2024

Fri, 17 May 2024 10:47:11 +0000

Ham and cheese please. Last night’s @krakatoa_band practice we were graced with the presence of l’organiste, @jason66c - here adopting a classic Tintin style panel impersonation.

#hawaiifiveo is sounding absolutely amazing with Alex on the drums. We’ll be playing sometime in June.

May 16, 2024

Thu, 16 May 2024 18:15:28 +0000

More jpeg experiments. I’ve loved “blue hour” since before I knew it was called that. But this is the first time I think I’ve ever photographed it. I just used to think of it as that time when the interior lights matched the intensity of the ambient light.

Per my previous post, I backed off the saturation on the “Vivid” Nikon picture control setting from 3 to 2 - although the full kazoo might have worked here. It’s really only on green foliage that I find it too lurid to stand.

May 16, 2024

Thu, 16 May 2024 11:58:12 +0000

I’m getting to grips with the Nikon D600. It’s criminal how little I knew about this camera before. So now I’m trying to really learn it to get the most out of it.

One thing that involves is setting up a hybrid jpeg/raw approach where I have useable jpegs like I do for my Fuji - that require little to no editing for sanity and quick sharing. Here I’m experimenting with the jpeg at max saturation. Probably ott but I’m not ruling it out for wildlife and some landscapes and architecture.

April 28, 2024

Sun, 28 Apr 2024 12:05:58 +0000

We have a number of large herons in South Africa. As a rule they’re pretty shy. But for some reason yesterday morning we kept coming across Black Headed Herons that were close to the road or even had to be persuaded to move.

April 27, 2024

Sat, 27 Apr 2024 17:16:32 +0000

Then there was this mystery buzzard. Common Buzzard? Something more unusual. I dunno. Will update.

April 27, 2024

Sat, 27 Apr 2024 16:08:33 +0000

Morning flamingos. 🦩 @millar6300 @joydemillar and I went to Strandfontein and started seeing big flocks of greater flamingos straight away in the early light.

April 05, 2024

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 17:20:16 +0000

This young guy has been going through some exciting times. It’s wonderful watching him and his sister growing into kind and passionate young adults.

April 05, 2024

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 16:48:57 +0000

Common as they are, I never get bored of the elegance that is the Little Egret. One day I’ll get a good pic of one.

My old man and I were out birdwatching at Green Point Park which is a really pleasant place to spend an afternoon.

January 16, 2023

Mon, 16 Jan 2023 09:19:35 +0000

The Lowveld in summer mist. This kind of landscape is generally called ‘savannah woodland’ as far as I know. It’s not the open savannah grassland you find in much of East Africa. Beautiful bushveld trees are everywhere - making up in perfection of form what they lack in height and girth.

I see the potential to reverse the annihilation of natural spaces like this, done in the 19th and 20th centuries, as the population peaks this century and agriculture becomes denser and more efficient - allowing more and more land to be released back into a natural state. This is the flip side to the ecological doom that looms ahead. At this point we could go either way. If the people with the money decide, we know it will only go one way.

January 12, 2023

Thu, 12 Jan 2023 10:15:28 +0000

A new zebra. They’re fluffy and their stripes are rather brown at this age.

January 11, 2023

Wed, 11 Jan 2023 10:32:01 +0000

Our cancellation-surfing approach to staying in Kruger worked less well than in other years we’ve done it. We ended up pinballing between camps a fair bit. Who can say why? Are more people doing it now? Are there companies grabbing cancellations and reselling? Or is it just the ‘post’-pandemic situation? Hard to say. It makes it a less appealing prospect for future trips, for sure.

January 08, 2023

Sun, 08 Jan 2023 11:50:58 +0000

But when these doggos aren’t ripping impala lambs apart without bothering to kill them first, they’re very sweet and sociable. These painted wolves made a cuddle puddle under a bush to wait out the rain with the reassurance of family all around. Though they’re obviously vulnerable to lions, they’re not easily taken unawares with many ears and noses at work for their common defence.

January 08, 2023

Sun, 08 Jan 2023 11:45:47 +0000

A tough old wolf. The Painted Wolf is among the very most effective hunters of large animals in the mammallian world - catching prey far more often than lions, leopards, etc.. This is because dogs are damn smart. And their hunting is cooperative and coordinated to a level only matched and exceeded by apes like us and chimpanzees.

December 24, 2022

Sat, 24 Dec 2022 12:22:18 +0000

Monkeys. Genuinely fun. Especially when they come in different sizes.

November 03, 2022

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 15:13:07 +0000

Our host, Jean, was a character out of a story-book from the 1950s. A Belgian who took to the sea at fourteen to work as a ship’s cook and saw many things - including over-eager young Poles cutting their fingers off and the preparation of seagull in secret to offset a meat shortage. He was a restauranteur for a spell and then a cooking teacher. He just so happened to teach me how to make an easy chicken stock.

November 03, 2022

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 15:06:15 +0000

The lads from our working-on-songs weekend a month or so ago. @kanesnaps, @jason66c, and @sad_ivan. It was a strange location.

March 02, 2021

Tue, 02 Mar 2021 14:53:06 +0000

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.

October 03, 2020

Sat, 03 Oct 2020 11:12:58 +0000

Another one of Hillbrow from Constitution Hill in Jan 2019. I took this with a lens not much newer than these flats - a Nikkor 105mm f2.5 from the ’70s. Such a killer lens. Anyone using Nikon SLRs or DSLRs should try get one. They’re not very expensive. Wonderful cheap portrait lens for full-frame - flattening features and separating from the background with its shallow depth-of-field at f2.5. And I found endless other uses for it too.