Xe1 on The Singemonkey

February 11, 2025

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 11:28:18 +0000

During and after our walk with @kanesnaps and Gnu the puppy. First pic is in front of a giant camphor tree, then Kane finding a bag for the porcupine skull, then Gnu cooling off in the pool where we soon joined her.

February 11, 2025

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 11:24:19 +0000

@kanesnaps found this grim skull of one of our African Ground Porcupines while we walked in the geen belt in the vicinity of Kirstenbosch yesterday. Cleaned up, it’s making a great garden ornament.

November 12, 2024

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 11:18:51 +0000

Bun staying out of the summer breeze through the open window by making rare use of this cat tower room that was once the fave of our dear departed Skitten.

November 12, 2024

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 11:16:04 +0000

And a few horizontal ones also from our first braai of summer. It feels like it’s really here now.

November 12, 2024

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 11:11:32 +0000

Some pics from our first braai of the summer, kindly hosted by @johnthevudio Swimming, good food, nice whiskey, birds and summer breezes, and loads of cute cats.

October 26, 2024

Sat, 26 Oct 2024 17:03:20 +0000

Boi’s official spring portrait

We did some wild gardening today helping Nicola in her mad dash to empty out her Gran’s house of 30 years before the bulldozers come for it - rescuing a few lucky plants.

October 04, 2024

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 19:24:14 +0000

Another view showing my faithful bike loaned to me by @joydemillar We all bid farewell to her dad - a one of a kind man - today. It was quite a scene, full to bursting, with a pipe band rattling the walls.

Just beyond those trees you can just make out my old primary school and the window of a classroom where I spent probably the most miserable year of my life. That teacher would have been jailed for the stuff he pulled today. But in the 80s complaining just made you a special target.

June 26, 2024

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 09:59:14 +0000

Caught Bun’s little fuzzy face this morning next to my old Fuzzface.

June 21, 2024

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 12:27:24 +0000

The Mouse is now firmly ensconced in my dad’s house. And she’s living up to her name/job-title as no mouse has been seen within since her arrival. She’s got to explore the outdoors for the first time in her life and is already in a feud with a squirrel that swears at her from a perch in the white stinkwood tree my folks planted when they moved in and now towers over the house.

June 21, 2024

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 12:06:01 +0000

Arum Lilly. Past its best but still worthy of a photograph. This one’s for my dear friend @sophdex today.

June 15, 2024

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 19:37:46 +0000

@joydemillar has organised another cracking #subwaysessions at our undisclosed location. Here’s Ilse holding everyone spellbound or in stitches between songs that you instantly feel like you’ve known for years.

May 09, 2024

Thu, 09 May 2024 12:18:47 +0000

I’ve had a cold this last week but poor @kanesnaps came down with a dose of the ‘flu in the 35 degree heat of #africaburn He’s mostly recovered and doing great work with that Mustang bass as always.

April 28, 2024

Sun, 28 Apr 2024 14:41:29 +0000

Last night was perhaps the best non metal rock show I’ve seen in South Africa. Just killer bands, great sound, enthusiastic crowd. Pictured is Beast with two great bass guitar players, a rock solid drummer and an operatic, dramatic singer. The Tasers from Jozi were probably my highlight with a great tension between absolute wildness and tight control. Headlined by Spiral Drive from Germany. The show is coming to Jozi in a few days and people up there should run not walk to get tickets.

April 26, 2024

Fri, 26 Apr 2024 09:20:23 +0000

I was with my dad while he got his prescription filled at Noyes Pharmacy in Kenilworth which still amazingly has a film autolab. You can see the diamond grid where they once had many brands and types of 35mm film for sale and now there’s just one - and only about a dozen in stock plus some disposable cameras.

They used to have a collection of vintage Leicas - MIII’s through M6s I think. Maybe 20 or so. Not even for sale. I believe the old owner sold them quickly when digital moved in - not realising like most of us that their value would recover in time I think.

April 22, 2024

Mon, 22 Apr 2024 14:41:50 +0000

His current favourite autumnal spot for taking his daytime zizz with the advantage of being able to see his rivals from the balcony.

April 05, 2024

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 17:08:21 +0000

@kanesnaps and I went out to see the effects of the summer fires in December (if I recall). It was amazing to see how the protea flower clusters had opened up to release their seeds and how there were already some green shoots in the ashes mere days later. Also impressive were the huge shards of sandstone blasted out of the boulders like onion layers where the water dumped by helicopters hit the searing hot stone.

April 04, 2024

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 15:24:12 +0000

John demonstrates his fistfuls of charcoal braaiing technique in his back yard in August 2023. The gum trees are a trial to him dropping leaves steadily in his pool. But in compensation they’ve attracted a young African Harrier Hawk or Gymnogene which is always an exciting garden visitor.

August 06, 2023

Sun, 06 Aug 2023 12:07:45 +0000

I dropped @withoutaleaf off at the harbour to take the Hogwarts Express. Some of us work from home and see and do the same things everyday, and she has so many adventures she begins to find some a nuisance. It’s not long ago she was spending the working day watching lions eating a giraffe they’d killed.

August 06, 2023

Sun, 06 Aug 2023 11:59:32 +0000

It’s the first time I’ve done this walk since March. So much going on with the cat boi going missing and then getting injured. I decided to take my camera. I just can’t get good results with a phone although some people can. I’ve also changed laptops and still haven’t sorted out my photos again. So I edited these on my phone.

January 27, 2023

Fri, 27 Jan 2023 11:49:02 +0000

Surprise guest. @withoutaleaf found this bunny while shooting at Wynberg Park. It may have been born there among feral rabbits, but it’s super friendly, so it may have been abandoned. Luckily a person nearby us with an eight-year-old daughter is coming to take it to its forever home this afternoon.

January 21, 2023

Sat, 21 Jan 2023 10:12:30 +0000

The Boi in one of his brief spells of wakefulness.

Watching lens reviews can sometimes be useful. I discovered this ttartisan 50mm f1.2 is quite a bit less sharp and contrasty focused at its minimum distance at f1.2. So stopping down to f2 makes quite a big difference when focused close like this.

January 21, 2023

Sat, 21 Jan 2023 10:05:21 +0000

Bun’s current top-favourite spot. We call it her tube.

January 12, 2023

Thu, 12 Jan 2023 12:43:27 +0000

@jason66c at a show we went to for the day back on December 11. We gathered intel and experienced the rare Cape summer thunderstorm.

November 20, 2022

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 17:44:07 +0000

Bunday morning.

November 14, 2022

Mon, 14 Nov 2022 09:25:09 +0000

The Magician. @kanesnaps larking at the back of The Elephant’s Eye - against the mossy retina. It’s a tall, temple-like opening in the mountainside in Silvermine Nature Reserve.

The last time I was there, maybe when I was ten or twelve it seemed a Herculean feat to get there. Kane and I found it such a quick and gentle saunter that we went on to the Hout Bay overlook - which seldom disappoints.

October 31, 2022

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 10:03:53 +0000

The place we live in faces the rising sun. So morning coffee-time is one of the sunniest of the day.

Bun likes this part of the house where she can hang out on my loudspeakers or on the windowsill and watch other cats safe from bullying.

October 10, 2022

Mon, 10 Oct 2022 20:53:48 +0000

Leucodendrons, @kanesnaps tells me. A very pretty and delicate protea that looked quite spectacular in spring profusion, painting the entire mountainside yellow.

October 10, 2022

Mon, 10 Oct 2022 20:44:57 +0000

@kanesnaps and I went heroically up the mountain by a new route (for me) and found that rock that looks like a camel from certain angles.

It was lovely up there, where the traffic noise suddenly disappears and you’re in this magic park in the sky filled with the astonishing diversity of plants in the fynbos botanical region.

Kane almost got bitten by a very unfortunate young puff adder that had been run over (almost certainly by accident since it was so well camouflaged on the road - such that Kane nearly didn’t see it too). Luckily some guys working up there arrived in a truck and ended it’s suffering with a sharp spade since it was way too injured to possibly survive.

August 27, 2022

Sat, 27 Aug 2022 12:51:01 +0000

I feel like Observatory’s going through a bit of renaissance as covid winds down. @withoutaleaf got ice-cream from @_tapi_tapi - and it’s really good. Lots of African ingredients are used. It seems like not long ago tourists would struggle to find anything African to eat that was accessible to them in Cape Town. But now there’s a lot on offer. Can definitely recommend this place. Great, unique ice-cream and super friendly, informative people working there.

August 23, 2022

Tue, 23 Aug 2022 14:15:36 +0000

Doing some technical reading on the balcony with this chonky chap. It’s the first warm weather in a good long while and he’s here for it. 27 degrees according to the weather app. No doubt there’ll be plenty more cold weather ahead. But this is a nice break.

I’ve had a nasty cold for a week. Did a great show on Friday @noongunbrewery in Muizenberg. Thank goodness we do a lot of instrumentals because I couldn’t croak a note.

July 26, 2022

Tue, 26 Jul 2022 11:59:11 +0000

This scene again. It was a three kingfisher day today - Pied (which we see most days), Malachite (we see these little jewels maybe every three counts or so), and Giant (seen more rarely - although this lady has a fave spot in the willow so maybe we’ll see her again next week). This in a place that shills for the developers love to pretend is a ruined, lifeless dump.

July 26, 2022

Tue, 26 Jul 2022 11:54:25 +0000

Terna as I found him soaking in the dawn by our river confluence bird count. In summer I really miss the late dawn that invites you to enjoy it without too much bother. This project is partly what inspired my newfound love for daybreak.

July 24, 2022

Sun, 24 Jul 2022 18:40:15 +0000

This is from a few days ago when @withoutaleaf and I were up on Plum Pudding Hill. I just wanted to post this to remind myself of this handful of mature silver trees that survived the fire. The trunks were scorched but they came through unlike most.

I mentioned that silver trees are hard to photograph. It’s because the top side of the leaf has a gorgeous metallic shine thanks to a profusion of fine hairs. But the underside is a deep green. In photographs this usually gives the impression that they’re a kind of grey green tree. But up close and personal, they’re just spectacular.

July 24, 2022

Sun, 24 Jul 2022 18:30:52 +0000

Second mountain expedition of the day. Kane (@kanesnaps) led Junko (@junko28a) and me up Kalk Bay at a blistering pace. I worked out it must be over twenty years since I last went up this route. And that’s a shame because it’s so lovely. The vegetation and landscape transforms so quickly - you’re rapidly surrounded by the most varied and beautiful fynbos - and the contrast between the white sand and the acquamarine of False Bay is a balm for the soul. And so lovely to share the mountain with much loved people. Second time in a week!

July 07, 2022

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 08:48:18 +0000

We went for breakfast at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens yesterday. Wow. Winter in Cape Town sure is terrible.

We actually got to spot the elusive Sombre Bulbul a couple of times - the call of which has been obsessing me for a year.

July 07, 2022

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 08:44:03 +0000

At the same location as the previous pic we came across these #cursed proteas. They only grow on the sites of necromancer’s towers.

July 07, 2022

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 08:40:40 +0000

A couple of #latergrams. Got to meet up with these ever delightful people a few weeks ago when we went to go see an Irma Stern exhibition. The knitter made us cute octopus plushies that we shall treasure.

July 07, 2022

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 08:37:01 +0000

Early morning Trinket, aka Bun.

With the rolling blackouts due to our corrupt and negligent state power provider we’ve been using candles a fair bit. Bun can’t seem to learn that these lights are too spicy 🌶 for her and keeps singeing her whiskers.

June 18, 2022

Sat, 18 Jun 2022 12:37:30 +0000

Newlands Forest was mighty damp after the huge amount of rain we had last week. To cross the streams with dry feet I had to do some tricky hops on slippery rocks. I amazed myself by managing to cross three of these rain gorged torrents without falling in.

A second mountain biker alerted me to their presence with a bike bell. That makes two… ever. It’s such a tiny, inexpensive object but it conveys so much respect to the other mountain users. Most of them though, are not well-loved by the rest of us. I have a bell on my bike just for getting myself around, let along tearing down narrow, twisting tracks. Sport riders in Cape Town need to be better.

June 11, 2022

Sat, 11 Jun 2022 10:18:49 +0000

The memorial to ruthless imperialism and capitalism. Even sharks respect power - it’s a really basic thing to revere. It’s much more appropriate to a sophisticated primate to revere kindness and cooperation.

Well, at least people can enjoy the free public space and every generation of kids can ride the scaled down imitations of the Trafalgar Square lions - none of them thinking for a moment about a dusty old Victorian narcissist.

June 11, 2022

Sat, 11 Jun 2022 10:10:53 +0000

Despite having some expensive sunglasses ruined by the wind ripping them off my shirt and skidding them - lenses down - for 50m across a tarred road, the irritation I woke up with couldnt stand up to Table Mountain Park at dawn. This has to be among the best city parks on Earth.

I’m not quite fit enough to run up the steep mountainside to the “King’s Blockhouse” (a grandiose name for a very tiny little fort) so, since I was scrambling anyway, I could take my camera. I was remembering how this seemed like quite a big hike even as a teenager. I was clearly very unfit then.

June 08, 2022

Wed, 08 Jun 2022 09:31:17 +0000

Last Sunday we went to the Paarl Arboretum. I’ve never been before. It’s a wonderful place - a huge park divided into continents for its collection of beautiful exotic and local trees. This is the lovely Cedar of Lebanon (celebrated on that nation’s flag). It looks like it’ll be a great place for lazing around reading and picnicking in summer. I was actually surprised how few people were there on a sunny day in winter. Wonderful birds too. We saw four African Hoopoes pottering about on the grass - a lovely, iconic bird that I don’t think I’ve ever seen this close to Cape Town before.

June 08, 2022

Wed, 08 Jun 2022 09:26:09 +0000

The date palm at the confluence stands on a tiny island. About the only thing on that bank spared destruction by the diggers and dozers. A good thing too as the willow beneath the palm seems to be a nesting site for Night Herons. Hopefully the cranes will be hauled away as they begin to rust.

June 08, 2022

Wed, 08 Jun 2022 09:19:49 +0000

Dawn light on the confluence of the Liesbeek and Black Rivers where we do our bird count. Egyptian Geese fly by. The cranes behind the little undamaged island stand silent, hopefully haemorrhaging money into bankruptcy for a company that sought to wreck the place with the collusion of the city that ignored its own environmental impact assessment which declared that it was wholly inappropriate to build on this environmentally sensitive floodplain.

May 28, 2022

Sat, 28 May 2022 18:01:45 +0000

This ruined cottage was an irresistible moonlight attraction when we were teenagers. And the wall was a seat where we could climb up and pretend we were vampires.

May 28, 2022

Sat, 28 May 2022 17:51:23 +0000

The native forests of Table Mountain. Dense and ringing with the calls of forest birds - unlike the bare alien pine forests that still linger on some slopes.

May 28, 2022

Sat, 28 May 2022 17:47:18 +0000

My camera battery charger has been rediscovered. So I took it for a long walk in the woods on the mountainside this morning.

It’s really striking how many more birds you hear when you leave the alien pines and enter the indigenous forest. Now that I recognise the eerie, jaunty call of the Sombre Bulbul, I can hear that the forest is lousy with them.

I also spotted a Cape Batis.

April 17, 2022

Sun, 17 Apr 2022 13:48:10 +0000

I’ll take a ‘plain top’ Les Paul over a veneer top any day. The mystery of maple’s fungal growth patterns is that it changes depending on the angle of the light and how you look at it. Every slab of wood is completely unique. In just the right light, the faintest hint of flames becomes visible on the top of my 2010 Tokai LS150. And patterns that mean that it’s completely identtifiable - like that odd little curl and the deeper flame near the toggle switch. This is a workhorse rock guitar. It’s been banged up and played hard. But it’s still the best guitar I own against some pretty stiff competition.

April 17, 2022

Sun, 17 Apr 2022 13:39:41 +0000

So I ran into this in Pinelands in March…

April 17, 2022

Sun, 17 Apr 2022 13:00:50 +0000

Had to relearn how to take pictures when we went to a heavy metal show last night up the street with @sad_ivan and Tanya. @withoutaleaf and I aren’t really metal people so we dressed as tourists. We bumped into the organiser of this 200 odd people event and she can be seen wearing my fly glasses. Absolute blast. Metal heads are the best people. The band, Abaddon, were cracking. Tight as a drum. Thundering sound. A fine night out.

February 14, 2022

Mon, 14 Feb 2022 14:11:30 +0000

This fella has been feeling like the house is the siege of Stalingrad since the painting began. But he seems to gradually be accepting that he’s not in mortal danger.

February 13, 2022

Sun, 13 Feb 2022 11:46:44 +0000

Our Liesbeek bird counting group had an away day this morning at Strandfontein Sewerage works. Jane and Terna looking out at the thousands of birds in every direction. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen the place so dense with avian life. As we drove down the tracks, Barn Swallows swirled around the car stuffing themselves with unseen bugs - to fatten up for their long journey back to the summer of Europe. We saw so many different ducks - Cape, Red-Billed, and Blue-billed Teals. Cape Shovelers. Spur-Winged Geese, Egyptian Geese, Southern Pochards, Fulvous Whistling Ducks, and Yellow-Billed Ducks.

November 09, 2021

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 17:47:13 +0000

A second of quiet dignity among quite a bit of camera-inspired hamming.

November 09, 2021

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 17:42:52 +0000

What @sad_ivan once called, “The cheap showiness of nature.” That blorange Cape sunset taking things over the top.

November 09, 2021

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 17:40:30 +0000

Sunday fun draws to a close chez @goflow42 and @jason66c. Old friends met. New conversations were held. @withoutaleaf cooked up great troughs of mussels in wine and garlic.

November 09, 2021

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 17:35:59 +0000

Sophie is an old lady now but still full of beans. Enjoying riding in #eljaguarazul avec @sophdex who deigned to let @ezlemoen pilot the sapphire chariot.

November 09, 2021

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 17:31:00 +0000

This little South Indian place in Newlands was great for lunch at the end of our river walk. But their claims to sell real Nepali momos were a bit exaggerated. Tasty dumplings they were. Nepali momos though? Nah. There’s a real gap in the market for a Nepali restaurant in Cape Town, I think.

November 09, 2021

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 17:23:49 +0000

A very long time ago they made a little walking route from Rondebosch through to Claremont along the Liesbeek. Even though most of it here is canalised, it’s still a very lovely walk from Observatory to Newlands for lunch on a summer’s day - especially because the locals all along the route have planted up a storm of flowers. Although it’s a domesticated section of the river, there’s still no shortage of life, such as a pair of African Black Ducks with a small swarm of ducklings.

October 30, 2021

Sat, 30 Oct 2021 22:20:10 +0000

Perched where she can see who goes up and down the stairs.

October 28, 2021

Thu, 28 Oct 2021 13:53:28 +0000

My boy is apparently now completely unfazed by the vacuum cleaner. Trinket, on the other hand, has once again gone into deep hiding. She still thinks it’s Stalingrad.

October 28, 2021

Thu, 28 Oct 2021 13:36:41 +0000

This guy asked me to take his pic when he saw me with my camera this morning near the Observatory station. He’s a local and I used to know his name, but was all thinking about camera stuff and forgot to ask. So there’s a weird thing with digital cameras: people are usually satisfied just to see themselves on the back of the camera. Now I’ve got a bit of a scheme. I want to get one of those Instax printers so I can make a print on the spot from the camera. Unfortunately it won’t be this one. The XE1 came out in 2013 and doesn’t have any wireless connectivity. But it’s something I plan to put together in the future because so many people don’t have any pictures of themselves - for memories or to pass on to loved ones. Pics on phones often end up disappearing with those phones. And few people ever have their picture taken by anyone who’s learned much photographic technique. So I’d really like to be able to make a small but high quality print when I take a picture of a someone I’m not in digital contact with. The instax printer uses a photographic printing technique so the quality is a lot better than that of other portable printers - but the prints are about $1 each. So I’d still have to be sparing.

October 28, 2021

Thu, 28 Oct 2021 13:28:25 +0000

@withoutaleaf and I had breakfast @rust.coffee.bar this morning. It sure is nice to be able to do some quasi-normal things during this lull in the pandemic now that we’re fully-vaxxed. I even got to be in a room with my whole band - six people in total - on Monday evening for two hours. It felt very good indeed after nearly 20 months.

October 28, 2021

Thu, 28 Oct 2021 13:23:51 +0000

If you’re ok to completely abandon any hope of ever owning your own home, the smashed avocado on sourdough toast @rust.coffee.bar here in Observatory is really damn good. That’s a joke, of course - based on some inequality-justifying hack’s ludicrous argument for why millennials don’t own homes. But not joking about the yumminess of this toast.

October 25, 2021

Mon, 25 Oct 2021 09:39:18 +0000

More experiments with retro wildlife photography. These are plains zebras - the more common of the two species of zebra in South Africa. This one is widespread throughout the continent South of the Sahara. There is one more species that is deeply endangered that survives only in small, protected enclaves in Kenya and Sudan.

October 24, 2021

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 11:59:51 +0000

The Cape Buffalo - or African Buffalo. It has a far more violent reputation than most of its Asian cousins - especially the Water Buffalo which has been widely domesticated and provides mozzarella for your pizza. This buffalo has never been domesticated. It’s simply too strong and fierce. Of course they start off pretty cute.

October 24, 2021

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 11:53:38 +0000

Looking at some of my ‘B’ selections from our recent Kruger Park trip. This was more experimentation with my ultra cheap ttartisan 50mm f1.2 on my Fujifilm XE1 - shooting wide open to get a mid 20th C bushveld look. You can see the vintage lens design in this brand new lens in the slightly odd character of the out-of-focus parts of the image.

October 18, 2021

Mon, 18 Oct 2021 19:28:49 +0000

A day yesterday with long tall Jay. His kids were very kind and let us watch our Velvet Underground documentary as long as we were quiet. After my comical series of mishaps, I finally made it out to Noordhoek only by [smartphone taxi-service] but it was well worth it. The leafy hide of the peninsula is on display out there. And the spring clouds were fierce and judgemental.

October 02, 2021

Sat, 02 Oct 2021 13:17:00 +0000

A #latergram of an Indian takeaway feast in the Jozi home of our dear friends @sophdex and @ezlemoen with parents, Jill and Pierre, and collies, airedales, and cats. Johannesburg doesn’t look nearly as welcoming in spring compared to summer. But get indoors and the citizens (not just our friends) are as friendly as ever.

Shooting scenes like this in available darkness is a big part of what makes having a fast wide-angle lens such a pleasure.

October 01, 2021

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 08:56:26 +0000

Pity about the shadows. But a very rare picture of these two eccentric gents in the wild: Gareth and Marcus (with beard!). I’ve quoted Hunter Thompson with regard to Gareth before, but it goes for both of them: “Too strange to live. Too rare to die.

October 01, 2021

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 08:52:37 +0000

I took many hundreds of pictures of Skitten since 2007. But this was the very last one. When we first got it home from Maatjiesfontein, I was convinced that we didn’t need a third cat. I took the cutest pictures I could of it parading about to make into a collage to advertise it… and in so doing it tricked me into falling in love with it.

It liked to sit on windowsills and contemplate the world going by. A most philosophical animal.

September 30, 2021

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 19:39:31 +0000

My old man. He’s a lot less stern than he sometimes appears. I got to see the Prof of cardiology ask him some niche questions about ECGs today - still a valuable font of knowledge on his lifelong arcane speciality many years after retirement.

September 30, 2021

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 19:24:26 +0000

@withoutaleaf queueing for one of her many, many, COVID tests outside a studio in town. I’ve managed to avoid them altogether (by not having any need to interact in person and not having any major symptom scares) while she’s had dozens and dozens from having to work safely on set. There’s very little pandemic on my Instagram in general. I was mostly at home and then tended to point a lens at things that were a break from the pandemic. There’ll be no shortage of documentation of this strange, history-bending time. But it is good to have a few images that show the thing actually happening in your own life even if you don’t interact with it directly - as I’ve been very lucky not to have to do.

September 12, 2021

Sun, 12 Sep 2021 18:58:55 +0000

Impala Lilies are blooming in The Kruger National Park in spring.

September 09, 2021

Thu, 09 Sep 2021 18:24:38 +0000

I don’t think this works great as an Insta pic, but it’s the kind of photo I’ll enjoy having hanging somewhere to remind me of this place when I’m not here. And bushbuck. Because I love bushbuck.

September 09, 2021

Thu, 09 Sep 2021 18:07:46 +0000

The savannah woodland in the morning - also the world’s largest land animal.

I experimented a bit today using my Fujifilm XE1 and the fast manual focus 50mm f1.2. On full frame that’s a 75mm focal length and roughly an f1.8 aperture in terms of depth of field wide open. I was trying to go for a bit of an old-fashioned look like if you were in the bush in the ’60s with a Pentax Spotmatic with a Takumar 85mm f1.8.

September 06, 2021

Mon, 06 Sep 2021 08:14:28 +0000

It’s a party in Jozi to see @cara.stacey announced as the Standard Bank Young Artist Of The Year! It’s an amazing achievement. I was very glad to be “there” with @sophdex, @ezlemoen, and @withoutaleaf to take it in in style.

August 23, 2021

Mon, 23 Aug 2021 10:29:55 +0000

If this goon is in Langebaan, does that make him the #langebaanlagoon?

August 23, 2021

Mon, 23 Aug 2021 09:11:07 +0000

@goflow42 nearly stepped on this beautiful lady just outside the Geelbek restaurant in West Coast National Park as we were walking towards one of the bird hides. This is only the second time @withoutaleaf and I have seen one of these beautiful cats in the wild - they can be spotted anywhere between here and Iran. Caracals are expert bird-ambushers. They can leap to extraordinary heights to pull down birds trying to escape by flight. This one was only slightly bigger than a house cat, but full grown males are considerably larger.

August 22, 2021

Sun, 22 Aug 2021 18:58:13 +0000

The next morning, as soon as the sun was up, they started on their way, and soon saw a beautiful green glow in the sky just before them.

“That must be the Emerald City,” said Dorothy.

August 21, 2021

Sat, 21 Aug 2021 17:30:32 +0000

My folks have had a pretty tough year. But things are starting to look up a little. Not really the right kind of pic for Instagram but this is a visual diary for me as much as anything else.

August 18, 2021

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 08:45:47 +0000

Morning Trinket.

Do people only still make black and white photographs to seem cool and sophisticated? The answer’s a little complicated. Knowing why you’d prefer a picture in black and white means you’ve spent a little time thinking about photography - which makes you a more ‘sophisticated’ appreciator of photographs. So then, in a sense, yes. But I can give you that ‘sophistication’ in not many words: Eliminating colour makes you more conscious of form, light and shadow, and detail. So, like any abstraction, it shows you things that that the full set of information may conceal. It helps you see the trees for the wood.

August 14, 2021

Sat, 14 Aug 2021 22:14:58 +0000

@withoutaleaf merrily teaches T to break the laws of God and men on our outing with @goflow42 and @jason66c to Kirstenbosch for a bit of apocalypse relief.

August 11, 2021

Wed, 11 Aug 2021 16:42:36 +0000

Having the house thoroughly cleaned is a deep joy for us but a nightmare for Trinket for whom the vacuum is a combination of the devil, Godzilla, and Voldemort. She’s fled the house for most of the day.

August 10, 2021

Tue, 10 Aug 2021 16:56:35 +0000

Kane pauses to punch some navigation data into the hyperdrive.

July 31, 2021

Sat, 31 Jul 2021 10:23:16 +0000

We were in Walmer Estate yesterday to pick something up. It’s such an attractive neighbourhood - #notaninvitationtogentrifyit This hair-dresser, corner store is a reminder of the vanishing corner stores that used to be ubiquitous in Cape Town. We call them Cafés for some reason - although we often pronounce it ‘Kaif.’ I have no idea why. You couldn’t buy coffee in them usually when they were everywhere when I was a kid. This hairdresser has supplemented its advertising with a graffito of a very strangely proportioned young man.

July 31, 2021

Sat, 31 Jul 2021 10:16:51 +0000

@withoutaleaf enjoying some well-deserved time off after over a 100 days shooting long hours. Convenient being able to stay home during the SA third COVID surge too. We’re both half vaxxed now though.

July 28, 2021

Wed, 28 Jul 2021 09:26:23 +0000

Our little dawn bird-counting team. Jane and Terna plus me. A lovely misty morning by the Black River. Commuters rushing to work on the M5 behind us. It’s very much an urban wild space.

July 25, 2021

Sun, 25 Jul 2021 17:46:46 +0000

Saw my dear friend Marcus with my own eyes for the first time in nearly a year and a half. Got filled in on his major plans and events - the way this COVID time seems to have swept everyone’s personal history along like it’s swept global history along.

I rode out to meet him in Keurboom Park and then we hung out on our old high school fields. When we were kids, the only thing we liked about that shitty old fashioned school were the vast, luxurious grounds.

July 24, 2021

Sat, 24 Jul 2021 15:17:36 +0000

In the queue at the Cape Town International Convention Centre for my first COVID shot yesterday. It’s a huge, well-managed, friendly operation. With the current dominant variant, it’s a long way from a guarantee that we won’t get the virus. But there’s a much better chance, and an even better chance that the virus will pass mildly and leave no long term effects. It’s not a castle. It’s a shield. But a critically important one that would be impossible without the dedicated efforts of thousands of independent, university-based scholars and masses of tax-payer funding globally.

July 21, 2021

Wed, 21 Jul 2021 19:54:48 +0000

Rainbow over the street.

One downside of this 50mm I realised… focuses past infinity. Not a major problem, but not ideal.

July 20, 2021

Tue, 20 Jul 2021 12:52:29 +0000

Across the road is a vast contiguous property with massive security. We call it ‘The Cult Compound.’ @withoutaleaf once took an interview with Gwyneth Paltrow’s brother in there and has glimpsed its secret interior. Today this huge load of soil was dropped off. With a bit of internet sleuthing, following up on the truck, getting to the manifest - some hacking was required - I discovered this soil originated in the Transylvania region of Romania and is described as ‘Vintage Funereal Soil - 1,200kg’ What could they want with over a ton of grave soil? And what does it have to do with the four crates that were delivered yesterday afternoon? Maybe just some very exotic gardening?

July 19, 2021

Mon, 19 Jul 2021 17:57:13 +0000

Poor Skitten has been wheezy and needed vetting. It’s going in tomorrow morning to check its larynx again. But at least its lungs are fine. Skitten is not a fan of automobile travel.

July 17, 2021

Sat, 17 Jul 2021 16:55:46 +0000

I realised I’ve never owned a fast wide-angle lens before. And I’ve gotta say, I like it. Mr. Crumb was assisting me by totally destroying the corner of the bed as he likes to do.

One thing no one’s mentioned about this fantastic little ttartisans 17mm f1.4: it has a screw-in metal lens cap. Everyone talks about how inconvenient that is. But in this case it screws tight with a half turn - making it in some ways easier to manage than a clip-on cap. The 50’s cap takes multiple turns and is totally impractical as a working lens cap. But this one on the tiny front element of 17mm is actually great.

July 15, 2021

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 17:21:41 +0000

My lenses arrived. Literally the best customer service I’ve ever experienced. They suggested I cancel my initial purchase to take advantage of their sale that was coming up in a few days. When Aliexpress wasn’t cooperating on giving the promised free shipping they gave me a discount for another portal to the value of the sale - and then stayed in touch via whatsapp through Fedex’s idiocy until I had the lenses. @ttartisanofficial is a company that can be proud of its customer service and it speaks well of Chinese customer service in general.

July 14, 2021

Wed, 14 Jul 2021 12:48:22 +0000

Another dawn by the Black River, looking to the confluence where the Liesbeek joins it. I’m still waiting for my new lenses because Fedex is a garbage company. Hopefully soon though. If I’d had the wide lens I could have included the full rainbow that went along with this scene.

July 08, 2021

Thu, 08 Jul 2021 11:55:54 +0000

I just wanted to visually record my first successful mutta roast - a Keralan egg curry - before I ate the leftovers for brunch. For some reason I was intimidated to make it although it’s actually really easy. Like a lot of not very Instagrammable brown food, it’s super tasty.

July 06, 2021

Tue, 06 Jul 2021 11:44:27 +0000

No otters down by the river. But great flights of ibis - including two flocks of Glossy Ibis; about a dozen each.

Might be getting new lenses for the little XE1 today. Excited about that.

July 01, 2021

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 17:02:56 +0000

They were having some mid-afternoon madness - usually reserved for the late evening. This chap is getting chonky again in defiance of my meal planning.

The box behind him is an extremely rare Gibson lap steel guitar from 1967 belonging to @sad_ivan (who was supposed to collect it after I discovered that fewer than 50 were known to have been made and hence they were a chunk more valuable than we’d suspected… but COVID).

July 01, 2021

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 16:56:23 +0000

The world has been too long deprived of Trinket! … or Bun as she’s known around here. I recently saw that a Youtuber I enjoy calls their cat, “Pigbunny,” which is a perfect cat name.

My camera seems to be working fine with a different memory card. I’d already decided if it packed up, I’d just get another ‘obsolete’ model like it. This sensor apparently has quite the reputation for getting analogue-looking results. I’ve ordered a pair of native TTartisans lenses for it - a 50mm f1.2 and a 17mm f1.4 (cheap as chips at <US$200 for the pair despite very good reviews - which I think will be a super-versatile pair. It makes photography difficult - manual focus lenses shooting at fast apertures with very little depth-of-field to nail the focus. But it’s exactly like the film camera I’ve used for so many years. And when I do get a sharp picture at f1.4 and 1/60th it makes me very pleased. It’s a big chunk of the experience of shooting film without the cost… or the tedious scanning.

June 23, 2021

Wed, 23 Jun 2021 11:15:29 +0000

A grab-shot of my boy moments before he jumped up next to me where he is as I write. He had a scare the other day where he tangled himself in the handle of a paper shopping bag that then followed him making hideous noises no matter where he ran. Even after being rescued - and his assailant banished forever - he’s been a nervous fella for a few days. We shan’t let such grotesque monsters come into contact with our high-strung boy again.

March 26, 2021

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 14:02:22 +0000

We popped into The World of Birds the other day. I was remembering that I first went there in 1983 and have found it fascinating ever since. Apart from the rehabilitation they do (there are a huge whack of pied crows and spotted eagle owls no doubt mostly brought in injured) you get a chance to see birds up close in real life that you’d seldom or never get to see - like this handsome Amazonian Blue and Yellow Macaw.

February 28, 2021

Sun, 28 Feb 2021 16:24:26 +0000

Trinket likes secret places for her daytime summer naps.

January 31, 2021

Sun, 31 Jan 2021 18:04:24 +0000

Trinket enjoying a rainy sunday.

January 23, 2021

Sat, 23 Jan 2021 22:04:29 +0000

This fat boy is as tranquil as ever - fastidiously washing his face. He’s taken to lounging about in the shade outside - including in flower pots with his limbs hanging out. One day he’ll let me photograph him like that.

January 23, 2021

Sat, 23 Jan 2021 22:00:57 +0000

Trinket overcome by a truly savage yawn. She at least gets to go out visiting the neighbours by her wall-top pathways.

January 03, 2021

Sun, 03 Jan 2021 13:16:59 +0000

Balcony Birds No. 6. This one was exciting. We’re almost positive this is a juvenile Rufous-Breasted Sparrowhawk. It makes sense that it would be coming around here trying to murder our sparrows. These kinds of hawks are built for manoeuvrability - they can zip between the branches at speed to surprise perching birds.

Aparna spotted this through the window and I was lucky enough to grab some hand-held, unstabilised pics - and got a few decently sharp ones. Lightroom could only partially compensate for the heavy purple fringing due to the older teleconverter dealing with the intense contrast against the sky.

December 28, 2020

Mon, 28 Dec 2020 09:16:47 +0000

A spiky plant that I know not.

December 28, 2020

Mon, 28 Dec 2020 09:13:44 +0000

Roaming about, photographing small things.

December 28, 2020

Mon, 28 Dec 2020 09:11:21 +0000

All the thorny acacias in the Karoo are blooming with these tiny yellow pom-pom flowers.

December 25, 2020

Fri, 25 Dec 2020 12:02:38 +0000

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.

December 25, 2020

Fri, 25 Dec 2020 11:56:36 +0000

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.

November 14, 2020

Sat, 14 Nov 2020 13:46:12 +0000

These ones are greater flamingoes - although their pink beaks are underwater. Almost a retro-80s, vapour-wave kinda thing going on with the colour scheme and the ripple patterns.

November 14, 2020

Sat, 14 Nov 2020 13:34:55 +0000

We haven’t worked out what these little wading birds were yet [Little Stints most likely] But damn if there weren’t a lot of them… Some kind of atmospheric disturbance made it really hard to get sharp pics of them with the long lens when they settled. Will update with ID.

There were a bunch of serious birders there for a “Baird’s Sandpiper” - probably some storm-lost bird from a distant country or something. Very exciting for the people who’re into chasing down these vagrant rarities, but it’s not really our bag.

November 14, 2020

Sat, 14 Nov 2020 13:27:29 +0000

Lesser Flamingoes! I don’t think I’ve ever seen them at Strandfontein before. Plenty of the Greater Flamingoes - and we saw lots of those too. Greater Flamingoes are almost all white except for their pink beaks and wing feathers. Lesser Flamingoes like these have deep red beaks, often quite red wing-feathers, and occasionally the whole bird is a lurid pink. Manual focus on the Fujifilm XE1 with a Nikon 300mm f4 and 1.4x converter 💪

November 14, 2020

Sat, 14 Nov 2020 13:19:14 +0000

Like many people I’ve been making bread since COVID started. Doing it every week has made my very simple recipe incredibly quick. And it’s evolved over time. Now I put it in the fan-oven at a high heat and get a crust much like French bread. I’m sure not everyone would like it with such a crunchy crust, but it suits me very well.

November 04, 2020

Wed, 04 Nov 2020 16:46:36 +0000

Middle-aged and muddling through. With a touch of irony - or something - mirror selfies are a lot easier with mirrorless cameras than they were with slrs.

October 29, 2020

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 14:41:04 +0000

A friend not only to fishermen. The Jolly Sailor is a friend to all. Sometimes smoke issues from his pipe. And sometimes the boat rocks upon the waves.

October 29, 2020

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 14:38:08 +0000

I thought I’d maintain my vertical line of Skitten pictures. Seen here on its balcony that it loves.

October 27, 2020

Tue, 27 Oct 2020 13:05:09 +0000

The strange, Plutonian flowers that @withoutaleaf’s ma left us before they moved back to India - years ago now - have begun to bloom and it’s going to be a bumper year. This is especially enjoyable given my indifferent gardening. It’s still sunny out there so I propped up a sketch pad as a reflector to ease the contrast.

October 26, 2020

Mon, 26 Oct 2020 12:40:14 +0000

Spoiled Boi got a comfy spot provided under my morning balcony coffee chair. Taking a load off those big paws.

October 26, 2020

Mon, 26 Oct 2020 12:38:10 +0000

Skitten was ill recently - which is most unlike it. And kind of strange given that @withoutaleaf and I have had not even a sniffle this year thanks to all of the anti-covid measures also protecting us from common viruses. Its eyes were streaming and it was sneezing up a storm. Luckily after some vet-prescribed eye-drops and pills, it’s right as rain again, full of beans and following me down to the kitchen every single time - ever hopeful of treats.

October 26, 2020

Mon, 26 Oct 2020 12:33:35 +0000

Balcony Birds No. 5. I used to be confused about what this was. It’s not a turtle dove. It’s a red-eyed dove - cunningly named after a feature that’s really difficult to spot with the naked eye. The easier way to tell is that they’re much larger than the Cape Turtle Dove, which is really quite a little thing. The Red-Eyed Dove is almost pigeon sized. It also has a pinky shade to its head and breast while the turtle dove is… dove-grey. They really are lovely, gentle things. Even if they’re not exactly geniuses.

October 09, 2020

Fri, 09 Oct 2020 15:04:42 +0000

Trinket woke up early and was ready for tea.

October 09, 2020

Fri, 09 Oct 2020 15:03:12 +0000

Skitten in the clouds. I thought I might post the one of Skitten yawning to show its single remaining fang. But it might not approve.

October 09, 2020

Fri, 09 Oct 2020 15:01:22 +0000

The sleepy midday Crumb.

October 06, 2020

Tue, 06 Oct 2020 17:01:19 +0000

Here’s another one of Trinket. Taken about this time yesterday when the late sun comes washing through the window of the little room where I work currently. Sometimes she visits and greatly enjoys standing on the table completely obscuring the screen and keyboard. But then sometimes she sits in the window and photosynthesises - as cats do. Got the Nikon adapter so I’m trying a very old Nikkor 50mm f1.4 instead of the Olympus Zuiko 50mm f1.8 I’ve been using for cat portraits ’til now.

October 06, 2020

Tue, 06 Oct 2020 12:56:42 +0000

It’s the sleepiest time of the day for the crepuscular ones.

September 22, 2020

Tue, 22 Sep 2020 11:50:51 +0000

@withoutaleaf in her office with her colleagues, Mr. Crumb and Trinket, doing script timings.

September 17, 2020

Thu, 17 Sep 2020 18:45:40 +0000

#balconybirds No.4 The Cape Bulbul. Distinguishable from other Bulbuls (or Greenbuls, I should say. I think they’re all called Greenbulls now) by it’s white eye-ring. These are fun little birds. Busy as heck foraging about in small groups. In fact, about 30 minutes after taking this two sat up on the line and were being incredibly sweet - the one grooming the other’s neck in the golden light. Of course my battery would die then. And of course I’d find the other was uncharged…

September 15, 2020

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 19:16:02 +0000

#balconybirds no.3. The Red-Winged Starling. This is a magic bird. From this angle you can’t see its dashing brick-red flight feathers that give it its name. This is one smart bird. Outside our old house I’d hear them give their special growling alarm call when our cats went out - to warn their foraging spouse and child that they’d spotted a predator. They hang about in these family groups. Males, like this. Females with their grey head. And the youngster who may look just like the parents but just hangs about waiting for handouts. It’s a cliff bird. Like many cliff birds including the European Rock Pigeon that’s ubiquitous worldwide, it’s adapted easily to the edifices of human cities. And being a great deal cleverer than pigeons, they’re not constantly being run over by cars. It’s a big and thoroughly charming starling.

September 15, 2020

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 19:09:29 +0000

#balconybirds No.2 An unloved introduced species, the European Starling. It’s the same one that forms those giant, pulsating flocks of viral video fame in its native Eurasia. Held in contempt though they be for their crime of having their ancestors brought here against their will, like all starlings they’re full of intelligence and virtuosity of voice. And like many starlings, they’re a blaze of iridescence when the sun hits them just so.

September 15, 2020

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 19:02:51 +0000

#balconybirds No.1: A Laughing Dove kook-ka-kooring atop the telephone pole. I got a Nikon lens adapter from #kandfconcept. Took about 8 days to get from Senzhen China, direct from the company, to Cape Town. Shipping was free. And way cheaper than the extortionate local markups. So now to try some #telephotography with the little old Fujifilm XE1. Usina a 300mm f4 Nikkor with a 1.4x converter. And I’m going to try get pics of all the birds that we get to see across from our #balconyofprivilege here in Observatory - be they ever so humble.

August 13, 2020

Thu, 13 Aug 2020 16:48:51 +0000

Yes. It’s possible I may never photograph anything besides cats again. @withoutaleaf made a little tent on the couch for them in this cold weather.

August 08, 2020

Sat, 08 Aug 2020 18:27:50 +0000

We’re having a late winter cold snap.

August 07, 2020

Fri, 07 Aug 2020 18:44:28 +0000

Portrait of a handsome chap.

August 06, 2020

Thu, 06 Aug 2020 12:26:39 +0000

And now it’s a series. Trinket is enjoying the plushness of the winter duvet for her daytime snooze. I’m using all manual everything here. I don’t say that as a brag, but to reflect on how easy it is with a ‘modern’ mirrorless camera. There are a couple of new developments that excite me in this regard. The one is the massive viewfinder resolution and magnification of Sony’s latest camera. Over 2000 pixels across and 90% magnification. That’s like the best of both worlds. The what-you-see-is-what-you-get of mirrorless with all the fine visible detail of an optical viewfinder, plus the large size via the magnification of the best old film SLRs. That will make manual focusing even easier on mirrorless cameras. And then I’ve found out a Chinese company that’s made a knockoff of Leica’s 50mm f0.95 Nocton lens. The Leica costs $13,000 (no that’s not a typo). The TTartisans 50mm f0.95 costs $750 (that’s not a typo either) and seems to have better centre sharpness in tests than the Leica. Since Leica mount to mirrorless camera adaptors are tiny, it’d make the perfect portrait lens for a Fuji camera. But that gold-leaf thin depth of field at f0.95 would really be helped by a large, high-res viewfinder to aid focusing. Great times for users of dedicated cameras even as people are writing hot-takes about their death.

August 05, 2020

Wed, 05 Aug 2020 13:37:57 +0000

Poll: Who thinks we need to clean the windows after a third of a year of deadly epidemic. Comment below to cast your important vote. Nothing for six weeks and then two Trinkets in a row. Being less sneaky. She likes to hold a little vigil in the morning when the sun is diffusing so beautifully through the build-up of gunge on the windows. Probably making sure the street isn’t full of sneks. She’s very concerned about sneks, this one.

August 04, 2020

Tue, 04 Aug 2020 21:13:18 +0000

Not a single pic posted in July. Well, I’ve not gone more than a handful of kilometres from home. I’ll probably be one of those people with no pictures of this time that anyone in the future could recognise as being from the pandemic. But then I suppose there’ll be no shortage of pics of empty streets and masked faces. I’ll be pleased to look back at a picture of Trinket spotted through the kitchen window getting up to sneaky shenanigans.

June 15, 2020

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 13:15:49 +0000

Sekrit boi. June gets surprisingly cold in winter in Cape Town because our houses aren’t heated. So though it’s not cold in the big sense, your house becomes really damn cold. But this boi knows how to deal with it.

May 12, 2020

Tue, 12 May 2020 11:25:56 +0000

My handsome boi is good company with morning coffee… and any other time.

May 09, 2020

Sat, 09 May 2020 17:14:31 +0000

@withoutaleaf’s baking triumph. Three days and about 300kgs of butter.

By the time we emerge, many of us will have developed a host of refined skills that will probably all be useless in the cannibal wasteland that will follow. We should really be practising barbecuing human hearts and syphoning deisel from speeding trucks while shooting lever-action shotguns with our free hand. Ah well, I was never going to achieve the rank of warlord. More likely I’d be food, second-class.

May 04, 2020

Mon, 04 May 2020 09:42:54 +0000

Trinket is the agile one. So using the balcony railing as her runway doesn’t bother us. Skitten on the other hand - who’s twice been witnessed trying to jump onto a coffee table and failing - makes us fret every time.

I took a run Friday when the maximum lockdown restrictions ended. But I need to rethink. The government’s curious decision to only allow exercise between 6 and 9 AM meant that my run by the river was like Oxford Street on a Saturday morning. Most people were wearing masks, but the social distancing is near impossible. . In general our government has given a very mixed performance during the pandemic so far. They locked down early and hard - which is good. But they’ve failed to provide adequately for the massive food insecurity, tolerated extraordinary levels of police brutality (including multiple murders of civlians), and made decisions on lockdown policies that lack any evidence base. It feels, as usual, like the conflict between the essentially competent (if unimaginative) faction of the president and his allies vs. the remaining kleptocrats from Jacob Zuma’s economic strip-mining regime - including the police minister, Bekhi Cele.

April 14, 2020

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 19:59:42 +0000

That time @withoutaleaf decided to make samoosas for dinner. That’s all we had. A freakin’ pile of homemade samoosas. Because we’re grownups and we can do whatever the hell we like. It was pretty great. There was tamarind sauce. I miss those samoosas.

April 14, 2020

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 19:54:32 +0000

Morning e para aprender Portugués and drinking coffee in the sun on the balcony. Once I’ve reclaimed my chair from Trinket, that is. We sometimes call this coffee press the, “Darth Vader plunger,” - because it looks like the French Press that would be supplied on Imperial Star Destroyers (imagine the drain gurgle as Vader pours coffee into his helmet). We’ve had it many years and it’s travelled many miles. And it still keeps coffee hot for upwards of an hour.

April 14, 2020

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 19:47:42 +0000

Housecats. Except they’re free to wander. Luckily Skitten does not, as a rule.

April 14, 2020

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 19:44:22 +0000

I’m relying heavily on this grinning, moustachioed cyclops to see me through.

April 04, 2020

Sat, 04 Apr 2020 11:58:08 +0000

A fat, heavy bass guitar amplifier holding up a fat, heavy boi.

March 25, 2020

Wed, 25 Mar 2020 13:07:02 +0000

Household objects. I believe my dad bought these mugs in Johannesburg in the 1960s. Lieberman apparently. They’re objectively the best coffee mugs. Thick sides retain heat, and modest volume means that it’s still hot when you get to the bottom. I have two and I love them. My folks actually bought some more - very similar - in the ’90s or early 2000s because they were still making them.

I’ve been thinking about capitalism’s gears starting to really grind. Consumerism is really bonkers. Many things that are sold everyday last for generations and don’t need replacement. At some point this century, the global population is going to begin falling. And if the game isn’t up by then, it will be after.

March 19, 2020

Thu, 19 Mar 2020 11:06:48 +0000

Amazingly sharp and contrasty folding binoculars from the 1980s. Posting so that @furiousgreencloud can prove her claims.

March 12, 2020

Thu, 12 Mar 2020 14:09:32 +0000

Skitten has made the rocking chair by the bedroom window its own perfect bed. It even uses my old Tanzanian blanket as a pillow.

February 12, 2020

Wed, 12 Feb 2020 15:21:24 +0000

I took a lot of these abstracty-y pics on my roadtrip. I just had so much damn fun travelling with my little Fujifilm camera - even though I only had one fixed-focal-length lens on it. It’s tiny enough to take anywhere. Feels so good in the hand. Trivial to shoot all manual with the electronic viewfinder. And I shoot it entirely in jpeg so I have to do virtually nothing to the pics after I click the shutter. Just proper travel photography fun.

February 11, 2020

Tue, 11 Feb 2020 12:31:08 +0000

Remember kids, when you buy your hiking boots, choose with the idea that you might still be wearing them as many years in the future as you’ve been alive to that point. Reducing and reusing are better than recycling.

February 10, 2020

Mon, 10 Feb 2020 12:12:25 +0000

@furiousgreencloud and I climbed up a stairway up the side of this old barn after dark and watched the lightning reveal the distant mountains by lighting them up from behind while the warm wind ripped around us.

February 09, 2020

Sun, 09 Feb 2020 12:05:57 +0000

Meme-tastic. Memes are thoughts that propagate - funny images are just one example. Before Richard Dawkins became a general troll and dickhead, he was a brilliant biologist who changed our understanding by noting that genes seek to propagate - not organisms, which are merely the vessels for those genes. He also hypothesised that human ideas could propagate in a way completely analogous to biological evolution - with ideas simply sticking around because they had the right properties to propagate rather than because they were particularly useful. The term, ‘memes’ was coined to describe these units of idea that could stick and propagate. These little piles of stones seem a pretty fine example to me. Someone made a first one and then…

February 09, 2020

Sun, 09 Feb 2020 11:59:04 +0000

Streaking folded upthrusts reach North into the Indian Ocean.

February 08, 2020

Sat, 08 Feb 2020 09:54:50 +0000

Certain adventures in my youth impressed on me how fynbos details track seemingly infinitely in - gross structural detail reveals smaller structures which reveal near-micro structures and so ad infinitum. This particular one has stems on the “flowers” (if they are flowers and not clusters of flower-arrays as I believe some fynbos flowers really are) with fine spiky leaves that make them look like the braided wire insulation on old fashioned electrical wiring.

February 08, 2020

Sat, 08 Feb 2020 09:48:46 +0000

The last light reflecting off the clouds after sunset rides the wine-dark Indian Ocean waters.

February 07, 2020

Fri, 07 Feb 2020 15:49:14 +0000

@furiousgreencloud learns the art of birding the old fashioned way - with a big-ass fieldguide and a pair of West German binoculars. We were visiting her aunt Sharon at her house on a beautiful farm outside Moreesburg. I’m not much of a birder but I hopefully conveyed some of the basics.

February 07, 2020

Fri, 07 Feb 2020 12:48:45 +0000

This struck me as the most South African weekend scene I can imagine - from the end of World War II to today, kids hanging out getting treats on the weekend.

February 07, 2020

Fri, 07 Feb 2020 12:25:27 +0000

@furiousgreencloud contemplates the sunlight leaving Africa for the Americas with a seagull at Storms River Mouth.

January 25, 2020

Sat, 25 Jan 2020 20:55:26 +0000

A boat heading into the sunset - a rather tedious metaphor for mortality.

January 25, 2020

Sat, 25 Jan 2020 20:53:48 +0000

I’m having one of my oldest and dearest friends, @furiousgreencloud, to stay. It’s always been too long. I’m having a knee issue so we took the cable car up and skulked among the fynbos on a beautiful windless evening atop the mountain.

January 19, 2020

Sun, 19 Jan 2020 09:16:16 +0000

This birthday girl looking pretty pleased at having made it from the 80s to the 20s.

January 15, 2020

Wed, 15 Jan 2020 18:55:19 +0000

I have 100% legit reasons for using this ludicrous camera…

January 05, 2020

Sun, 05 Jan 2020 11:03:17 +0000

Very much a latergram from before our trip. Got to have coffee one morning in Cape Town with two special visitors, Pierre and Raphael. I do love these two brilliant chaps. Probs why neither is on Insta. Well aware that all that Facebook touches does not turn to gold.

January 05, 2020

Sun, 05 Jan 2020 11:00:21 +0000

@withoutaleaf and I treated ’elegant garden party’ as pretty Indian lady in silks and long-haired weirdo in a blue velvet coat… like we do.

January 05, 2020

Sun, 05 Jan 2020 10:57:37 +0000

My Ma at @joydemillar’s wedding reception.

January 05, 2020

Sun, 05 Jan 2020 10:55:29 +0000

It’s strange seeing pics of my dad, @millar6300, and his cousin, David - the proud father of the bride - from the ’50s and seeing how they seem much more similar today than they did back then.

December 09, 2019

Mon, 09 Dec 2019 16:47:17 +0000

This little dude was super bored out to lunch and was amusing himself by playing a game with @withoutaleaf which involved squishing his nose against the glass. When he actually licked it his people thought maybe it was time to intervene. May he carry his eccentricity with him through life.

December 08, 2019

Sun, 08 Dec 2019 12:34:02 +0000

The braaimaster of the day. Tanya decided she was going to leave the souties to handle the braaiing. Astonishingly we actually had edible food without burning the place to the ground. But it’s still usually better to leave the fire to Afrikaaners who know what they’re doing.

December 08, 2019

Sun, 08 Dec 2019 12:31:04 +0000

Just because he’s a madman doesn’t mean you don’t want to know him. Wild Frank will always be wild.

December 08, 2019

Sun, 08 Dec 2019 12:29:23 +0000

A very dear friend who I don’t think has ever appeared on my insta before. A man with a giant heart. One of our greying gang of school friends.

October 25, 2019

Fri, 25 Oct 2019 16:43:19 +0000

I now have a contact for reasonable slide film processing in Cape Town (thanks to @goodweatherforducks). I have a plan for this beasty. I brought a couple of lenses from the Pentax 67 as well, with an adapter. Once a droolworthy piece of pro kit, the Pentax 645N is now seen as a “beginner’s” medium format camera (probably mostly because of its ’80s styling more than anything). It’s a brilliant camera and great fun to use.

October 25, 2019

Fri, 25 Oct 2019 16:38:28 +0000

A rare moment of sibling harmony from the gremmies.

October 25, 2019

Fri, 25 Oct 2019 16:36:28 +0000

@sophdex knows how to wedding, and doesn’t care if you know it.

October 25, 2019

Fri, 25 Oct 2019 16:32:52 +0000

Spring wedding for @johnthevudio and Aleks.

September 03, 2019

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 09:31:26 +0000

The blue wobbly bit around the edge of South Africa.

September 03, 2019

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 09:27:15 +0000

Some rocks I fancied.

September 03, 2019

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 09:25:26 +0000

Bun in repose

August 16, 2019

Fri, 16 Aug 2019 10:50:06 +0000

Spring is dropping hints all over the place and these guys are especially enjoying having balcony access.

August 06, 2019

Tue, 06 Aug 2019 15:29:43 +0000

I’m concocting a cheesy plan with @sad_ivan to use our SGs in the upcoming #deathofpop show we’re doing with @krakatoa_band. They need a bit of stage time, even if they’re not what you think of as surf guitars. On the other hand, Link Wray used one for a long time so…

August 06, 2019

Tue, 06 Aug 2019 11:43:44 +0000

The shuttered remnants of Gandalf’s - for about 20 years the main place for undergrads and other young people to go and enjoy cheap booze, crowds jacked up on youth hormones, and rock ’n roll music. Ian McKellan was once photographed hanging off the sign while shooting something in the area. I played a couple of good shows there though even when the place first opened I felt like a teacher chaperoning at a high school dance. Rock ’n roll is now on its last legs as a mass youth movement.

August 06, 2019

Tue, 06 Aug 2019 11:36:50 +0000

Off Lower Main Road Obz yesterday. Not much is holding out against gentrification now. The city is content for the few who weren’t already pushed off to distant wastelands by Apartheid to be pushed off to distant wastelands by rising rents and redevelopment. At top right is a mosque that I didn’t know existed. The daily call to prayer is emblematic for me of our diverse city and the history of that diversity in building it. Islam in SA began with Indonesian and Malaysian slaves being sent here by their Dutch colonists. Political prisoners too. The first book ever written in Afrikaans was the Qran, translated by a political prisoner from ‘Dutch Batavia’, Tuan Guru.

August 01, 2019

Thu, 01 Aug 2019 13:33:44 +0000

I’m still enjoying this custom jpeg profile I’ve made for my Fujifilm XE1. Still not missing shooting RAW.

July 27, 2019

Sat, 27 Jul 2019 13:33:25 +0000

Trying out new jpeg settings on my little Fujifilm XE1. Never used a digital camera I liked this much. Straight out of camera jpegs can be tweaked to look so great.

July 27, 2019

Sat, 27 Jul 2019 09:53:38 +0000

It’s the end of the line for these magnificent sea bugs.

July 27, 2019

Sat, 27 Jul 2019 09:50:42 +0000

A lobster boat cruises to a halt in Kalk Bay Harbour yesterday.

July 27, 2019

Sat, 27 Jul 2019 09:48:02 +0000

Yesterday was a good winter day to dry off and catch some sun.

July 25, 2019

Thu, 25 Jul 2019 10:23:05 +0000

But the sun did come through over the mudflats and marshlands of West Coast National Park. And then the grey grasses and plants came with the showiness of Avataar. It’s a beautiful and complex landscape brimming with life - at least until capitalism washes it all away.

July 25, 2019

Thu, 25 Jul 2019 10:14:20 +0000

Another day, another bird hide. Loads of flamingos, avocets, three-banded plovers, Kilitz’s plovers, whimbrels, greenshanks, African oystercatchers, even in the Southern winter.

July 25, 2019

Thu, 25 Jul 2019 10:10:58 +0000

@withoutaleaf has some time off after her last job. So we went down to the gloomy West Coast National Park. Despite the weather, time well spent. Fascinating scenes on the mudflats.

July 17, 2019

Wed, 17 Jul 2019 17:06:12 +0000

I’ve always wanted one of these pancake 40mm lenses to turn my trusty little camera of 25 years into a proper compact when the mood strikes me. And this one looks and feels almost unused.

July 11, 2019

Thu, 11 Jul 2019 10:11:45 +0000

One more from the hockey. Just because I like the mist.

July 11, 2019

Thu, 11 Jul 2019 10:05:37 +0000

At the hockey stadium. Not many walk-ins at this early, misty time. But the players, coaches, and parents were already fully getting into it. It’s an international tournament, apparently.

July 11, 2019

Thu, 11 Jul 2019 10:02:29 +0000

Misty morning in Observatory - looking down from our balcony onto the neighbourhood cult compound. Took the opportunity to take my #pentaxmx out in the mist, down to the international hockey tournament happening just a hundred meters away.

July 07, 2019

Sun, 07 Jul 2019 09:23:18 +0000

Japanese lunch at Obi followed by Japanese desert at some other place on Long Street. So great to hang out with @goflow42 and my dear friend Jason and their wonderful kids - even if T was feeling that adult time was getting very old.

June 27, 2019

Thu, 27 Jun 2019 12:24:30 +0000

It’s turning out a classic Cape June. And that means very chilly mornings - for which Mr Crumb has found ways of compensating.

June 27, 2019

Thu, 27 Jun 2019 12:22:01 +0000

Morning Trinket.

June 24, 2019

Mon, 24 Jun 2019 09:21:22 +0000

@withoutaleaf’s ma brought us these windchimes from India and I hung them on the balcony two days before a massive storm. Well, it turns out I’d hung them in the best/worst place. Almost totally unaffected by the wind that hurled tree branches onto gates and walls. While dawn is latish around the winter solstice this balcony is a great place for a cup of coffee and a read as the sun comes up.

June 24, 2019

Mon, 24 Jun 2019 09:17:12 +0000

Our boi visiting his new balcony for the first time. He was very nervous but realised he could watch a little dog pottering down the street without being noticed. I think he liked that.

June 11, 2019

Tue, 11 Jun 2019 11:51:52 +0000

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.

June 11, 2019

Tue, 11 Jun 2019 11:49:46 +0000

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

June 10, 2019

Mon, 10 Jun 2019 17:08:45 +0000

This character had a lot to say to me in a growly little old lady voice on my lunch run.

June 06, 2019

Thu, 06 Jun 2019 17:47:12 +0000

This picture doesn’t convey just how weird these clouds were. We were sitting out on Monday night at a little after 8, long after dark, and these thick, ectoplasmic clouds were looming overhead. Like nothing I’ve seen before (note that the blurry effect was not from a long exposure - it actually looked like that). We’ll need to raise Mme Blavatsky in a séance to find out what was disturbing the ether…

June 06, 2019

Thu, 06 Jun 2019 17:36:01 +0000

More Obz Victoriana on the new street.

June 06, 2019

Thu, 06 Jun 2019 17:33:10 +0000

Anbaric Towers. Taken from the one end of my new street looking down towards the river.

May 22, 2019

Wed, 22 May 2019 12:42:31 +0000

Devil’s Peak presiding over a beautiful city rife with blood and misery. Frankly the Devil has never been for blood and misery in this world. So it’s more an aspirational symbol for the city than anything else.

May 22, 2019

Wed, 22 May 2019 12:31:48 +0000

Painters in Obz on my lunch acquiring expedition.

May 16, 2019

Thu, 16 May 2019 15:28:00 +0000

@withoutaleaf wins today’s Trinket pic competition. The weather’s changing and the cats are becoming sun-seekers. (btw, if you want to see pics I don’t post here, check out our @krakatoa_band account).

May 16, 2019

Thu, 16 May 2019 08:52:18 +0000

@kanecroudace’s magic hat of illumination also doubles as a little portrait ring-light. The perfect headwear for the instagram age.

May 08, 2019

Wed, 08 May 2019 17:46:12 +0000

Some great undulating topiary on my way back from voting in the 6th democratic elections in South Africa. Let us hope our path straightens out now.

May 03, 2019

Fri, 03 May 2019 14:22:33 +0000

A local monument to the great, cosmic turtle, A’tuin - which slowly paddles through space on its mysterious journey, it’s head full of ineffable thoughts, with the world borne on the shoulders of the four elephants that ride on its back.

May 03, 2019

Fri, 03 May 2019 14:17:30 +0000

School kids walking past parliament and a statue of the first prime minister of The Union Of South Africa. Maybe they’ll get to live in a country that’s not exploited by tyrants or thieves.

May 03, 2019

Fri, 03 May 2019 14:12:24 +0000

“All the world seems in tune on a spring afternoon As we poison the pigeons in the park, And maybe we’ll do in a squirrel or two As we poison the pigeons in the park”

Tom Lehrer

May 01, 2019

Wed, 01 May 2019 20:02:00 +0000

Obz is still Obz on a Wednesday night. Warm lights and lots of merry noise on Station Road on my shop run.

May 01, 2019

Wed, 01 May 2019 19:59:13 +0000

Misty night on the bridge over Observatory station.

April 30, 2019

Tue, 30 Apr 2019 09:06:24 +0000

I realised the other day that some people who’ve known me for years don’t realise I have really bad eyesight. I have a genetic condition from my old man called keratoconus - in theory causing a progressive thinning and bulging of the cornea. In practise it’s a very easy disability to live with. Especially as our optometrist is a bit of a genius and my condition has - if anything - improved over the last ten years under his care. Upshot is I have to wear old-fashioned hard contact lenses. Specs don’t correct my vision. While they correct my short-sightedness, I still get a kind of multiple double-vision effect from the distortions in my cornea. But at bed time I do wear specs. And my grandfather used to collect spectacle frames. So when I needed some in ‘96 or so, I asked my gran for a pair of 1920s-1930s wireframes which I still wear today. Going to bed selfies take a bit of time if you’re like me and insist on taking them at f1.8 with a manual focus lens. But surprisingly, I usually manage to get a frame or two in focus.

April 28, 2019

Sun, 28 Apr 2019 14:22:20 +0000

Even more drastic dieting actions may need to be taken with this fat Crumb. I’m testing different jpeg setting with the XE1. The idea is to see if I can get the pictures I want without have to do any post-processing at all. RAW files are great for specific things you may want to do to a pic, but it’s a pain in the ass to have to process every single pic. This will hopefully be a bit more like shooting slide film - where I’d choose the look I wanted when I chose the film to load, and the rest was simply down to camera, composition, and timing.

April 26, 2019

Fri, 26 Apr 2019 17:06:13 +0000

We’re moving this boy towards set meals. He’s a serial snacker. A snacktopus. And it’s showing.

April 26, 2019

Fri, 26 Apr 2019 17:00:24 +0000

This is our last autumn in Ash Street. We’ve lived here since 2007. Without any plan in that regard we’ve both lived here longer than either of us has ever lived anywhere else. We’ll miss wonderful neighbours but it’ll be good to be moving… a full 3 or 4 blocks away.

April 23, 2019

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 13:22:08 +0000

Snapshot of this old girl - finally gig-ready 35 years later. It’s still got the ridiculously low frets, but I’ve changed everything else - pickups, tailpiece, tuners, bridge, knobs, control pots. Nothing I can do about the 5.2kg in weight except wear a wide, fat strap. Amazingly it’s “weight-relieved,” and easily weighs a kilo more than my all-solid Tokai LP.

April 23, 2019

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 13:16:10 +0000

Meanwhile in the chest-of-drawers…

April 23, 2019

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 11:31:13 +0000

Colours and contrasts in the early morning shop run. The XE1 is small enough to take anywhere with me. That’s a HUGE advantage over modern SLRs.

April 23, 2019

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 11:20:31 +0000

This handsome boy has rediscovered his tower.

April 21, 2019

Sun, 21 Apr 2019 09:11:41 +0000

Geology pretty much stole the show. Crazy warped sandstone upthrusts in the early light. Millions of years and extraordinary pressures. And they’ll still be doing their thing when us meatbags are dust in the wind.

Ok… so part of the nature of my insta for the time being is I only have telephoto lenses for this camera. And they’re all manual focus and I’m still getting used to everything so my ‘hit rate’ is not that great.

April 18, 2019

Thu, 18 Apr 2019 15:39:51 +0000

Tulip… Y u no open?

April 17, 2019

Wed, 17 Apr 2019 14:30:51 +0000

I did warn you…

April 15, 2019

Mon, 15 Apr 2019 16:06:51 +0000

This is Mr. Crumb’s sleepiest time of the day. And that’s saying something.

Carrying the new-old camera around, but until I get my eye in, I’ll just keep posting cat pics.

April 11, 2019

Thu, 11 Apr 2019 18:31:41 +0000

Still playing with the XE1, natch. It’s old. But not as old as the last one I was using. So I don’t have to restrict it to bright daylight. This arm of the couch is Trinket’s current top fave evening spot.

April 11, 2019

Thu, 11 Apr 2019 15:30:07 +0000

I’ve finally got my little Fujifilm XE1 camera up and running and I’m so stoked to use it. I’m just going to explore using the in-camera jpegs for the time being.

So here in testing is my old man - Prof Scott Millar to students who were amazed that any person could care so much about electro-cardiograms. In fact, he’s still at it. He’s working with a PHD student to develop an ECG app and I’m helping him put a little diagnostic ECG database together.

August 29, 2018

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 10:45:04 +0000

I’ve bought my first ’new’ camera in years and I’m excited. Ok. It’s 5 years old. It’s not the latest and greatest (it only cost me R1,500 or about $100 US though). But it’s got the same size sensor as the D200 I shot this on, but look how tiny! Hugely better low light performance. All kinds of modern bells and whistles. And yet pocketable with the right lens (I don’t have any yet and nor do I yet have adapters for all my Nikon, Pentax, and Olympus lenses - ALL of which I can use with this camera). I’m more excited to start using this well-loved little darling than I have been about a camera for many years. .