Xtrans1 on The Singemonkey

July 04, 2024

Thu, 04 Jul 2024 14:58:19 +0000

Arum Lily 2: Lily masquerading as frozen exothermic reaction.

The lilies growing across the street seem to have come up early as I’ve seen none on the common while running where they grow in great profusion.

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.

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.

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.

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 18:30:52 +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!

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 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.

May 28, 2022

Sat, 28 May 2022 17:58:02 +0000

The pines have their own charms though. When you’re raised on European culture and JRR Tolkien - and our spectacular African scenery is just the backdrop to life - it was easy to romanticise this slightly exotic landscape. But it doesn’t really belong here and as such it lacks the intense diversity of our native biomes. The one upside though is that it provides a living for fungi from Europe which extrude bizarre fruits out of the ground and bark after rains.

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.

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.

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 19:24:26 +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.

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.