CAPE St MARTIN

We celebrated Guy’s retirement spending a few days on the West Coast. Sadly the infamous dense fog rolling in from the sea enveloped us for most of our stay and was more conducive to reading than photography, but braving the icy wind I ventured out to make the most of a little clearing in the weather. I can’t control what will happen when shooting the sea, but I observe the movement of the water between the rocks and using slow shutter speeds, wait for the right moments to capture the silky, wispy pattern of the waves. Of course, the last night was clear and to my delight, a soft pink light transformed the atmosphere of the beach. I enjoy photographing seascapes as they will not only produce beautiful images, but it is a relaxing way to spend my time!

EVOCATIVE IMAGES

Since preparing a collection of “Evocative Images” for the CTPS Congress and a few workshops on this topic, I have been totally immersed in Macro Photography for the last 3 months and having clarified my thoughts, I feel able to get to the results I want to achieve much more easily. I am so familiar with my concepts and techniques and I attribute this to staying focused in the macro world without other distractions for a long time. Playing with abstracts, simplifying and allowing colours to be an emotional and rich element in my designs, I patiently distil the subjects until the eloquent natural light bring harmony into my photographs.

KOPPIE ALLEEN

The Cape Town Photographic Club celebrates its 125 anniversary this year and one of the high lights amongst their special events was an excellent Mini Congress in De Hoop where Guy and I were honored to be amongst the guest speakers.

The weather was not great but this did not stop us to rise early I the hope of catching a sunrise at Koppie Alleen. It was so overcast as we made our way to the beach by the light of our head lamps that it was soon obvious no sun was going to pierce this dense canopy of clouds. As always, I never give up and started shooting in complete darkness, painting the rocks in front of me with light. The beam of my flash light looked ridiculously insignificant in front of this majestic landscape and amazingly, it had some effect while the sea and sky blended in countless shades of blues to deep indigo. Eventually, a little glimpse of light filtered through the clouds and surprised me with the most unexpected range of colours dancing over the water and trough the waves. 

It was a great start of the day!

AFTER THE FIRE

Since the fire which ravaged the Jonkershoek Valley a month ago, I have walked regularly in the affected areas and am amazed at what I discover. The pine plantations smoldered for days and everything was black, shrouded in blue smoke. Our house & garden is a little green oasis on top of the hill. The weather is still unusually very warm for this time of the year with no rain and the regular strong winds sprinkles a generous new layer of ash at every gust, but I am thankful I still have a house to dust! A touch of luminescent green makes an appearance here and there and now the forest floor is covered in a thick carpet of crispy pine needles. The colours in the damaged foliage of the trees are taking a multitude of russet shades and in the evening light make a textured canvas in rich monochromes.