Remembrance and Hope

Every year the Photographic Society of South Africa hosts a competition, the Marike Bruwer Award for Visual Art (https://www.pssa.co.za/competitions/marike-bruwer-award). I took a chance this year and entered the above photo into the competition, and am absolutely honoured to have won the award for 2021! Reading the judges' comments was the cherry on top!

The idea for the photo started with all the talk and excitement regarding the introduction of the Covid-19 vaccine into South Africa. One couldn't escape from all the news about it - with not all the reporting being positive. During the same period I came across a photo of candles that had been lit for people who had died after contracting the virus and wondered whether the whole situation could be captured in a single photograph.

It took a while for me to get the concept together. I wanted to keep it as simple as possible, and once I had the picture in my head, it was fairly straightforward from there. First thing was to get all the pieces together, and after unsuccessfully asking a few friends if they had an old-fashioned candlestick holder that I could borrow, eventually put a query on the Facebook Somerset West Community page for one. I had a few responses, and the one in the photo was my favourite. It turned out the lady had no use for the set of two anymore, so gave them to me.

I decided on the large black background to represent the huge amount of darkness that the virus had caused, from things like loss of freedom and jobs, to, of course, lives. I thought about which colour the vaccine should be, and while this represented the "hope" side of the equation, I chose to make it red to indicate caution, as there was still a huge amount of discussion and argument around whether the vaccine would work or not.

I had the syringe from a previous shoot when I was working with some water droplets, but getting the flame proved a little more difficult. I tried copying and pasting from flames from matches, etc., but they didn't work that well, so in the end my wife used a chef's blowtorch to heat up the end of the needle until it got red hot and looked like a flame. 

Camera and settings:
    Camera:                       Fujifilm X-T4
    Lens:                             Fuji XF 35mm F2 R WR
    Exposure program:    Manual
    Exposure:                    1,5 sec at f/5.6
    ISO:                              160

Please click on the photo to bring up a higher quality version.

Helderberg Nature Reserve

View from the dam on the reserve

On Wednesday 15 September, Jacqui and I took our first walk around the Helderberg Nature Reserve. It started off as a cloudless but cool day, with a very mild breeze, but the clouds came in while we were walking. Ideal for photographs.

Total cost for our one-time visit, 2 pensioners plus one car, was the princely sum of R45 (R15 each)! For those who might be interested, annual memberships are very reasonable at R140 per annum for ordinary members, and R80 per annum for the over-sixties.

Both Jacqui and I are very unfit, and so we decided to start off with what is the shortest trail. It is the "Sugarbird walk" and is supposed to be just under 3 kilometres long. Ya well no fine, if they say so, but I can tell you that it felt more like 10 kilometres! From the parking area it was a steady but gentle climb to to top, and then happily downhill all the way back! 

Then again, I can't swear to it that what we did was the Sugarbird walk. The paths are not nearly as well-marked as we expected them to be, and so there were times when we chose a path more by instinct than anything else. Maybe we missed a turn or something, so next time we will definitely spend some time asking questions at the Information office before we set off.

And we will be back, even though it took me about three days to get rid of the stiffness so that I could walk normally again! It was lovely being out in the fresh air and being surrounded by the natural and diverse vegetation that Cape Town with which is blessed. 

To end off, some photographs taken along our walk.

Saturday 28 August 2021

 End of August - end of winter - right?  Wrong!

After two days of fairly consistent downpours resulting in just over 75mm of rain, we woke to a very cold morning with lots of snow around. There was even a sprinkling of snow on one of the really low mountain peaks close to us - this shot taken from our patio. First time in four years that snow has hit this peak!

So we set off early to see if we could find some decent falls. And what a correct decision that was! Straight onto the N2, over Sir Lowry's Pass, and as we took the turnoff to Grabouw, we were treated to the following sight, and knew it was going to be a good morning:

A short while further along the road to Theewaterskloof, we stopped for the next shot.

As we reached the first proper sighting of Theewaterskloof, I took the panoramic image that starts this post, plus the following to show just how far down the mountain the snow had fallen.

At this stage we decided to go home via the Franschhoek Pass, and that also turned out to be a good decision! Here are some photos taken along the way, on both sides of the pass. It's worth mentioning that at the top there were hundreds of vehicles parked in legitimate parking areas, as well as illegally on the side of the road, encroaching onto the driving area. Added to that was the fact that visibility was absolutely minimal with the low cloud that had descended onto the pass. But it was a small inconvenience and did not at all detract from a wonderful drive.

Our only poor choice during the morning was to then finish off the trip with coffee and photos at the Postcard Cafe in Stellenbosch, as we knew there would be some spectacular snow views from there. But unfortunately the cloud was so low and the rain so heavy that we could only juts make out the snow areas, and so gave that a miss.

Theewaterskloof Dam

 

On Saturday, 17 July 2021, Jacqui and I took a leisurely drive along the N2 towards Caledon, and then turned off on to the beautiful scenic R43 to Villiersdorp, where this year's canola fields were just starting to show themselves. We wanted to view the dam from the wall side. The above shot was the first view we had.

It brought back memories of that horrible time not that long ago when the words "Day zero" were on everyone's lips. It had been forecasted that Cape Town would run out of water during April 2018, though luckily it didn't happen. Just in case anyone doesn't remember, here are two images showing what the dam looked like in November 2017, albeit these were taken from a different viewing angle to the images taken this year.

Back to July 2021 - a short while further and we came across the area of the dam wall where the water overflows when the dam is full, and saw the wonderful sight below - the dam at 100% capacity and overflowing! Long may it last!