Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Seagull Territory


As the sun dips lower and lower towards towards the horizon, the Sea Point public swimming baths, closed for the night, are strangely deserted.  




A few seagulls fly in to do their "floating duck" thing on the unruffled surface of the pools.




The numbers begin to swell.




And at last the mystery as to where seagulls go, between their day and night shifts, is solved.  They fly in for sundowners!




Suddenly, in a seemingly joint decision, a great cloud of birds depart the pools and head for the restaurant strips and apartment blocks of Sea Point.




So now you know!

Monday, January 24, 2011

Experimenting

The prevailing southeasterly winds raged around the city bowl the entire weekend, snapping branches off trees and shrubs, driving dust under doors and through minute gaps in the windowframes.  Several of my newly planted petunias were blown clean out of the soil and the garden today looks pretty parched and battered.  This morning the wind has dropped and, as usual, it's a swelteringly hot day.  You'll find that Capetonians are pretty evenly divided between those who prefer the wind to the heat  - we know what happens when it stops.  I actually prefer winter above all!

As the gusts of wind made it difficult to stand upright, let alone take sharp pictures, I thought I would try a little experimentation on a couple of spare pix.   I call this image Wood, Stone, Brick.  It was cropped from a larger photo because I liked the effect of the sunbeams falling on the different surfaces.



The next picture was taken in Cape Town's new Biodiversity Gardens at Greenpoint and I'll do a post about this in the near future.  My point of departure was an oversaturated and underexposed photo, with nasty greens and blues, as a result of forgetting to change from the John S Filter on the Hipstamatic App.




 First, I lightened the exposure and applied a fairly hefty dose of blur.





I quite liked the  watercolour effect that this produced, so I tinkered around and cropped the image to just the people on the bridge.




I also tried a black and white version with selective colour ...






... but finally came to the conclusion that adding the Toaster filter to the image worked best of all.








Friday, January 21, 2011

Sunburst

Before sinking behind Lion's Head mountain in the late afternoon, the sun sets the kitchen windows on fire and illuminates the whole room with its radiant, golden light.



Thursday, January 20, 2011

Shooting Star

Here's someone who embodies the spirit of the artwork on his delivery van.  Weaving in and out of city traffic, with flourish and flair, he's certainly a shooting star.


Wednesday, January 19, 2011

A Scooter named Darling

I've come across this gorgeous red scooter several times in the last week, not always in an easily photographed parking place.  I first spotted it outside the best fish and seafood shop in Woodstock, where I went to buy ingredients for paella.  It's a small place on the corner, packed with discerning shoppers, especially on a Friday morning.  The skilled assistants, with their gleaming deadly knives, scale, debone a fish in minutes, while keeping up a fast line of banter and sharp wit. 




Two days later I spied the scooter outside our local deli coffee shop and on Sunday it was looking nonchalent in front of the glass doors of the icecream shop on the promenade.  Perhaps I'll even get to meet the owner one of these days.




LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails