A Vincent Mounier Photography Blog
A Lazy Blogger's Guide to Enlightenment
February 9, 2016
Now that I have your attention, I shall begin with a disclaimer: it was a ruse. The purpose of this post is merely to report on the state of things, not to instruct you on how to alter them. The latter you will have to learn by yourself.
My blogging activity has recently dwindled to the trickle of a faucet in a drought. Work has been keeping me on my toes during the day, and wide awake at night while the toes are resting. In addition my core website, Vincent Mounier Pho...
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Coney Island in the Snow
January 25, 2016
Jonas, the whale of a storm that engulfed the Northeast this weekend, has sailed on to meet the Atlantic Ocean and worry some boats. According to the Weather Channel, New York City's Central Park recorded some 26.8 inches of snow, second only to the 2006 storm - and by only one tenth of an inch - in the last hundred and forty years.
While the media was cashing in with a few reported deaths, whipping shoveling-induced and carbon-monoxide-related deaths into a saucy omele...
Winter Storm Jonas Tickles The 'Hood
January 23, 2016
I might have been running in shorts and a t-shirt on Christmas Eve but winter has finally arrived, nature slamming down its first winter storm on the Northeast like a hand slaps an ace at the table, ending the game.
Jonas arrives with a pedigree, I guess, distinguished heir of a series of blizzards which for your convenience I have documented here.
Marie is quite sick so we kept our afternoon walk short but we could not resist going out. NYC is blessed receiving this...
The Namaqualand Bloom, Part 4 - The Ghost Farm
January 19, 2016
From picturesque Nieuwoudtville we drove up a low dorsal in the fields, etched with mesmerizing green and orange patches, and doing so we left the Namaqualand proper behind, having changed provinces, switched weather patterns, traded low lands for higher grounds and returned to the Karoo which had been my first off-the-road crush when I initially visited South Africa.
As if a magic slate had been shaken, flowers thinned then dispersed, dryness returned and the road that...
'Twas The Night Before Christmas... And I Was Running In My Shorts And T-Shirt
December 24, 2015
One had to be there to believe it. This season has been all over the place but we have got to be shattering records. I never thought I would be sweating on a late afternoon run into dusk, on Christmas Eve, in New York City.
The photos are my phone's - mea culpa - and the hand was hurried and not always so steady.
So here is the proof, even though I could not get my app to show the date - No less than 22°C or 72°F!
To be clear, I have not suddenly opened a fountain o...
Waterfront Snapshot, A Night, A Run
With the next installment to The Namaqualand Bloom likely delayed until after Christmas, I'll try and post casual glimpses of this and that in the meantime.
Below is a very average picture of the view down the East River on my current run home from 34th Street. I have now traded the Hudson waterfront for the East Side of Manhattan, and while a bit too close to the FDR highway, the path offers great views of the three southernmost bridges into Williamsburg and Brooklyn. ...
Quick Update
December 11, 2015
Those of you reading this blog on a semi-regular basis will have guessed. I find myself quite busy these days and experiencing a serious shortage of a quintessential ingredient to blogging: time. Between the holidays, approaching like the light at the end of the tunnel which one knows all too well to be a train, the complete rebuilding of my computer - it had been dragging its tired chips for much too long - and the bloody battle for domination endlessly fought by my work ...
The Namaqualand Bloom, Part 3 - A Canyon Through the Flowers
December 1, 2015
Nieuwoudtville is a quaint, otherworldly little town sitting squarely at a biased crossroads in the middle of immense fields. The main artery is the very ordinary R27 leading inland from semi-coastal N7, up the escarpment, across the border between the Western and Northern Cape provinces and into the Karoo proper, towards Calvinia. At about a right angle and slicing right through town, a dirt road lazily offers travel alternatives as well as farming access, disappearing no...
The Namaqualand Bloom, Part 2 - A Clever Dinner Trick
November 15, 2015
Morning came, light slowly oozing into our tent's quiet darkness. The wind had long exhausted its last breath and with that, new weather had moved in, warm and cloudy, casting a pale veil over the land. I took a thirty minute round-trip walk down to the park's ablutions block, lucking out as the sun briefly dashed out of the cast to ignite the fields. Having been told by a barely awake camp staff member that coffee could not be taken back...
Interlude
November 1, 2015
But, for now, I am trying to shake a cold loose and get a hold of my runaway time and spirits.
This was shot on Tafelberg Road at the foot of Table Mountain, Lion's Head is in the background.
Pincushion
The Namaqualand Bloom, Part 1 - Luxury is a Luxury
October 19, 2015
Growing up in the south of France, I think I might have taken flowers for granted. As a kid I never doubted their supremacy and thought they were as intrinsic a part of nature as clouds and oceans.
Québec, I knew, mostly lacked said flowers, but I assumed that was an exceptional stigma brought on by euphorically snowy winters and since Canada lured me in on occasional visits with maple syrup, marshmallows, peanut butter, poutine and color TV, I had unconsciously disrega...