A Vincent Mounier Photography Blog
Woodstock, Winter, White
March 1, 2015
So time has passed but the flame burns hot. Recently, a small celebration was in order after seven years of blaze. They decided to get out of the Big Apple for the allotted two days of a city-slave weekend. He rented, through a phone app, bits back and forth and no human contact, a Zipcar. Dwelling two blocks away in a dark multilevel parking lot, it was a red Jetta called Iberra. These have names, like pets.
Weekend unarguably including a night, accommodation was requi...
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Kirstenbosch Flowers
February 24, 2015
These were taken last December, during a ritual visit to Kirstenbosch which is located just a stone's throw away when we are at home in Constantia, South Africa. In the background, Table Mountain's majestic cliffs.
Pincushion
Snake!
February 21, 2015
We spotted this impressively colored specimen of puff adder, called pofadder in Afrikaans, during a drive through Cape Point last December. Indiana Jones' heart would have skipped a bit. Marie stepped on the breaks and I ran out with the camera.
African puff adder - Bitis arietas
One of the most common venomous snakes in Africa, the puff adder is typically dully colored, except for this rare bright yellow and black variation of males in the Western Cape. At the thickes...
Cats
Forever deprived of the utterly endearing and highly sophisticated disdain of our late Estorbo, cat of a lifetime, Marie and I have been carefully avoiding the subject of his magnificence in particular, and all feline supremacy as a whole, like one treads lightly on the edges of a tropical beach where little land-mine-like grass burrs called sand spur (I dare not say their nickname) are waiting, half-buried, to inflict a sharp pain that is seriously disproportionate to the...
Birds of De Mond, an EVA - Part 2
February 13, 2015
While on our De Mond EVA, the friendly ranger who checked us in showed us a mother spotted eagle owl, in good old SANParks fashion. Later we found the two chicks. And finally, on the last day, the dad flew right above our heads to a tree near the Landcruiser. Two pairs - everybody wins.
Not so nonchalent gaze
Near the cottage, sugarbirds and sunbirds shared a huge set of aloe, though it took us a while to leave the orbit of our cottage and find them. Then out on the ro...
Birds of De Mond, an EVA - Part 1
February 9, 2015
Imagine yourself adrift in the harsh emptiness of interstellar space, transiting from the cozy orbit of a southern sun called Cape Town to the outskirts of a black hole on the Eastern Galactic Belt of the Garden Route.
Not much around in terms of pit stops. The light, sure, traveling all around at its own speed. Engine-like white noise, too, on the comm, 'bit like ocean assault on rugged shores if you ask me. Time to think and reflect, to ponder the chivalresque motivat...
And New York Paniqued
January 27, 2015
Well, as far as New York City is concerned, this was mostly media frenzy. I walked to work this morning, some nine kilometers on perfectly scraped sidewalks. The snow had stopped and apart from a few short gusts, an eerie lack of storm floated in the air. Streets were empty, clean, and a mere ten inches of snow covered Central Park in an all too light blanket of soft cleanliness. I shot a few JPEG images - could not process RAW - they are as-is.
As I walked past Columbu...
And New York Panics
January 26, 2015
Well, our new mayor having publicly added to the hysteria and almost wet his pants as he pretty much implied we were all going to die in the snow storm if we didn't run for cover, the NYC public transit agency, the mighty MTA, is shutting down all service at 11 pm tonight. If you are trying to go somewhere, you are out of luck. To quote de Blasio's press release, "... get off the roads, get off the streets, as – get off the sidewalks – as this emergency deepens." FYI, ther...
Mystery Ingredients, De Mond Nature Reserve
January 21, 2015
No, these are not mushrooms
Ready for pot roasting
Return to Cape Agulhas
January 16, 2015
For our most recent yearly trip to South Africa, I could only afford two weeks away from work. We decided to invest four days on a short road trip, a mini-adventure, to grieve, empty our minds and recharge mostly depleted batteries. The target was a minuscule place called De Mond Nature Reserve, on the eastern flank of Cape Agulhas, southernmost tip of the African continent.
We had visited Agulhas three years earlier and if you are curious about the geographical and his...
Bo-Kaap Colors and Sounds
January 4, 2015
It was close to departure. Time was running out. Deep into the complex systems of South African Airways, digits were flicking and a plane had been dispatched to fetch us (or so I like to think). It would arrive five days later. Time was recoiling on itself as always before a jump and we were nervously trying to pack as many activities into a narrow strip of available windows.
Needing glass chimneys for our candles, we had decided to go visit the Atlas Trading Company. A...
Aerial Thoughts, Lost in the View
December 27, 2014
A bump. Just a bit above the equator, we were skimming the coast of Liberia at thirty-eight thousand feet. It was a precocious two thirty in the morning, Cape Town time. Towering menacingly above our right wing, an enormous cumulonimbus was unleashing its brutal power and every few seconds, lightning erupted deep in its bowels and illuminated the giant from within. All around it, though, stars were shining coldly and with all parasite lights off–includi...