A Vincent Mounier Photography Blog
Escape from New York - Panorama of the Pool
September 5, 2014
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Following the stills I posted this week of our same-day run to the Catskills, here is a full spherical panorama of our secret spot.
Somewhere in the Catskills
As always, click on the full screen icon at the top right of the pano, and then zoom in and out with the mouse wheel, and pan manually in all directions by click-and-dragging the scene.
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Escape From New York City
September 2, 2014
There are no easy options when it comes to escaping the Big Apple and its madly turbulent crowds. I like to imagine the city as surrounded at all times by a series of concentric circles, or bubbles, characterized by a slowly decreasing level of overpopulation.
The inner bubble is centered on Manhattan and within it, no hope subsists. There will be a mob no matter where one goes. The second bubble typically includes the five boroughs and while there are hotspots, it is u...
Torn to Run
August 26, 2014
I have been running for some fifteen years. Yes, a late start simply because figuring out how to do it took forever. Contrary to what one might think, it was not as simple as tying up my shoe laces and taking off. That had been attempted throughout the years and with one notable exception, systematically ended prematurely in breathing disarray and discouragement.
The exception, surprisingly, had happened when I was a late teenager. I had gone on a five-kilometer run and...
Breathing Hard through Dust, Filth, Concrete and Exhaust
August 23, 2014
Not all runs are pretty or epic. This one was an experimental breach of protocol in search of virgin grounds and unsettling sights.
It took me from home in Harlem towards the East River, where I crossed the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge onto strange Randall's Island. There I ran in a circle, my path mimicking life. This was quite a while back when cramps were still a daily plague - I'll write about that soon. I winced and stopped and stretched a lot. There was no momentum to...
That Perspective we Gain and Lose
August 16, 2014
This is a re-post of a series of stories the first of which was written in 2008. I have revised it and completed it and added some pictures. It will now be part of the new "Little Cayman Chronicles". This will be a nostalgic series. The photos are very old, most taken with a two-megapixel point-and-shoot. Sigh.
Marie was just reminding me—very appropriately—of the way one can just crave fondue. There is nothing rational about such a dish and how it cree...
Estorbo's Birthday
August 10, 2014
So the cat has a big personality. He got presents. He is not all that young anymore but swears like a trooper and enjoys a party. We think he is fifteen, which would make him seventy-seven in human years. I took pictures for his blog but happened to like them a lot, and here we are. I am particularly fond of the third one where the little taxi - it cranks and will drive off the table's edge with beautiful fatality - reflects in his eye.
Trying out the new catnip mat
...
The Search for Yellow Rose
August 8, 2014
This is a re-post of a series of stories the first of which was written in 2008. I have revised it and completed it and added some pictures. It will now be part of the new "Little Cayman Chronicles". This will be a nostalgic series. I unfortunately do not have relevant storm pictures worth illustrating this story, for obvious reasons. The images below were taken on various occasions, including the wake of 2001 hurricane Michelle which came clo...
Welcome to the Rock
August 4, 2014
This is a re-post of a series of stories the first of which was written in 2008. I have revised it and completed it and added some pictures. It will now be part of the new "Little Cayman Chronicles". This will be a nostalgic series. The photos are very old, most taken with a two-megapixel point-and-shoot. Sigh.
The Cayman Islands, a British Overseas Territory, sit by roughly 19º latitude north and 80º longitude west in the Caribbean Sea, tucked below th...
Those Were the Days...
August 2, 2014
This is a re-post of a series of stories the first of which was written in 2008. I have revised it and completed it and added some pictures. It will now be part of the new "Little Cayman Chronicles". This will be a nostalgic series. The photos are very old, most taken with a two-megapixel point-and-shoot. Sigh.
The name was Banana Wind. I think the year was 2002. She was a thirty-five-foot dive boat custom-designed by a guy named Glenn Young in Mississi...
Inbound Flower
July 26, 2014
Through highs and lows, heat, wind and shaky watering, the terrace is growing lusher by the minute. A couple of days from now, Marie will be flying home from Cape Town, leaving much peace and beauty astern, tearing apart a heart or two as she cuts hers in half to seek mine.
There isn't much in Harlem to lure one back in, but the terrace and a black cat will team up with me in a bond of sheer need, welcoming our love home, begging for food and drink and presence in both ...
South African Flashes - Part 2
July 23, 2014
More flashbacks of Cape Town, monochrome this time as darkness is on the rise. But work will never be more than it is. Four letters, a pay check. It shouldn't, and doesn't, define one. One defines it.
The "table cloth" spills over the edge of Table Mountain
Curly scales
Windy times at Camel Rock, Silvermine
South African Flashes
July 19, 2014
With Marie spending some well deserved time down in Cape Town's peculiar winter, I am once again faced with a now familiar divergence of time and space. The short stories she tells me, the photos she posts, it all feels so vivid I could almost touch it.
And yet the smells, the tastes and the scenes are so distant, splashed across an ocean, both tropics and the equator, six hours and two seasons apart, in a world so inherently different it could be a parallel universe, t...