A Vincent Mounier Photography Blog
Silvermine, Table Mountain National Park
January 11, 2014
We've been there many times, and if you have been reading this blog for a while, so have you. You will find more images of it in Silvermine on my Mind, A Hike over Muizenberg, South African Flowers and Views of the Cape Peninsula...
Silvermine is a section of Table Mountain that is just south of the actual table, separated from it by the Constantiaberg. The area is split in two by Ou Kaapse Weg, a winding road that provides an essential link between the Cape Flats and t...
6 Comments
VMP Print Shop Preview and Underwater Shots
January 4, 2014
In an ironic contradiction, the first gallery to be ported to the upcoming VMP Print Shop section of my website is one that most likely will not be available for prints.
My underwater images were taken many years ago when I lived in Little Cayman, with a two megapixel Powershot A20 Canon point-and-shoot. This was circa 2002-2005. I can barely believe this was a first digital camera after having forgotten my entire Minolta X700 kit and multiple lenses in a Spanish hotel ...
A Drive Up Chapman's Peak
January 1, 2014
A picturesque, cliff-side road leading south from Hout Bay to Noordhoek and then either Fish Hoek or Kommetjie, Chapman's Peak Drive (Chappies for the locals) is aerial and exposed. To circumvent Chapman's Peak, an extension of the Constantiaberg, the drive was carved right into the mountainside, high above the shiny waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Frequent rock falls have yielded the need for advanced protective engineering and entire sections of the slope above the road h...
Chameleons revisited
December 26, 2013
I guess we all have habits, rituals that create a protective comfort bubble within which to feel safe.
Here is one of mine: As soon as practical after arriving in Cape Town, I pay my chameleons a visit with my cameras. They live in four specific trees in a Constantia green belt and have been there as long as I have visited, almost seven years now. I have rarely seen them anywhere else, but on that spot, regular as clockwork, I normally find five to twelve of them within...
Flight
December 23, 2013
This is an aerial medley of two trips to South Africa. Last summer's flight was on South African Airways, with the Kruger in our sights. Then this winter, we flew Virgin Atlantic. Whoever is cheaper wins our dollars. I wasn't so impressed with Virgin. When you buy thirty-eight hours worth of airborne time from an airline, the least they can do nowadays is supply you with decent entertainment. Virgin's video system either had a defective remote or failed to start on time on...
The Long Flight from Freedom
December 14, 2013
As modern South Africa mourns her father and leads the world through an unprecedented mega-media, uber-political and cheesy-flashy ride, and while Marie momentarily stays behind in the beautiful land of fynbos, I am now flying home to Harlem to tackle reality, trying not to forget that freedom is in the eye of the beholder.
When taxes eat up in excess of 40% of one's income, when the over-achievement race turns relative victories into as many failures to gather more, wh...
Godspeed Madiba
December 6, 2013
South Africa was a late discovery for me. Back in the days when Apartheid was in full swing, I remained blissfully unaware of the struggle and names like Pretoria and Soweto were parked deep in my ignorance alongside places such as Beirut, Phnom Penh or Chernobyl. Pockets of deep trouble and suffering, far away, difficult to understand, either politically explosive, economically ravaged or socially tortured. Or all the above.
It was only recently, long after Mandela had...
Strange Signs
December 5, 2013
There have been fewer and fewer leopard toad attacks on humans since the signs were put up. Still, we roll our windows up when driving through the area.
And I love the ideograms on the SANParks signs; one should never walked behind a group of three people, and taking pictures is encouraged but star gazing is not...
Ye have been warned!
Constantia Flowers
November 26, 2013
This is just a knee-jerk post as beauty is everywhere. Needless to say there will be more. I have been stalking my chameleon, and am hoping to get some flying done, weather permitting. Stay tuned.
As reported by Dreamer, I seem to be having an issue with comments going straight to spam. If your comment doesn't show up, don't worry, I'll find it and post it, it could just take a little while. Hope to have this fixed soon.
Running Home
November 13, 2013
With a longer commute to Harlem, I find myself arriving home later than I am used to and often having run out of steam. Since steam doesn't do me any good and an after-commute jog has become less practical than it was in Brooklyn where I was one subway stop away, I recently tested a simple run home from work.
The run I wanted to test was simple. I work right down at the bottom of Manhattan, a half-a-block away from Wall Street. Yes, I am surrounded daily by bankers and ...
Slingshot to Kruger, Part 12 - Honing in on Kaapstad
November 3, 2013
The lions roared again at dawn as we were packing up in the Karoo National Park.
Breakfast was included in our stay and served in the main restaurant, right behind the reception desk. Full English was the word and I daringly ordered lamb kidneys, which turned out to be butchered, pardon the pun.
We ate quickly as the room filled up with semi-serious gamer watchers. These were the people who needed coffee and toast before driving out in search of wildlife. They would ...
Exploring Harlem - A Walk to Central Park
October 28, 2013
This will be the first of a series of Harlem-related posts. Following our recent departure from Brooklyn and arrival in its antipodean Harlem, we have carried, lifted, unpacked, sorted, arranged, moved, attached, re-organized, sorted, cleaned, questioned, doubted and trialed our new surroundings. The process is a lengthy one, much rougher than we had expected - but then again, we had not really contemplated the future beyond the very immediate necessity of our move.
Whi...