A Vincent Mounier Photography Blog

Slingshot to Kruger, Part 3 - Through the Orpen Gate
July 9, 2013
In a rare breach of morning protocol, the Landcruiser was packed and the premises vacated even before breakfast the next day. The keys dropped off, we asked for advice on the best place to purchase some kind of coffee-making apparatus, and drove down the main street two full stop signs and a bit. To our utter delight, the recommended shop not only sold coffee makers but they were authentic Bialetti's! We replaced our missing Italian genie with great relief, ordered a...
Macy's 2013 NYC Fourth of July Fireworks - Flowers in the Summer Sky
July 7, 2013
I hate crowds. As a sum, they are systematically stupider than their individual parts. There are a few public events in New York that I have always found a reason to skip despite my curiosity, blaming it on the hundreds of thousands who would also attend. But sometimes exposure is unavoidable. A few years ago, bracing myself, I checked out Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade®. Attendance: 3 million people. I will never go again but I'm glad I saw it. Ironically, Macy's is...
Slingshot to Kruger, Part 2 - Mpumalanga Worries
July 3, 2013
Up early on our second day, we had breakfast in the hotel lounge and I was granted an eyebrow lift when I asked a waitress if she could kindly fill our coffee flask for the road. I guess Bloemfontein, third capital of South Africa, gets more business travelers than off-the-beaten-track explorers - the latter, it is well known, drinking coffee by the flask rather than the cup. When I carried our bags out to the Landcruiser, a precocious dawn was upon the city and the nig...
Slingshot to Kruger, Part 1 - Snow in the Karoo
June 29, 2013
I am writing this from New York City, the Big Apple, eight million souls, fifty million visitors a year, four hundred and sixty-eight subway stations, thirteen thousand yellow cabs, on a hot and humid summer day with a thirty-seven degrees Celsius signature (98°F). My head is still spinning from the trip, daydreams powerfully controlling reality, dampening the heat, distilling flower scents from raw smells and muffling sirens and horns until they chirp like happy birds. It...
Digression
June 25, 2013
While I work on my Kruger wild animal pictures and water the Brooklyn roof farm, he are snapshots of the relieved Estorbo, half of his human crew having returned. The catsitters were awesome, he says, but they did not completely understand me. They thought I was needy. I'm just sophisticated. Don Estorbo de la Bodega Dominicana
Duck, You Pixel!
June 21, 2013
This will conclude my unrelated, without-a-point, off-the-record series of posts with a Sergio Leone title. One scratches an itch. Not being ready to proceed with Kruger images, I've stepped aside and had fun with bird pictures taken in the Constantia garden. Both sexes of amethyst sunbirds conducting a negotiation There will be many impressive, strange and colorful birds in the posts to come, yet these small regulars of the home garden are somehow more fun. They ar...
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Pixel
June 18, 2013
We are back from the Kruger, recovering from a fantastic 5,000 km road trip through South Africa and enjoying Cape Town's funky winter weather. I now have to sort through close to 3,000 photos and eliminate the many bad and ugly ones, and deliver the goods - the few keepers that will fuel our memories for years. I will be back in NYC in less than a week, while Marie straggles in the Cape a little longer. Processing these shots will take eons, patience needed. I expect f...
My Name is No Body
These shots were taken with the trusty point-and-shoot, hence the silly title to this post. This was unfortunately the only trail run I was able to squeeze in this far, time having been preciously filled with all sorts of things, and rain omnipresent. I mean real rain. Torrential rain. With thunder and lightning and occasional hail. With ponds and swimming pools overflowing. With happy birds and ducks everywhere. Towards the Constantia Nek I ran up the green belt into ...
Once Upon a Time, Pixels
May 30, 2013
Roaming around Constantia and the Cape Peninsula, we are stocking up on beautiful food, delicious scenery and moody, rather wet weather. We've randomly gone mushrooming in the Tokai Forest and seen a pod of maybe a hundred dolphins off Simon's Town. Pictures to come. We ate the best polenta on earth at Kalk Bay's Olympia Cafe. We had family martinis at The Cellars in Constantia where I opted for my ritual ostrich dish. The chameleons are paid regular visits and owls hav...
For a Few Pixels More
I started writing this on Thursday night over the Gulf of Guinea in the Southern Atlantic, just below the Bulge of Africa, and have now adjusted all verbs to the past tense. The South African Airways A340-600 was flying on a south-easterly course off the coast of Angola. Our cruising altitude was a notch above 39,000 feet, our airspeed a little below that of sound, we had traveled almost 10,000 km and 1,100 km remained.  We were rushing through the night and stealing time ...
A Fistful of Pixels
May 16, 2013
Well, since I finished my last post on these very words, I could not resist the title above - and it has actually inspired a series. For now, seemingly random images, anarchic pixels. I recently spent some time in the Flatiron district after work, going to a happy hour-slash-billiard, of which I might or might not post shots later, as some of the players were quite focused and made for great models. I walked around the neighborhood before and after the event, catchin...
A Doctor Called Avalanche
May 13, 2013
I like telling stories. Fiction is always fun, but I seem to tell best what I have seen with my own eyes. Stories then become autobiographical to some degree, and as always when using the word "I", arises the fear I might sound like someone trying to tell others about a dream they had: nobody really listens and heads just nod, unless the dream happens to be particularly gruesome or completely nuts... Le grand Pagnol once said he found it easer to write a book than to wr...