A Vincent Mounier Photography Blog
Seals!
May 9, 2020
Spotted a few weeks BC*, these two seals sat on a rock in weak afternoon light, dutifully soaking in the invisible waves of a pale sun, a stone's throw from the beach.
Perched
Of all places in and around the city, Staten Island has over the years yielded the steadiest stream of cool fauna, bald eagles, ospreys, snakes, deer, groundhogs, salamanders, musk rats and now these adorable fury fluffs.
Adding to this list the dolphins and snowy owls of other bea...
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Sweet South African Birds
April 12, 2020
The Western Cape is home to amazingly colorful birds, both in character and plumage. These were seen earlier this year in the Constantia garden and nearby Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden.
Just as we name any garden chameleon Meeleon, any male Whydah is called Charlie. We don't like him much as he bosses everyone around like an overzealous Bobby on a London street. But maybe we should empathize with his burden of carrying such a tail around...
Charlie
The swee...
Chameleons, 2020 Edition
April 6, 2020
With the world having plunged in utter chaos, looking at those pictures taken in the Constantia garden in February 2020 B.C. (Before COVID) makes me smile. They are such a good antidote to stress and worry. Boy George is right—they come and go—but I have yet to fail finding at least one chameleon, on any given trip to Cape Town, somewhere in the garden or the adjacent green belt.
Meeleon
These are photos of the same specimen hanging out in a tree at the bottom of the g...
South Africa From The Air
April 1, 2020
The images below are set in a pre-pandemic world, or rather, in hindsight, an early pandemic stage since the giant was already slowly but surely awakening and taking its first baby steps, soon to become devastating leaps. I had met Marie for a week in Cape Town, a last-minute trip decided after my May business travel plans had been canceled and future escapes seemed doomed.
Marie had arrived early and was staying behind a while longer, and when I got back to the States ...
Supermoon
March 15, 2020
Maybe a week ago, a touch before rationality gave in and fearmongering finally hijacked society, Marie and I were having a drink on the terrace, toasting to a precocious spring on the blue marble. Suddenly, we heard the plaintive cry of a young supermoon.
"La-la-laaaaaaa......"
Supermoon over Brooklyn
P.S. Notice the plane silhouette over the moon. Sorry it's not sharper, NYC's heat blur is an issue, even in winter...
P.P.S. Yes, it is dark in here, I am going th...
Homecoming
March 4, 2020
So high above all the rampant worry and fear, aboard the smart Airbus 350-900 of a struggling South African Airways, cutting across the Gulf of Guinea towards the equator and a vast ocean at a modest thirty-six thousand feet—multiple step climbs will follow as fuel gets burned and the aircraft lightens, culminating at forty-one or forty-two thousand feet—Marie is leaving home to come home.
Sweet and sour for her but I can't wait.
I'll soon post some aerial pictures o...
Against All Odds
January 13, 2020
Yes, eight and a half million souls merrily sharing three hundred square miles of prime real-estate is a lot. Way too much in fact, as is the case for any large city. The very notion that I spent seven idyllic years on a Caribbean island almost exactly the size and shape of Manhattan where I personally knew most of the hundred and fifty inhabitants (including a few fish) still boggles my mind.
However with some five hundred and seventy-eight miles of shoreline, New York...
Prospect Park in the Fog
January 6, 2020
A recent walk through Prospect Park in thick fog yielded moody images. The duotone rendition seems to have captured the moment well. While the Brooklyn park will never replace my beloved Stanley Park, I have learned to appreciate its many faces and the fact that Marie and I can just be there in minutes when we feel like it.
Fog!
Return to Chamonix, Part 5 – The Geneva Spur
We leave Chamonix behind late morning on Pentecost Sunday, heading northwest through the Aravis massif towards Geneva. The weather has deteriorated into a stormy mess and we progress slowly under bleak light and tremendous downpour, mountains gently fading in washed-out grayness at our backs.
Having promised a friend that we would drive by the place where she grew up, we detour slightly towards rural Lully in the north, take a quick picture of the house as the rain ling...
Return to Chamonix, Part 4 – Retour à la montagne
November 7, 2019
High above Chamonix, a sharp granite needle called Aiguille du Midi shoots into the sky as if attempting to escape Earth's embrace. Belonging to a crisply jagged ridge called les Aiguilles de Chamonix, the Aiguille du Midi tops at three thousand eight hundred and forty-two meters, or almost thirteen thousand feet above sea level, which means it mightily towers some nine thousand feet above the valley floor.
The rocky spur is in great company with Mont Blanc, roof of Eur...
Return to Chamonix, Part 3 – SIV Over Lake Annecy
That first night in Chamonix, we sleep blissfully and get up in Goldilocks fashion, not too early nor too late, preparing strong coffee with the provided stove-top espresso maker. Marie has smuggled a batch from Brooklyn, a special Beirut roast recommended by Gus at the Atlantic Ave Damascus Bread and Pastry Shop. It is even more finely ground than Sahadi’s wonderful Moka Java and almost oily. It rewards us with superb coffee, yet we will never know if that result is due t...
Return to Chamonix, Part 2 – Club Alpin Français
Seated in the garden behind the Chamonix house, a glass in hand and dreamy eyes on the peaks above, I set my thoughts adrift and land in Côte d'Azur, long, long ago.
Tucked against a small cape covered in towering pine trees and lapped at by the scintillant Mediterranean Sea, the flowery town of Antibes might as well be my birth place as it is where my first solid memories emerge from the void.
Growing up there in the seventies meant spending summers at the beach and...