A Vincent Mounier Photography Blog
I Fold, Therefore I Am
September 12, 2018
In moments of sheer panic about the unbearable pressure of being, these days, I am amused by the sense of comfort a neatly folded paraglider gives me.
Most everything in our life is actually out of control and a large piece of colorful fabric flapping in the wind won't change that tendency much, but folding a familiar item is soothing and it is like wearing blinkers to avoid seeing what could be coming at us sideways...
A neatly folded and bagged Iota 2 makes the cha...
1 Comment
It's Never Too Late to Jump
September 2, 2018
A bit before I showed up unceremoniously in '64, screaming for attention and throwing in a jaundice for effect, my dad had served as a paratrooper in the French army and landed in Algeria, a messy colonial war that left him scarred for the rest of his short life.
Many decades later, juggling the mid-eighties and my mid-twenties, and having failed to hustle work as a commercial pilot, I turned to skydiving as an upward escape despite its definitive association with gravi...
Advance Iota 2
July 28, 2018
The new paraglider is beautiful, a cheerful mix of orange, lime and white. Yes, that matters.
With a wingspan of forty-one feet, the glider only weighs a bit over eleven pounds. Even when packed along with a reserve parachute in my new reversible harness which doubles as a backpack, the whole kit will weigh a mere twenty-five pounds and suddenly, serious hiking is an option.
Of course I have not even had a chance to go kiting and I am awaiting the arrival of a new re...
Apologies For The Messy Look In Here
July 18, 2018
I broke my last theme and will have to redo everything in here. Content remains unchanged but may be harder to find. I apologize for the inconvenience and promise to sort it all out as soon as possible.
The Soaring Fool Looks Skyward Again
July 14, 2018
Circumstances and life unfitting, it has been years since I flew my paraglider regularly. Oddly enough, it was my time in Little Cayman almost two decades ago that best allowed the escape freedom required to travel and fly. While the "rock" as we called our island was fever-inducing, the lifestyle was forgiving and I managed multiple vacations a year.
I learned the Art of paragliding in the French Alps near Chamonix and my first hops off a grassy slope were done fa...
Language, My Loud Friend
April 15, 2018
It is a precocious, chilly morning and the doors of my Manhattan-bound F train open unto a few vacant seats. I have selected the forward-most car but going into town before dawn, conspicuously free seats often have just been used as a warm and relatively safe bed by homeless wanderers and that open space is eyed suspiciously by even the sleepiest of commuters. No one wants to be the first to sit down where a ghostly character with a terrifying lack of hygiene has spent the...
The Road to Mokala, Part 5 - Bush Run
March 13, 2018
While Vancouver was blessed with the most spectacular playground a runner might ever dream of, South Africa has also delivered memorable—and at times challenging—trail runs. Whether it was running into the sunset on a deserted Mpumalanga hill, up and down Table Mountain the long, arduous way, or through the entire length of the Cape of Good Hope, the memories are sweet and sweaty.
SANParks are definitely not runner-friendly, though; between predation and regul...
Ballpoint Pen Up Close
February 16, 2018
While procrastinating about the last installment of the Road to Mokala series, I began wondering if my inkwell had dried. One thing lead to another and I ended up examining the situation through a makeshift macro lens. Here is the result.
Disclaimer, I did not clean the pen before this shoot, I just picked it up from my desk. Guess I need to clean the desk more often. This is done with an old Canon EF-S 18-55mm lens reverse-mounted on bellows and extension tubes. The le...
A Decade Passed, Long Live the Decade!
January 24, 2018
It was a lovely day of breaking the rules, of throwing preconceived ideas into the wind, of going back to the source, of shaving the unnecessary, of looking deep inside instead of out, of holding a single hand rather than many, of spending time with angels, of walking barefoot when shoes are in order, of wearing jeans because they feel good, of eating with bare fingers, of doing exactly what we wanted, of staring into the sunset while dreaming of sunrise, of not caring too...
The Road to Mokala, Part 4 - Vermilion, Ochre and Gold
January 22, 2018
Squarely sitting off the beaten track, Mokala National Park is remote enough that a lengthy dirt road approach would be required. Our paper map and Google's insights seemingly as prone to disagreement in second class areas of the Third World as the political factions that divide them, we hesitated and finally gambled on an early branch off from the N12 and a surreptitious arrival from below.
A rather perfidious absence of any road signs or directions to the park wa...
The Road to Mokala, Part 3 - Of Elephants and Mousebirds
December 31, 2017
A couple of eventful years ago, after driving up the spine of South Africa while wearily watching the glow of a lit t-belt light, our initial reward upon entering Kruger through the Orpen gate had been elephants, my first encounter with them in the wild. From neurotic mud-covered attractions swaying at the far corner of a smelly zoo enclosure, the magnificent giants had metamorphosed before my amazed eyes into the largest land mammals alive, and a force of nature to be rec...
The Road to Mokala, Part 2 - Ride of the Tsitsikamma Dolphins
November 18, 2017
Dutifully purring her way up Sir Lowry's Pass on Cape Town's eastern flank with the Hottentot-Hollands peaks rising above us like unbelieving eyebrows, our beloved Landcruiser Mogashagasha, locked and loaded for a week-long foray far into the Northern Cape, felt about as comfortable to me as the proverbial saddle we were back in. Vinyl might have replaced worn-out leather and a weathered hat was still to come, but the rhythm was there and empty, beautiful space lay ahead.&...