A Vincent Mounier Photography Blog
Klein Constantia: rebirth of Vin de Constance
May 27, 2009
I read about it in my youth. It is mentioned in the works of Balzac, Beaudelaire and Alexandre Dumas. Some even whisper it could have been the vector by which Napoleon was arsenic poisoned. Et après tout, with such a French name, I had always assumed Vin de Constance came from France herself. I was wrong. It's South African.
The wonderfully sweet wine's origins go back to the late 17th century when the Constantia estate was created by Simon van der Stel, second Governo...
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New: a random post when I lag too much
May 26, 2009
I am busy. I do stuff. I play. I process photos. I work (a little). I dream. I get caught up. So as most of you will have noticed, my posting rhythm isn't always Swiss-like.
With my readers' utmost satisfaction in mind, I hence added a custom feature to the blog: it will now serve a random entry from the past it you arrive here with great hopes only to find that nothing new was posted for the last two (2) days.
A huge thanks, as always, to mighty Garvin over at Serendi...
Dog Story
May 24, 2009
Who needs them? as would say Estorbo. Granted, it's not like me to post about dogs. But these ones are special. They are therapy dogs. The two corgis dispense good vibes like the sun its rays on a beautiful spring day. And they live in a special place, with special people. 'Bottom line is, we love them to bit(e)s.
On the day these pictures were taken in Hout Bay, near Cape Town, the dogs were joined by many of their kind. We carried plastic bags - need I say more? It's a...
Tweeting from Space: The NASA Prank
As it turns out, good old astronaut Massimino wasn't actually tweeting from the orbiting space shuttle Atlantis but rather sending emails to Houston where some twit entered them into his Astro_Mike Twitter account between two bites into a Big Mac.
Never mind the fact that they actually labeled his tweets "From Orbit", I am most disappointed by the crushing realization that for all we know, maybe the space shuttle was never up there in the first place. It could...
The state of things
May 21, 2009
It had been a while since I last visited the very cool world of Wordle and I was thrilled to find an option that I did not remember from before: the applet now analyzes not only your own submitted text but also an entire web page as per the given URL. So I ran Coriolistic Anachronisms through it as a test and as always, I like the looks of it so much I feel compelled to show it.
Here, hence, is Wordle's rendition of this very blog's main page, based on pure word fr...
Another French astrophotographer attempts to duplicate Atlantis pictures
The first round was quite a success. The pictures by French astrophotographer Thierry Legault of the space shuttle Atlantis transiting in front of the sun on its orbit to rendez-vous with Hubble are now all over the internet.
Inspired by such beauty and motivated by his talent, I decided to attempt my own experiment with the shuttle's sun transit. My gear is nowhere close to his, but I figured that ingeniousness and creativity would compensate.
With transit times sho...
The Shop & Print section goes live!
May 19, 2009
It was long overdue. I've just put the finishing touches to the new "Shop & Print" page that will allow visitors (yes, you!) to buy select prints from the main galleries. Granted, the current selection is rather limited but now that I have a functional site, I will be adding more pictures as time goes by.
The service is provided by SmugMug straight from my site, and most prints are done by Bay Photo, a professional California-based photo lab.
Not all who ...
French astrophotographer captures Atlantis silhouette against the sun
May 17, 2009
Ok, I rarely do plugs like this, but I found multiple references to these photos on Stumble Upon and they are truly amazing. I'm sure I won't be the only one. Voyez plutôt.
Thierry Legault, a French (cocorico) astrophotographer, has managed to take incredible photos of the space shuttle Atlantis during its transit in the company of Hubble in front of the sun.
He shoots with photo and astronomy gear that is quite beyond my understanding, except for the Canon 5D Mark I...
An A for (Macro) Effort
Up at 4:15 AM this morning again, I headed for Stanley Park long before sunrise - only to find out the wind was blowing 5 or 10 km/h over Lost Lagoon. How ironic! Went I'm not waiting for the wind to pick up in order to fly my paraglider, I'm hoping for it to die down to do some macro photography.
I ended up in the rhododendron garden. These pictures are the result of multiple focus-bracketed exposures blended together for a small bit of extra depth of field. Mixed resu...
June 5th is World Environment Day - Home is Free
Next June 5th will be World Environment Day. The environment. Our planet. Of all the issues we can chose to address or ignore, to embrace or discard, to concern ourselves with or to make fun of, none are more critical. Make no mistake about it, our very survival as a species depends on them.
Well, found over at Orcas in the Mist (thanks for the scoop, Elo), here's the upcoming eye-opener: a movie called Home, directed by Yann Arthus-Bertrand and produced by no other tha...
Kalk Bay, South Africa
May 13, 2009
This quaint little fishing town on the inside of the Cape Peninsula is home to the Almighty Harbour House restaurant, the more modest Olympia Cafe and its fantastic - if rare - polenta, and a small lighthouse at the end of the port's jetty that has been known to throw waves up in the air to incredible heights. Every establishment - and probably every soul - in Kalk Bay has a picture of some gigantic wave crashing on the pier and exploding upwards.
But it can also be quie...