A Vincent Mounier Photography Blog
Henri
November 18, 2018
As my father-in-law struggles on a hospital bed half a world away, I can only look back to try and paint a sad smile on my face.
Henri arrived as an unexpected present, a decade after my own dad had passed away, and his endearing fatherly figure filled a void I had not thought could be tackled.
He was seventy-seven when I decided on impulse to join him on the Cape Argus Cycle Tour. He would do his on one lung. A year later, he led me up the famous India Venster hike ...
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Inaugural Flights with the Advance Iota 2
While butterflies flap their fragile wings across the globe and out of sheer chaos, like an artist with raw clay, shape our lives ever so slightly upon each flutter, distant, unseen reminders that every fragment of this universe is connected to all others at all times, and that events affecting us today were set in motion eons ago, Marie and I, at last, have landed in our new home. Could we have predicted it? Not a chance. Butterflies are shrouded with mystery, and so is c...
Outage Recovery
September 26, 2018
Those of you having visited since last Friday will have been met by an error message. A catastrophic error was made by someone at my web hosting provider and server data was erased or corrupted beyond repair. Good old Murphy jumped in and it turned out two levels of back-up or redundancy were unusable so they had to restore thousands of customer accounts from the last line of defense, an older, slower server.
What this will do to their business, I cannot say. They are a...
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...
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...