Lockdown Level 5 - March / April 2020

And so Covid arrived on our shores in early March 2020 resulting in the government announcing a National State of Disaster and imposing draconian lockdown measures  to "flatten the curve". The first 5 weeks allowed no movement outside one's own home except for essential shopping at the closest supermarket so suddenly almost all of my photos had to be what I could find within the walls of my home or property

 Still life became important indoors

 As did experimenting with flowers ...












....and food

Camping Trip

Nothing like a camping trip with a group of friends to recharge the batteries. We are always on the lookout for places to go where we can take our dogs. Four Yorkies - or rather two Yorkshire Terriers and two Yorkshire Terrorists. The "Terrorists" are young, boisterous rescues who after about 3 years with us are still learning to be proper dogs after their bad start in life, so it is not everywhere we can take Max & Charlie. But they sure love going camping. They love the openness and freedom.
And for the accompanying humans, it is a chance to rest and relax. To go swimming in the river, and walking on the quiet farm roads feeling safe from traffic and maniacs on the roads. It is a chance to sleep in late or get up early without any pressure. And a chance to sit around the campfire late into the night, telling stories and watching the stars. And simply breathe in the tranquility

Drought - Port Owen, Western Cape, 2018

Gosh but I have been an extremely poor blogger. I wonder if I can make any of that change??? I need some  kind of motivation. One day if anybody ever finds and reads my blog that would be quite something and would definitely motivate me to do this. But how do I get my blog found by anybody? What's the magic secret. Is it just that I don't write a riveting story. Or do I need more or better photos? What is the starting point that I have so far missed?

Anyway, perhaps this is a good place to start keeping some kind of record of the Western Cape drought, from my own personal perspective. Yes there are the big pictures out there of empty dams, or acres of cracked mud. That is nowhere near where I am, but I am just as much affected by the lack of water in my own little way. And I am making every effort to reduce usage and wastage of water....

And here on the coast, far away from the dams that provide our water, our river has become salt water instead of fresh as no fresh water is flowing out any longer, so the nature of our environment is changing. I am not seeing as many pelicans or flamingoes lately as I used to, so I presume their food source is changing or disappearing? And the hundreds of thousands of cormorants that used to fly up river at sunset, and down river to the ocean at sunrise, wave upon wave of them, are reduced to a few scattered flocks.

My lawns have died with lack of watering, and the resulting sand/dust is constantly blowing into my house making everything feel dusty and gritty on a daily basis. But my little yard is small fry in the big scheme of things. The farmland around us seems to have become one big dust bowl with the sand piling up along the sides of the road and blowing dust storms across the land. The sheep need to be fed with supplemental feed as I don't think there is any grazing left for them in the fields.

Walking the dogs ... Port Owen Marina

Sometimes the only time I have in the day to use my camera is while I'm out walking dogs so I am getting quite good at using my old faithful 450d with Tamron 18-270 whilst holding two furkids on leashes at the same time, and watching where another two are who are not on leashes
Walking late in the evening has special challenges of slower shutter speeds, but there can be magical colours if one can get all 4 dogs to the spot you want to be at the right time!







And walking in the morning can have it's own interests and also challenges of hurrying the dogs along to where one wants to be to capture the team of men cleaning up the weed from the marina before they finish up and move away

Flashing Harriet Again

Moved Harriet in front of a wall in the dining room. Somewhat less ambient light here as much further away from any windows than I was yesterday. And also, being a white wall makes good practice for learning to deal with shadows. Much needed practice as you can see by looking at these awful headshots and the seriously bad shadows on the wall behind Harriet.  Last three shots I moved her about half a metre away from the wall, but the shadows are still there, although not quite as pronounced. 1st shot in this series is direct flash. Next flash bounced off ceiling, then reflector held above her and angled down

After a few days, I think I am finally getting somewhere, although I am consistently noticing that my photos seemed to be underexposed and I needed to pull the exposure up in LightRoom, so I tried FEC +2. This is perhaps a bit too much flash but a huge improvement on previous days attempts. However, pulling the highlights down in Lightroom has resulted in quite nice tones

And FEC +1. This is perhaps a good compromise as I haven't needed to pull the exposure up in Lightroom but is still a bit bright - perhaps I need to pull the hightlights down as per above shot

And No Flash Exposure Compensation:- Once again I needed to pull the exposure up in Lightroom by 0.48 or half a stop

 

Learning to use my flash - Harriet

Well, I have to try and figure out how to make the best use of my new piece of photographic gear - a speedlite 430 ex rt ii so here are my attempts at trying ETTL flash bounced from the ceiling and from a reflector held or propped in different positions relative to the model on camera left. 

This is also a good opportunity to introduce Harriet or Hatty, my patient model. 
Here she is  shot in natural, available light only

This is the easy bit .... She is about 2m away from the background - my lounge wall which is mostly quite dark (as in facebrick fireplace and a very large bronze picture above the fireplace. There is natural light on camera right, with french doors about 2m away providing a reasonable amount of ambient light

Relocation of the Mole from our Garden

Oh my word. All my good intentions to keep my blog up to date once a week have come to nought. I see I last posted in March - that is 2 months ago now!

So the latest exciting happenings here are that we caught the Mole that has been causing havoc in our back garden for the past 6 months. I happened to be at the kitchen sink washing dishes one morning, and I saw it sunning itself on the lawn. I couldn't believe how huge it really was, so I called hubby to come and have a look. 

In that time Max & Charlie realised something was going on outside the kitchen window and dashed out. In no time at all they had the mole on its back with much noisy barking. Hubby got the dogs off the mole and I got Max & Charlie into the house, while hubby managed to get the mole into a bucket with the aid of a mop. 

I think it was stunned but not hurt. We took it to a large empty plot and released it there. My word it was angry and just wanted to attack us until it realised the futility and started looking for a place to burrow in.