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.

Stray Butternut

I keep all my vegetable peelings to add to my compost bins. I usually try and avoid letting seeds get into it, but obviously sometimes a few still make it into the bin with the peelings. I recently put some of this lovely earthy smelling compost around my lemon tree, growing in a pot next to the side of the swimming pool.

Next thing there was a butternut plant growing out of the pot. I have left it to see what would happen, and it is providing the most wonderful source of gorgeous yellow flowers and pretty green tendrils. There isn't much space for me to photograph these flowers and tendrils without squashing the plant or falling into the pool with my camera, but I am thoroughly enjoying it while I have it. I wonder if it will ever manage to produce butternuts that grow to maturity for us to harvest and consume in this unsuitable and inhospitable environment, but I shall give put extra nutrients into this pot to support both the baby lemon tree, and the butternut plant.

Little Workers

Not quite as busy as bees, and I haven't found a use for ants yet, although I do sometimes wonder if they help pollinate some plants? They seem to be very busy collecting something from inside the little florets of the bromeliad and taking it off somewhere. Do they collect nectar like bees and birds? Does pollen move around on their feet? What are they doing in the flowers? So many questions....

Bromeliad

Watching the progress of my bromeliad flower. I really do enjoy the flowers while they last, but I must admit I find it quite difficult to photograph artistically - especially as my plants are growing in the garden in amongst other plants, and wooden railway sleepers etc. So getting good angles isn't the easiest task. I love my tripod for indoor table top photography, but it is just too tall for plants that are low like this, even when I spread the legs. I wonder what good alternatives there are, other than attempting to get really good at hand held shots.

Finding Some Purpose

Okay, so I was just reading an article published by DPS called Tips to Help You Start a Successful Blog, and amongst many of the tips I need to pick up is that I need to have a purpose for my blog instead of just drifting along.... Yeah, I guess that makes sense. So as I started this photo blog with Felicia Daisies, and feeling fired up about photographing flowers, perhaps I should revisit my initial intentions and go back to exactly that! This is my photographic journey to learning to take the kinds of flower photographs I see by other fabulous photographers and wish I could achieve something as beautiful. So instead of being too hard on myself because nothing is good enough yet, accept that this is where I am currently, and try and improve along the way. So as one of my bromeliads is flowering right now, why don't I try and improve my vision as I document it's progress.

Tygerberg Nature Reserve

Only heard about Tygerberg Nature Reserve for the first time about a month ago, and when Karen and I tried going there on her birthday 4th October, before we went to Barnyard Theatre, the whole mountain was covered in dense mist and one couldn't see more than a couple of meters ahead. So we endeavoured to get there early this time. Couldn't have been a better day, but we didn't factor in that it would take 2 hours in the morning traffic to get from Brackenfell to the nature reserve not very far away. So instead of being there at 7:30 when the gates opened, we only arrived about 9am, by which time it was already hot and in full sun. But there were clear skies and it was a great day to be out. Very steep hike up a tar road to the first lookout point. They said it was 200m, but in the heat, and walking up such a steep hill it felt like at least 400m for my unfit legs and lungs. But the view towards Table Mountain was wonderful. 

Another couple of hundred meters took us to the summit with 360 degree views. Absolutely spectacular but unfortunately not particularly photogenic in every direction due to all the microwave and cellphone towers with dishes, in all directions, and of course massive supporting cables intersecting the skyline. So it meant careful positioning to avoid cables and towers in the photos.

Interesting information about a lovely old canon - I never knew there had been canons installed at frequent intervals to act as a communication system. Fascinating to learn a bit more about the history of the country I have called home since 1972 when I left my homeland, Rhodesia.







 

And then a walk down one of the dirt trails took us to a couple of tunnels under major roads that cuts through the nature reserve. The second tunnel was so wet and muddy that unfortunately we didn't walk through it. We only learned on our return that there was a dam on the other side, so I'm sure I would have enjoyed that. Anyway, I'd love to visit here again, and then I definitely will go through that tunnel despite the mud.

 

Arum Lilies in my garden

Loving all the arums I've had lately. Remind me so much of my granny. She had arum lilies as well as a whole garden full of other wonderful flowers. She used to let me cut flowers to make arrangements in the house when we went to stay with her for school holidays. One day I made an arrangement of arum lilies. We got visitors and they were shocked to see the big flower arrangement. That's when I learned that some people consider them to be funeral flowers. But granny never let anything like that faze her. I decided to try some abstracts using depth of field to capture the wonderful curves on the flower. I'm not totally happy with what I've achieved so far, so will try and improve tomorrow morning if there is no wind. After a day of gardening today, there is too much wind this afternoon for any photography!

Felicia Daisy - White

Well, I've had this blog for years now just sitting here forgotten about, so now I decided I should start using it to record my photographic journey. Hopefully I'll be able to look back and see some improvement over time ... As my blog is called Lazy Daisy it seems appropriate to fill my first posts with pictures of daisies. I've seen this pretty, tiny little flower catching my eye at my holiday flat (AtlanticSunsets), and never known what it was, so I picked some and took it to the local nursery to identify. It is a Felicia Daisy. I have mostly seen pretty purple ones, but this white one looked particularly pretty and dainty to me.