Hi gang,
Writing this from the lobby of the airport here in Cape Town, South Africa. Spent an amazing 2 weeks here with family and friends at the Cape. About to board a 12-hour flight back home. Flew trusty British Airways. Always wondered what the pilots do during 12-hour flights during which you have 4-hour straight ahead lines. One of my best friends is a pilot, he keeps claiming to always be busy during those hours. We agree to disagree 🙂
Travelled light for this trip. 1 body , 3 lenses, lot’s of memory cards, batteries and a tripod. Shot the D300s for the video capabilities & highly-coveted DX-reach during travel photography.
Table mountain, as seen from Signal Hill. Nikon d300s, Sandisk Digital Film, Sigma 10-20mm @ f/8.0
Shot a lot of street photography here. Streets are filled with amazing, interesting people. I keep finding people a bit boring in Antwerp lately. They’re al such comformists. They (almost) all dress alike, in the same style. People in Africa are way more extravagant. Exhuberant. They all dress in colour. It’s like moving through a lifelike painting. The canvas is surreal. That’s why I love heading out to Paris for a few days a couple of times per trimester.
Brought 3 lenses with me : the Nikon AF-S 18-105 VR f/3.5-5.6 for street photography. It’s not a very fast lens, but it’s sharp and since I’m in auto-ISO when doing street photography, doesn’t really matter. Like the 18-105 more than the 18-70 for the reach and sharpness. Opinions differ, but that’s my POV. Also brought the Sigma 10-20mm with me. This badboy is THE go-to lens when you’re going to step in building and such. Churches look surreal with this baby. The colors are amazing, and it’s sharp. After 7 years of lugging it all over the world, including the sandy beaches of Thailand, the wet lagoons of Vietnam, the moisty fields of Cambodia and such, it’s starting to show it, but I consider it like a soldier’s rifle. You want it to be dented and scratched. The markings of war.
Last, but not least : the Nikon 80-200 AF-D f/2.8. Wonderful lens. Don’t own the 70-200, but used it and optically they’re almost alike. This is not the lightest of lenses to carry around, but I didn’t mind. In my Lowepro backpack it didn’t bother, and shooting wildlife at f/2.8 gives that wonderfully, creamy bokeh that makes all the effort worthwhile.
Shot some timelapses as well during my stay at Knysna. Slept in beautiful lodges owned by Made, a person really trying to make a difference here in South Africa. She gets her water from her own borehole and purifies it ecologically. The lodges have this amazing view over the lagoon at Knysna.
Tripod is indispensable here. It’s a no-go territory if you haven’t brought one. Get a carbon tripod, they’re ultralight. Shot in Aperture priority mode, f/8 for sharpness and using the amazing intervalometer built-in the D300s and other higher end Nikon models.
A 12-hour long flight gives you time to get stuff done. Watched 2 docu’s about Cartier-Bresson, one of the masters of (35mm) street photography. Amazing that all these masters (HCB, Ernst Haas, Jay Maisel,…) share the same point of view concerning gear. They don’t give a crap about what gear they’re shooting. It’s all about vision. I’m preaching this as well. The sooner you detach yourself from the illusion that better gear will give you better images, your photography will improve.
Love Haas’ quote about Leica’s.
Leica schmeica. Any camera could’ve captured that image. What counts is to learn how to see
He said that to two women that attended his workshop and couldn’t stop preaching about the qualities of their respective cameras. Eventually Haas (who knew Leica very well) burst out whilst looking over their portfolios.
Gear is good. Vision is better. Repeat 100x times, then restart.
Passed through the ‘Seweweeksepoort’ in the main land. Translated that’s ‘7-week pass’. A route that carves through the deep mountains of the mainland. It’s called like that because it used to take up to 7 weeks to cross that patch. It’s hellish. There is a saying here that you can’t pass through it without having at least one flat tire due to the sharpness of the rocks that are the untarred road. We didn’t have one thankfully. The ‘Seweweeksepoort’ is a dead zone. The whole route feels like that disaster movie when the annoying character (who is about to die a horrible death) checks his cell and the cell reads ‘No Service’.
Beautiful landscapes though. Amazing rocks.
Also visited some wineries. South Africa has a huge cultural wine-heritage. Dutch settlers came here with French vines in the 1600’s and the fruit of their labor is delicious. Amazing estates, beyond belief. I’ve visited some wineries in my life, but the geographical extend of the South African estates is unbelievable. Huge would be understating it.
Also ran into some traffic jams whilst being down here. Although not the same you’d encounter anywhere else in the world…
All in all, Amazing place, amazing trip. Really recommended!
More soon!
Cheers,
MM
MORGAN 