Recently I bought an attachment that would allow me to take photographs with my cell phone mounted on my 8″ Newtonian reflector. After much cursing and swearing, I captured some great pictures. These two photos were possibly the best.
Seen in our garden in Riviersonderend
Cape White Eye
Cape Sparrow on the grape vine
Red Bishop
September was remarkable for the cold fronts that hit Cape Town. This gif was done early in the month before familiarity bred disinterest.
Recently there was a moon Jupiter conjunction. A wonderful sight.
It gave me a chance to brush up on my astro-photography
This is my first attempt at stop motion movies and I learnt a number of things.
1 Putty rubbers can be used effectively to create a character who moves
2 It takes time to photograph a sequence. This 18 second sequence took 20 minutes to photograph.
3 Always use a tripod. No matter how still you think your hand is and how accurate your alignment is, it isn’t any of those things.
4 The type of light you use to illuminate the scene can make a huge difference to the colour of the product. I like the effect of this long life bulb. I had fun No sound yet but watch this space.
Tonight the moon is 98% full. Close by are Saturn and Jupiter. And ideal photo opportunity you might say but there were clouds and aerosols so I did not get a hard classical astro-photograph but a dreamy, ephemeral image. I used a little point and shoot camera and it exceeded my expectations.
Or African Harrier Hawk. We occasionally see this magnificent raptor in the Cape Town CBD. This time a neighbour spotted the bird and called us. It was sheltering from a Cape winter storm in a palm tree. I managed to get some pictures. The problem was that it was quite dark and rainy. Also the neighbour had fire burning and the smoke drifted across our line of sight. The troubles of birding photography.
A man prepares kayaks on a Mouille Point beach.
On a walk around Cape Town I took a picture of a church door. Only when I got home did I see that Table Mountain was reflected in the window panes above the door.
The Moon and Venus were extremely close on 19 June, 2020 and I was lucky to capture some images.
