The weekend saw some wonderfully Irish weather roll in. I’m honestly mystified how this island hasn’t been washed away by the amount of rain that it gets.
Then again, after years of drought in Cape Town and facing the existential threat of running out of water, it becomes quite hard not to enjoy the rain.
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Abandoned umbrella (victim of Storm Diana), corner of Blackhall Place and Ellis Quay.
Simon Schama, the very erudite British historian, is responsible for one of my favourite quotes,
"...landscape is the work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock".
For me, this also applies to the built environment us city dwellers live in. The way we build and shape our cities is entirely influenced by our culture and beliefs. I would even go so far as to argue that the dominant ideologies of the day design a city’s buildings as much as the architect who actually draws the plans. This isn’t a new theory with many photographers, such as David Goldblatt from South Africa and Paul Seawright from Northern Ireland, exploring different aspects of this process.
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Light Blue Wall and the Four Courts, Dublin
Looking South towards Claire Island.
The west coast of Ireland is an easily romanticised place. Incredible coastlines, rolling green hills and more than enough space to get happily lost.
A Giraffe stands by while the world spins itself into craziness...
A little while ago I got the always welcome news that somebody liked my photography enough to feature it on their website. Finally, after 3 weeks of excited waiting I got the email that it was up. You can access the site through the following here.
The website, Muybridge's Horse, features artists who are interested in the ways in which humans interact with and experience animals and nature. I particularly like the sly sense of humour that fills many of the posts on the website and that was what initially made me want to contact them. Yet, if the humour pulls one in, it is the tone of gentle reflection pervading the site that makes it truly memorable.
The featured images are taken from a series I'm constantly working on about life in a South African museum.
In Cape Town's Company Gardens hidden in a shaded corner is a small bamboo grove. On the other end of the Company Gardens is Gardens Commercial High School. For the young pupils of this school this bamboo grove has become a traditional space to affirm your existence and proclaim your social relationships.
Read MoreSince I started working in the museum there was something I found quite humorous in this bird display but for a long time I couldn't work out what it was. Eventually it struck me. It was very much like a baroque painting but without any of the painting.
Read MoreOne of the edges of Cape Town
This ugly concrete wall, topped by an electric fence, is the final sign of continuous habitation on Okavango Road. After travelling past house after house after housing estate, one is suddenly confronted by a low wire fence and an immense space of sunburnt land. In essence, this is one of the edges of Cape Town.
Using the Recessky TLR is a constant gamble. The viewfinder is blurry, focus is as much about estimation as it is about luck, there is no such thing as a standard shutter speed and rolling on the film is a total guesstimation. But sometimes you get something worth keeping like this little run on of images.
Pot plants at Artefact cafe in the Iziko South African Museum.
An old favourite. Taken with a 70 year old Rolleiflex TLR using Fujichrome Provia 100
Created using Recessky TLR and expired Fujichrome Provia 100F
On a small Swartland farm named Fynbos Estate lives Rupert the dreadlocked donkey and not to far from his dusty little kingdom is a perennially bare tree. Somehow my homemade Recessky camera makes them appear both orange and much closer together than they actually are.
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I was initially attracted to the former lion enclosure on the UCT campus by its scale. It feels like something from a medieval horror movie that would contain a bizarre many-headed, snapping beast rather than a pride of lions.
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Black sand sandpit near Seljalandsfoss, Iceland. Shot with D800 using 50mm lens.
I love how travelling forces one to confront all kinds of differences. These can vary from vast and imposing contrasts that force one way out of one's comfort zone while sometimes they can be simple, subtle details that let you wonder at the variety of life.
Personally, I loved this black sand sandpit I found in Iceland. I'm from coastal South Africa and grew up on white sand beaches. Unsurprisingly as a child this white sand always made up the sand pits we played in. Contrast that with Iceland, one of the world's most active volcanic regions, and famed for their black sand beaches. Equally unsurprisingly, this same black sand is also used to fill up sandpits in Iceland.
Its all swings and roundabouts but nice to think about in periods of quiet reflection.
Few lepidoptera (moths or butterflies) can claim to be as 'edgy' as the Acherontia atropos, more commonly known as the Death's-Head Hawkmoth. For us Generation X-ers this reputation was cemented by its starring role on the poster for the movie, The Silence of the Lambs but it had had a long history in popular culture before that.
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Shot using a Hasselblad H5D using a 120mm macro lens.
Storage Area - Iziko South African Museum. Shot using a Hasselblad H5D