Bright and beautiful

This field of bromeliads at St Georges Park makes for a very colourful display...............



..............but the true beauty is revealed when you get up close and personal.

Sky Watch Friday - New Dawn

Sunrise off Cape Recife, Port Elizabeth.

Visit the Sky Watch site for more great photo's from around the world.

I wonder.................

I can figure the bit out about the children, but the cat part has me baffled. But then, in a place like St Francis Bay, which has more than its fair share of eccentric people, a sign like this should not come as a surprise.

Time for portraits

Becasue kelp gulls are so common along the South African coastline, we often tend to overlook them when it comes to photigraphy, but they do make interesting subjects.

This guy very willingly posed for his portrait at Port St Francis last week end. The truth is that I was trying to get him to fly off, so that I could photograph him in flight, but he stubbornly refused to move.

Sky Watch Friday - Soaring again

After the dreaded "C" word I am happily back in action - somewhat behind schedule, but nevertheless back. Today's picture features an immature Kelp Gull soaring overhead at Port St Francis.

For more great pictures from around the world visit the Sky Watch site.

The "C" word

This weekend the dreaded "C" word happened to my laptop, it crashed.

We decided to spend the weekend at Cape St Francis and on Saturday afternoon I decided to do a post. I put of a new CD I had bought,with some of my all time favourite Elvis songs and was just getting into it, when there was something like a power surge. Elvis started to splutter and the screen started to display a kaleidoscope of colours. Then it was black quiet and I thought, "I wonder if it does not like Elvis?"

My blood understandably ran cold. My life is in that computer and I had not backed up for a few months, in spite of my good intentions to do so.

I rebooted and hey presto it was working, but all I got was what looked like an over developed negative. No problem I thought, I will just reboot. This time it came on as normal. I quickly put it into hibernation mode and resolved to do without it for the rest of the weekend and backup as soon as we got home.

The backup went smoothly and the virus check was clear, but when I turned it on at work on Monday morning, the screen resolution was something like 60x80.

"No problem," said the guy from IT, very cheerfully, "I will have it sorted out soon."

Two hours later I asked him if I was sorted out and in the same cheerful voice he announced, "No, it has crashed."

More cold shivers.

It seems like it was a motherboard problem so all my data and pictures are still safe on the hard drive and have been backed up by the IT guy as well. Hopefully I will get it back with new innards today. I say hopefully, because that is what they said yesterday.
The moral of this story is clear. You never know when the "C" word might happen, so do regular backups. This is my first crash in eight years and I came out unscathed - I could have lost my last four months work and photos.

As soon as I get it back I will be blogging as usual.

Sky Watch Friday - Isolated showers

Sometimes nature gives us a spectacular display when we least expect it, like this scene I shot through the windscreen of the car when we were driving to Cape St Francis some time ago. Just in case you were wondering, I was the passenger.

For more great pictures from around the planet visit the Sky Watch site.

Mongoose sunrise

We took a jaunt up Marine Drive early on Saturday morning to enjoy the sunrise and came across a mongoose family at The Willows. Only one of them was willing the pose - I think it was more to catch the early morning sun, than to oblige me, because they are usually very shy animals. The two little ones kept us entertained with their antics but did not stay still long enough for me to get a decent picture.