kites are fun

kites are fun
It's amazing what the power of the lens can do.
It dragged me out of the stupor I usually find myself in when the school term has finally ended. This morning my body felt like I'd just crawled on my elbows ( boot camp-style...in the mud) through WWIII- and if you teach you'll understand when I say that a Concert Term in the middle of winter is the equivalent of trench warfare. You can't see where you're going, you never see sunlight and the only things keeping you going are the hip flask and postcards from home.

Anywayyyy, I had to go and buy some electricity so I decided to kill two birds and take the Sigma for a walk on the beach. There is a special little hell reserved for all those privileged enough to find themselves living in the coastal town of the Strand.... The Wind. It blows there. A lot.
So I wasn't too surprised to find it really pumping (as the windsurfers lovingly refer to a gale). I sat in my car in disgust and then realised that I couldn't keep Sigma wrapped up in cotton wool for ever. If she were to be my walkabout  lens she'd have to just get out there and be exposed to the elements. So I drove down to the surfers' end and to my delight found the sky festooned with brightly coloured kites. And surfers hanging on down below for dear life.
Telephoto time.

The wind was freezing and I got earache in my left ear, but it was also wonderfully exhilarating.
I won't bore you with the technical details. It always takes me forever to work out the right settings (I'm stubbornly staying in manual mode) and it's a kind of hit and miss thing still. These are the hits. Hopefully.

 

While the kite surfers were creating intrinsically beautiful and colourful whoops and sweeps across the shoreline a bit further down the beach, others were trying to look cool but only managing the bloody-hell-it's-freezing look.

 

They were shooting an ad for something or other. A small patch of sand was littered with skinny models wrapped up to their noses in beach towels. And some guy with a loudhailer kept shouting 'OK people, I know it's cold but we need you to....' etc etc....

This extra had the right idea...

You gotta get off your butt.

 

And shoot the breeze.

 Go fly a kite.

More kites and things at my Flickr site.

PS- Check out the Youtube vid link under the title. Love this song and the video is quirky, cute and just perfect.

Lost Coastlines..and a new lens

Lost Coastlines
Today was my duvet day. A Friday when one of us (name drawn from a hat) is fortunate enough to escape the institution at 10:00  and start the weekend early. The only thing stopping me from making an actual date with my duvet and climbing into bed with a copy of Julie & Julia in one hand and bar of chocolate in the other, was the fact that I had a brand spanking new lens waiting for me at the post office. So I collected my Sigma 18-200 f/3.5 (how scary is it that I know those specs off by heart?) and headed for the beach.

The Sigma is a telephoto lens which, as my brother so succinctly put it, will now allow me to take sneaky pics of people without them knowing.
Of course, we've had the shittiest weather imaginable and winter still has us in it's claws so when I arrived at the Strand beach it was decidedly empty. No people anywhere.
So I took pics of big fat clouds and churned up brown sea....

 

And an interesting log bit.

And a half a tree dumped rather artistically during one of our recent storms....

 

So far no people.

I was just beginning to give up when this lady arrived, dogs in tow. Telephoto time.

See how powerful the lens is? 

I'm terrible at estimating distances but I'm standing like, really far away, OK?

Two things I had not noticed until I popped this shot in Lightroom...

a.) She's smiling at me. I had no idea! Probably telling me to bugger off under her breath.

b.) The big rottweiler is cocking it's leg over the flotsam and jetsam. Niiice.

Then this guy walked in from the sea.

I think he knew I was trying to shoot him.
He'd keep on looking round and I'd noncholantly swing the lens away and pretend I was actually looking somewhere else.
Then another surfer arrived.

I was really far away for this shot too.
He seemed in an awful hurry. I could have told him not to get too excited....not much happening out there with waves like that. What's the surfer term for those conditions, boet?
Crap?
 My lens however, in my totally unprofessional opinion is not crap.
I love it already.

I got your six

I got your six
On a side note.... I'm halfway through the final episode of Generation Kill and don't want it to end.
Why I, a soon-to-be-middle-aged-spinster-Grade-3-teacher, should be so enamoured with this show is beyond me.

But I am.

And I feel everyone should try to incorporate the GK marine lexicon in their everyday speak as often as possible.....

Foot-mobile: a person on foot.
As in, "God, these foot-mobiles just cross the road expecting you to slow down. F%*#ing foot mobiles!"

I glassed it: I viewed the object through binoculars or a rifle scope.
Well, why not try this on a photo shoot?
"I glassed it and realised I'd need the 50mm f/1.8 that got stolen from the hijacked truck."

O Dark Hundred: until darkness falls.
"Woohoo! O Dark hundred is getting later and later these days. Summer is on it's way!"

Oscar Mike: On the Move
"Ok Grade 3's! Let's get to assembly. Oscar Mike!"

Stay frosty: Stay cool.
A favourite.
"Those people from the department are only here to give us advice. Just stay frosty, ladies."

Cluster Fuck : Mass confusion and chaos.
 Yet another favourite but one that I can't say out loud as often as I'd like.
"The last hour of school yesterday was a total cluster fuck."


Hitman Two out.

Thanks to discussions of things i find interesting for the glossary!

Sun, sun, sun..... here it comes

here comes the sun

A little taste of Spring.Although the blossoms on the lemon tree outside my computer room have actually been doing their thing all winter.

The weather today was spring-like though. 

Warm and sunny and sit-on-the-back-step-and-read-all-afternoon weather.

 

And when I felt in danger of melting from all the unaccustomed sun I went inside 

and worked on Astronaut Girl.

P.S.I want my new lenses and I want them NOW! The guy at SACamera told me the 50mm's were in a truck that was hijacked and stolen. I would have swallowed the excuse without a qualm except that the boy I give a lift to told me just the other day that a cell phone retailer used the same excuse to explain a delay in getting his phone repaired. Hmm...I smell a rat. A very South African rat.

lemony snippets

I want all these elements in my next piece. Not sure how though. The bee and stripy socks are very sentimental and nostalgic photoshopping elements.

I'm not sure whether to include the rather cute but ancient rugger bugger or not but I must have  the socks!

The lined paper underneath is from a journal/diary (mostly empty) I found in a Kalk Bay junk shop. It's over a hundred years old and I hated cutting that page out. The 'pure bug beauty' bit comes from a line from a Jeff Tweedy song.
In case you were interested.
Neat that it can look like an old bit of paper, eh? That's cause it was stained with a few teaspoons of instant coffee. I'm now printing images from digital archive libraries like BibliOdyssey and trying to make them look real. I think it really works.

I'm also loving my inspiration board at the moment.
It sort of inspired this probably-never-to-be-completed zebra collage. Which I now don't like very much.

That's it for this week.
I'm off to soak up some sun before Debs arrives.