Partial Solar Eclipse and CNN

There was a partial solar eclipse over Southern Africa, Antarctica and part of the southern Atlantic and Indian Oceans today. Many people did not know about it, but luckily I did. It started this morning between 06:40 and 06:45, and I made myself home in the Coots Corner Bird Hide at Rietvlei Nature Reserve, since it is the perfect vantage point from which to watch the sunrise. I sat there for approximately one hour and forty minutes. I took a total of 33 photographs from the start of the eclipse to the end.

I started to tweet on my Twitter account about the eclipse and I then started getting a lot of notifications of retweets and favorites! At the time of taking the photos I wasn’t able to upload any photos to Twitter or Facebook, etc; so, I improvised and snapped a photo of the LCD screen while the camera was aiming at the sun, using my Sony XPeria Z3 Compact. I immediately tweeted the photo onto my Twitter account.

Used my mobile to take a photo of the back of my camera in order to tweet it.

I received a lot of activity on this photo on my Twitter page. Out of the blue I received a request from Derek van Dam, meteorologist at CNN and CNN International, via his Twitter account, whether he could use this image on his next weather section on CNN. I gave the go-ahead, but I couldn’t see it, so I quickly called my wife to switch the TV on to watch it. She was in time to see it on CNN and that looked like this:

My photo from above on CNN! Yay! I’m famous!

It was really cool to see the image of my photo on CNN, later on Twitter. Funny how things happen sometimes. And it can’t even be called a real photograph!

Anyway, I took some of the photographs of the eclipse and created an image with a series of the eclipse from beginning to end.

The settings of my camera changed from the beginning to the end as the sun became consistently brighter. See the photos below. Please note that I pulled the info below each photograph below from my Flickr account.

By the time of the photo above, the sun was sitting fairly high and it was very bright. I could no longer get a defined outline of the sun because of the brightness! I felt a little stuck at this point, and so my mind went into overdrive! I have the Sony SLT-A37 with the big lens on it, but I do not have an ND filter for it. However, my Canon D1200, which I use for close ups and landscapes using a small lens, has an ND400 filter, but it won’t fit my big lens. So, I had to improvise! For the next four photographs of the sun, of which three can be found below, I simply aimed at the sun while holding the smaller ND400 filter in front of the big lens, and it worked!

And so another day, another weekend comes to an end! Now we have to wait for the next eclipse, which will be a total lunar eclipse on 27/28 September 2015. For South Africans, you will have to be awake in the very early hours of the morning on Monday, 28 September 2015 at 02:11. The total eclipse will start at 04:11, maximum eclipse will be at 04:47 and the full eclipse will end at 05:23.

For more of my photos, visit my Flickr account.

2015 Imperial Toyota Tshwane Motor Rally–2015-08-15

I joined some of our photographic club members at this year’s Imperial Toyota Tshwane Motor Rally to do some action photography. The rally is part of the National Rally Championship. It was my first time doing this. So, in essence, all of us, except for our club chairman, were rally photography rookies! It was a lot of fun, though! There were 9 of us.

Of course, doing an action shoot at a motor rally in winter in Gauteng province, South Africa, is a very dusty affair, and a photographer should be prepared for this. because of all the dust kicked up by the cars, I took with a sturdy plastic bag with strings to pull tight when closing it. After every car passing I would open the bag and pop my camera in it to protect it from the dust. I also carried my lens dust brush with me.

The rally was held around Cullinan the first day (14 Aug) and around Bronkhorstspruit the second day (15 Aug).

South African driver, Giniel de Villiers, who won the 2009 Dakar Rally, was also one of the drivers in this rally. The rally was won by Leeroy Poulter and Elvéne Coetzee of the Castrol Team Toyota Yaris S2000.

Looking at the map above, we shot our photographs at SS 5 and SS 6.

Here are some of the photos I took of the rally.

Looks like The Mummy’s sand force enveloping the car!

Driver: Giniel de Villiers, winner 2009 Dakar Rally!

Spin that wheel! Make dust!

This one got a little bit too close for comfort!

Click on the image above to see more of the photos I shot at the rally.

Marievale Bird Sanctuary–2015-05-01

More than a month ago, on 1 May 2015, I once again visited Marievale Bird Sanctuary. This was now my second visit, and true to form, things were different this time. I still haven’t seen the whole sanctuary, but I did enjoy my visit very much.

Here are a few photographs…

Grey Heron

African Spoonbill – This was the first time I saw this one.

There is more to photograph than just birds!

For more photographs of this visit, go to my Flickr album.

B&B: Buddies and Breakfast–2015-06-20

For a long time, some years ago, 2 of my friends and I used to have breakfast together once a month on a Friday morning. Then I changed jobs and needed to travel 50Km (31mi) to work, and the same happened with one of the other two, and the breakfast fell by the wayside. But, then a little more than a month ago we decided to start it up again, on a Saturday morning! So, we had the first one last month, and then yesterday we had the second one. However, yesterday’s breakfast took on a different slant to just being a breakfast. Two of us like photography and use proper equipment, and the third uses his iPad (and some iPad apps) to come up with some creative photographs. So, iPad Man, his name is Drix, came up with the idea that we should have breakfast at Rietvlei Nature Reserve this month, and then he would drive us around the reserve so that the other two, Mark and myself, could take photographs of the wildlife at Rietvlei. It turned out to be a great morning for each of us!

Here are a few of the photographs that I took, and you can see more at my Flickr account of this visit.

This mongoose, and his little pal, were not bothered by our presence at all!

Have you ever tried to scratch your ear with your foot like this Springbuck?

The Cape Longclaw really makes a pretty picture!

Rietvlei Nature Reserve–2015-05-30

Rietvlei Nature Reserve is one of my favourite places to visit. It is close to home, and there is enough to see. Early mornings provide for great sunrise photography. One thing is for sure; every time you visit, you will not get to see everything it has on offer. There are some animals there that I have never seen, such as the cheetah and otters. Anyway, here are a few pics from this visit, and if you want to see more go to the album on my Flickr account.

When I walked out of this bird hide, I simply turned around, liked what I saw and took the shot. For some reason, this is my wife’s favourite.

This Waterbuck was hoping that I couldn’t see him.

A beautiful Common Fiscal.

Sabie weekend–2015-05-09

This post is related to my previous post—Bourke’s Luck Potholes - 2015-05-10—as it is part of the same weekend away in Sabie, Mpumalanga (Lat: 25° 5.914'S, Long: 30° 46.735'E). On the Saturday of our weekend away, my wife and I visited the Sudwala Caves (Lat: 25° 22.557’S, Long: 30° 41.555’E) and the Mac Mac Falls (Lat: 25° 0.041'S, Long: 30° 48.986'E).

We stayed over at the Jock-Sabie Lodge (Lat: 25° 5.876'S, Long: 30° 46.682'E). It is a lovely place to stay at right in the heart of the town of Sabie. It is very neat and comfortable, and they make a mean breakfast too!

In the background is the restaurant area of the Jock-Sabie  Lodge.

After we had a delicious breakfast at the lodge we headed out to the Sudwala Caves. I enjoyed visiting the caves. The rock formations, stalactites and stalagmites had really interesting shapes and sizes.

Interesting formations in the cave.

After we finished the visit in the cave we went to the dinosaur park next door and ran into this guy!

When we finished here we went to the Mac Mac Falls. It was already late afternoon. I had heard of these falls so many times, so I was very excited to finally get to see the falls. However, I was very disappointed when I finally got to see the falls. First, you can’t get near them. Second, you get to see the falls from behind a high fence that you need to peer through. Third, with the number of visitors, you have to jockey for a good position if you intend to take any photographs. Fourth, at this time of day the sun sets right behind the falls. In the end, I didn’t have enough time to set up properly in order to get good photographs. My intention was to take long exposure shots of the falls, but with all the people there I didn’t want to occupy the best spot for too long.

I took this photograph with shutter speed of 1.3 seconds, aperture at F29 and ISO at 100.

All in all, my wife and I enjoyed the weekend away and definitely go back to this area. There is just so much to see that we never got to see!

To see the rest of the photographs from this day, please visit this album on my Flickr account.

Bourke’s Luck Potholes – 2015-05-10

A month ago my wife and I had a weekend break in Sabie, Mpumalanga (Lat: 25° 5.914'S, Long: 30° 46.735'E), an area in South Africa where the main business is trees. Yes, they grow thousands upon thousands of trees in the region that are used mainly in the paper making business. The region is one of the most beautiful regions in South Africa!

The problem with this break was that the previous Sunday I started getting sick, and by the Monday morning I was very sick. I decided to go see the doctor, with the result that he booked me off sick the whole week! I had developed bronchitis! The problem was that my lungs did not want to open up and release all the gunk in them. By Wednesday, my lungs weren’t doing better, so the doctor prescribed me a second set of antibiotics to take together with the first set, and he also prescribed stuff that I needed to nebulise with twice a day. By the time Friday arrived—departure day (8 May)—I was still not better. I was still nebulising, but I just felt that we had booked the weekend, and we (my wife and I) were going! I wasn’t going to just lose the money for the weekend away.

My wife had to do the driving, since I couldn’t drive at the time because of all the coughing. I would suddenly get these coughing fits that would completely rob me of oxygen, making me go light-headed with momentary blackouts. I couldn’t sleep in the car as I was the navigator. We eventually arrived at the lodge at about 21:00! After unpacking, I first had to nebulise. Saturday and Sunday morning I first had to nebulise before we went out for the day.

So, even though I was sick, and being in this beautiful area, I just had to take photographs. One of the most amazing places to visit is Bourke’s Luck Potholes (Lat: 24° 40.447'S, Long: 30° 48.646'E). These potholes are truly amazing, and here are some of the photographs I took.

For more photographs of the Bourke’s Luck Potholes, please visit my Flickr account. In the past we used to be able to make slideshows of albums to embed on web pages and blog posts, but it seems that it is no longer available. I also tried some third party Flickr slideshow generators, but none worked.

This n That

On Saturday morning I started the day off with 2 of my friends visiting the Pretoria Boeremark (farmers market) for breakfast. It is not the conventional sit-down breakfast. You simply arrive and watch people buy everything from their weekly meat and eggs, to leather belts, etc. Then there are food stalls where they sell “boerewors” rolls, melkkos, pancakes (not those silly things Americans call pancakes, which are really crumpets or flapjacks), samoosas, and more. We first had condensed milk coffee, which is a real treat! After strolling around checking out the food stalls I started off with 2 bacon and vienna rolls, where the bacon is wrapped around the vienna and then fried. One of my friends also had one of these rolls and the other one had melkkos. We strolled among the stalls some more and the other two decided that they would have some crumpets, but since my wife made us crumpets at home on Friday night, I decided to have some real pancakes. The line was long and by the time I was about 5 people from the front, they ran out of pancake mix. No big deal! Since I had two of the vienna and bacon rolls, I reckoned that I had enough anyway. So, we ended the morning off with some more condensed milk coffee.

I took my camera along in case I saw something interesting. At such a “boeremark” all kinds of things can popup, and that is when I saw this sign:

Direction signs are sometimes helpful, but other times not!

Of course, to understand this sign, it will really help being South African!

I also saw this black man making his wire trinkets and selling them on the spot.

A black man hard at work making his wares!

Those were the only photographs I snapped while at the market.

As an extended family we all decided to go watch the afternoon show of the new Avengers movie. After the movie we quickly popped into a local store, and then we headed home. When we got home I saw that moon was floating at a nice angle, so the first thing I did after returning home was to grab my camera and tripod, set it up outside and started taking pics. I tried a whole lot of settings, but here it is:

-- Hardware -- Camera: Sony SLT-A37 -- Lens: Sigma DG 15-500mm 1:5-6.3 APO HSM  -- Manual Settings -- Shutter: 1/125s -- Aperture: F14 -- ISO: 200 Focal Length: 500mm -- White Balance: Manual 3900K -- Metering Mode: Spot

So, that was my Saturday!

Slow day at Moreleta Kloof Nature Reserve–2015-04-11

I visited MKNR last weekend and it was a very quiet day. It isn’t a big reserve, in fact, it is in the middle of one of Pretoria’s up market suburbs, Moreleta Park. At a brisk walking pace you could walk through the reserve in a couple of hours. Somehow, the zebras, impalas and blesbucks evaded me. I walked right around the reserve, and discovered that they had all settled on the front lawn of the Rademeyer Restaurant on the reserve. I also sat at the bird hide for at least half an hour and never saw one bird there. It was one of those days.

 

Anyway, here is what I did capture…

Springbok

 

Helmeted Guineafowl

 

Bridge over … peaceful waters

 

Bad hair day!

 

Serenity in the woods

More of my photographs can be seen at my Flickr account.

Roodeplaat Nature Reserve–2015-03-21

So, last week I read a bit at South African Birding Spots, and discovered that there is yet another nature reserve that I could go to and be there in about 30 minutes. That is the Roodeplaat Nature Reserve.

I visited Roodeplaat on Saturday morning, arriving there just after 06:00. It opens at 06:00 and I wanted to be there when it opened. It really took some time to eventually get in, even if I was only the eighth car. Once I got in I decided to stick to the tar roads for a while first, just to get to know the lay of the land.

While I was riding I saw a part of the Roodeplaat Dam and decided to follow a dirt road that seemed to go that way. After following the dirt road a while I decided to turn back to the tar road as the dirt road didn’t seem to go anywhere specific. I stayed on the tar road until I saw a bird hide to my right. I stopped the car and walked to the hide.

 

 

I sat at this hide for quite some time. I saw an African Wattled Lapwing at a distance. Slightly closer I saw some Grey Go-away birds.

 

 

After that I carried on with the tar road and eventually came to a T-Junction. Right led to the exit, and left took you further into the reserve. I turned left. I soon came to the reserve’s offices where I saw a sign that said, “Bird hide.” I decided to follow that, which led me onto another dirt track (with lots of stones and smaller rocks). After driving a while I came upon a split in the dirt road. A bunch of arrows pointed left and one pointed back. “Hmmm. Which one?” I went left, and after some time realized that there probably was no bird hide on that road. I turned around and returned to the split and carried on with the other side of the split. Not too long and I came across a beautiful kudu male. He tried to be very nonchalant, and even tried to hide behind some branches and leaves (see the slideshow below), but I spotted him and still got my photograph.

 

 

After the kudu I decided to continue; just to get to another split in the dirt road. I decided to just take the middle one. Eventually I got to the second bird hide. I sat here for some time too. I got to see 2 White-breasted Cormorants, a Squacco Heron and some swallows. I was hoping for so much more.

 

 

As I was walking back to my car, I saw that the tree on the other side of my car was covered in Barn Swallows. It was just amazing to see so many together. They eventually took off, and within minutes a couple of Lesser Striped Swallows came and sat in the same tree.

I wanted to stay longer and cover some more of the reserve. However, while I was driving down the dirt road I realised that my car’s fuel light was on and that my tank was low. Because I didn’t know the rest of the reserve, I decided to pack up and leave (to fill up) and to return another day.

I will return to the reserve soon, perhaps even this coming weekend. It is hard not to compare things with one another. Entering this reserve I had no idea where to go and which roads led to what. You are kind of left to your own devices. What I like about Rietvlei Nature Reserve is that they give visitors a map of the reserve so that you could at least have an idea where the different roads go. Roodeplaat had nothing like that. Also, getting through the gate wasn’t that easy. While we were still sitting in our cars waiting for the gate to open, one of the security team came around and we could enter our information in a log book. Once we got to the physical gate, it had to be done again, even though the first guy was there with the others. It could be that the slow entry was due to the day itself. Maybe the next time I go, it will go better. Next time I will take my own map that I get from Google Earth.

 

Created with flickr slideshow.