This is one of the essential tourist stops in Bermuda. Located not far from Horseshoe Bay, from the top of this lighthouse, you can see most of the island. I like to stand up there and look out across the Sound and Hamilton Harbor on a calm day.
Today’s photo is of Detifoss, the most powerful waterfall in Iceland, and I’m stood right on the edge. I’ve talked about my fear of heights before on this blog, while photographing the Victoria Falls in Zambia. For some reason, I managed to avoid getting too worked up at this one. My travel buddy on the other hand had a bit of an episode. I didn’t realize it at the time, but she’d frozen right on the cliff edge a bit further down the gorge while I was taking the photo at the end of this post. Apparently she had to talk herself back to sanity and then crawled her way up to safety. She did manage to snap this photo of me just before I descended to get good and close to the torrent though:
I feel kind of bad for not realizing that my travel buddy was in a bit of distress, but I’m pretty sure she’ll agree that this photo was worth it:
We came to this bridge and as it wrapped around us, I decided I wanted to try and capture that, so I called for my driver to reverse. We could see a car coming up the single lane road behind us, but it was a distance away. You find you can see cars on the same road as you from a long way away in Iceland pretty often. Still, I felt the pressure as we were blocking the road. So much so, that I took this photo barefoot. The road was freezing. I don’t think I stopped hopping from foot to foot the whole time.
I’ve moved onto a new, larger external hard drive for storing my photographs. So, I went through all the photos I had left to process and moved them over to the new one prior to flying out to Africa. I was sure I’d processed all the Prague photos I was going to process but decided to take a look anyway. Then, I found this one. It won’t have made the cut originally because I was focused on trying to capture Prague with minimal people. Upon looking at this photo again, I decided I kind of liked it. The sky is beautiful and it doesn’t look so crowded as to be uncomfortable (which it can be sometimes). So, I thought it might be nice to show just how lively Prague actually is.
I’ve made it to Cape Town with sanity almost intact! I managed about 2 hours sleep on my first overnight flight from London to Bermuda. It was a dreary overcast day in London, just as expected. I summoned up the energy to spend a couple of hours taking photos, despite the rain. Following that I met up with a few friends from London I haven’t seen in a long time, and a couple of friends from Bermuda who I see all the time.
I set out for Heathrow Airport a bit later than I should have. It turns out that the Heathrow Express doesn’t run quite as often as the Gatwick Express. I wasn’t too late for the flight, but didn’t manage to pickup a few bits and pieces I wanted, like extra camera batteries, but I can get on fine without any of it.
The next flight was a long one, 11 hours. I really expected to crash out and sleep through most of it. Unfortunately I woke up about 5 hours before landing feeling refreshed! The last time I did this flight I’d had quite a lot to drink, so did manage to sleep through the whole thing, despite waking up briefly and discovering I was hungover. I spent about 4 hours on this one, watching movies, sat in the darkness, surrounded by sleeping people. I did reach a point where all I could think was please turn on the lights and people start moving around, I’m going insane.
Following that I had one last hop, from Johannesburg to Cape Town. A two hour flight with hardly anyone on the plane. I might as well have had someone book a private jet instead of this. I succeeded in sleeping through that one nicely!
Today’s photo is from my wander around London, I think I’ve got about 5 good pictures out of it, mostly of Tower Bridge. I was trying to find a way to create an image of the bridge that was more interesting than just a photo of the bridge. I fired off a lot of frames, and got lucky with this nicely blurred double-decker bus. In my mind I just wanted to catch the bus on the bridge, I was pleasantly surprised when my +2 exposure came out with the bus looking like this!
I don’t know what this is, but it looks pretty cool. We encountered this on our trip to see seals in the Northern region of Iceland. Just below the cliff there’s a beach. Just off the beach is a sand bar that a seal colony calls home. I took this shot on my way back, while waiting for my travel buddy to catch up.
Oh yeah, Happy New Year!!
I’ve had this idea for a little while of Macro Mondays. The problem is I haven’t been taking very many macro shots… they’re pretty fidgety and I really need to get a flash to pull it off properly! So, I’m not officially rolling out macro Mondays, but I took today’s photo with my macro lens and it’s Monday.
This was taken in a small pond in the Sensory Garden of the Botanical Gardens right next to my house. I don’t think I really got close enough to call it macro, but it’s pretty cool just the same.
My bags are actually all packed now, clothes and everything! I fly out in about 5 hours for London, where I hope to spend the day running around taking photos before meeting up with some old uni friends, and maybe current Bermuda friends, for lunch and maybe a pint or two. Packing for three weeks in Africa and one day in London is pretty tricky. We’re going to be traveling on a budget, so there will be lots of buses and trains and I had to keep my baggage to a minimum. My camera backpack is big enough on it’s own, not to mention whatever mammoth bag my travel buddy will be bringing, so I can’t bring too much else. As a result I’ve decided to forgo a proper jacket and I’m going with the layering concept. I’ll be wearing a long sleeved t-shirt, my trusty fleece and rain jacket. I’m pretty doubtful that this will do the trick when I’m out trying to take photos, so I’ve also packed some old thermals just in case. Oh yeah, and it’s supposed to rain all morning tomorrow. Hopefully it will be the typical English light rain, because if it’s pissing it down I’ll have a lot of time to kill with nothing to do!
I meant to get this out before Christmas, but as you are aware I got a bit lazy moving into the festive season. I figure it’s still okay so long as it’s out before New Years, right?
I dedicated a good part of today, one day before flying out, figuring out how to fit my camera gear into my brand new F-stop camera bag. At first glance, it’s a pretty awesome pack. They’ve designed a proper backpackers backpack you could hike with all day and fit space for camera gear inside. When I started packing however, I quickly became frustrated. It could barely take anything! I kept thinking, on their website they had loads of lenses, bodies and flashes all fit in. I kept trying. I even started considering which lenses to jettison. Eventually, after pulling out all of the dividers to try to come up with my own system, then forgetting how to put them back in, I logged onto the F-stop website. That’s when the words “those bastards” entered my mind. They’d cleverly removed all of the lens hoods from their lenses in their examples. Fortunately my fury was short-lived. I soon discovered that my lens hoods nest together quite neatly and fit in the handy upper compartment of the bag. Once I’d done this I had acres of space and numerous interesting configurations to play with.
Ready to go… just need clothes
For this trip, I wanted to keep my telephoto lens on my 7d-Mk II, ready for action, should a lion, penguin or whale shark cross my path, unannounced (it sounds like a joke, but I’m likely to see all three on this journey). I figured out I could lay it across the bottom of the pack. For a moment I tried to lay it across the top to keep it really handy, but the opening tapers at the top so this was not an option. With the 7d plus 70-200mm lens across the bottom of the pack I fit in the rest of my gear, lenses and bodies all separate. I sat back, pleased with myself. I even took a photo and sent it to my friend, who didn’t respond, funnily enough it was only exciting to me. Then, I changed my mind. One camera and lens ready to go wasn’t enough, I wanted my 5d-Mk II to fit with a lens attached as well. I don’t want to have to break it down every time I put it away. So, I settled on the configuration photographed to the right. There’s a startling amount of stuff in the bag, and I still have space in the top compartment.
I’ll write a fuller review of this bag after I get back from my first trip, but for the moment I’m pretty happy with it, despite my initial frustration. I’ll also keep you posted if I have an issues with it on a day to day basis as I travel around Southern Africa.
I love these Icelandic horses, and if I go back this year. I’ll be spending a night in a field just trying to get photos of these guys under the midnight sun. I never really put any time into photographing these horses when I was there last time. We came across this pair on our way back to the hostel. I was with my friend, who’s a vet. This is an important point because as I hopped out the car she said, in all her vet-ly wisdom, “You better be quick ‘cos they’ll run away from you. You’ll never get close to them.”
Johnny Peacock: Better Horse-Whisperer than Charlotte
Little did she know that all animals love me, including cats, which I’m allergic to. As this photo shows, she soon ate her words. As soon as I walked up to the fence the horses trotted right over and began striking poses.
I’m visiting her in Africa soon and I’m hoping that, this time, any large animals we encounter there, particularly the cats, will be more attracted to her than me!
If you’re wondering why I’m not wearing socks, it’s because my feet hurt and I was riding back barefoot, to let them air out. When we stopped I just pulled on a pair of sneakers I had in the trunk.
Tonight’s photo wasn’t taken from the angle you see there, though I think that may be gracing your computer screen soon. I took this shot shortly after the horses came over. These two seemed inseparable. The dark one lead the way and the tan one followed along. They stopped for a little cuddle right in front of me and I fired away. I’m not really happy with this photo. I’d have liked it if their heads were a bit closer together and if I hadn’t cut off their hooves. But, I did a quick preparation of all the photos I have left to work on while traveling and discovered that, including those I’m not quite happy with, I only have 26 left!! I’m going to have to be pretty active on my stopover in London and my three weeks in Cape Town, Mozambique, Zambia, and possibly either Botswana or Namibia to make sure I get enough quality shots to keep me going until my next trip!
Ah, Victoria Falls… I may be seeing you again soon. I just hope I can get over this bloody flu before flying out in two days!!!
