baa

I've spent a fair bit of time this year at the Cape Heritage Hotel, taking photos of the stunningly renovated rooms and all the quirky details throughout the hotel. It's been a very inspiring job, thanks to the efforts of the the new owners, Victoria & Johan Nel, and interior architect Lisa Bond. All the rooms are completely unique, and where possible they have left parts of the original details showing through. Anyway, we have finished the website, so if you wish to see a bit more of my "work" work, go have a look at www.capeheritage.co.za.

They are also running some last minute end-of-year specials, so if you're in the Cape between 24 December and 7 January, and would like the opportunity to stay at a luxury boutique hotel for reduced rates, contact them at info@capeheritage.co.za or phone +27 21 424 4646, and just mention that you heard about them from pic of the week!


I fell in love with this pair of sheep that you'll find grazing on the carpet in one of the halls of the hotel.

seaweedy stuff

yikes! I tried to take December off. Well, off urgent work at least and on to all the other work that needs to get done but doesn't have a deadline so just gets shoved out the way, but guess what?! Yup, still been busy doing all the things that are urgent, but fortunately the calendar finally reached that "urgent" status, although I must admit I wasn't expecting quite so much admin! Next year I'll be more organised and won't leave it to the last minute! (hahahaha... ahem... sorry, I digress...)

I managed to find a few moments at sunrise to wander down to the beach and play with my new toy. Oh, how I love macro photography - the actual act of taking the photos. Or to be more precise, the act of looking through the lens, swaying slightly to see the composition change as the focus shifts, the depth of field being so narrow at a few mm from the subject. I think there were more than a few startled dog walkers and joggers going past seeing me with my nose practically in the sand!

Anyway, there were all these bubbles within bubbles, and bubbles on seaweed, and seaweed well, you get the idea!...



some seaweedy stuff on the beach sand, which admittedly I found the most interesting to look at - so much detail on the teeny bits of seashells, and the translucent stones... mmmmm!

to give you an idea of scale, I photographed my fingertip (sorry it's blurred, difficult to still the shakes with one hand!)

2009 pic of the week calendar

For the past few years I've made a calendar for my family's Christmas pressies, but due to the fabulous feedback I've had from it, I've decided to make the 2009 version available to all of you on the pic of the week list. It's an A3 calendar (folding to A4) with a month to view, featuring a selection of landscapes from the pic of the week.

I'm going to print them to order, and I already know some of you want to order them for Christmas pressies, but please just email me with the quantities as well as your delivery address. The cost is between R110 to R140 excluding postage (the cost per calendar goes down the more I print, so I can only confirm the final cost when I have all the orders in.)

All orders must be in by the evening of Wednesday 10 Dec, so I can go to press on Thursday and have them done before the printer goes on holiday!


I'm still working on the layout, but this is basically what it will look like.

kinky pine

I was camping at my uncle and aunt's farm in the Outeniqua Mountains this weekend for my cousin's wedding (the kind of wedding where the bride wears wellies (painted cream of course), that takes place under the trees next to a mountain stream, where the guests are seated on rustic benches made from hacked invasive alien wattles and then are each given a tree sapling to plant somewhere on the farm). Anyway, while my sister was making tea and I was collecting pine needles for my bed from one of the remaining alien trees, I spotted this kinked pine needle. I subsequently found another two that were similarly kinked, and while I have a couple of ideas, if anyone knows how or why some of them do this, I would be most interested to find out! (and yes, a recent photographic commission has provided me with a long-awaited excuse to purchase a new toy - this is shot with the Nikkor 60mm Micro lens... yummy!)


kinky pine needle (shot at 1:1)


the whole of the tip of the kinky pine needle