Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge (Day Two): Clouds


Slow internet aside, I am having a lot of fun with this challenge and also getting to know many new bloggers in the process. Thank you to Cee from Cee’s Photography Blog for inviting me to join in. If you haven’t already, do give her blog a visit – she posts some wonderful photos and her challenges provide constant inspiration.

“The rules of Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge require you to post a photo each day for five consecutive days and attach a story to the photo (It can be fiction or non-fiction, a poem or simply a short paragraph) and then nominate another blogger to carry on this challenge. Accepting the challenge is entirely up to the person nominated, it is not a command.”

Today I am inviting Aletta from nowathome to play along. Aletta is lucky to live in the ‘Mother City’ of Cape Town and her photos are always a treat to see.

Today I am going to combine my post with two other challenges – Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, Clouds and Jude’s Bench series, Bench with a View.

You can see my first post in the challenge here.


Clouds

I love clouds!

When I was at university my meteorology lecturer was passionate about clouds. He asked us students to give him copies of any cloud pictures we took and he would pin them on the notice board for everyone to admire. Even though I never got to submit a photo, I think that is where my interest in photographing clouds began.

One of the first photos I ever took was of a cloud on a National Bird Count exercise I took part in in the Gona re Zhou National Park in Zimbabwe, probably in 1988.  I have since lost that picture but I clearly remember that it had uncannily taken on the shape of a dove, flying high above us while we scurried about below looking for birds.

Since then I have taken thousands of cloud pictures and I have found it quite a challenge today to select only quite a few for this post. (I can see I am going to have to do more than one ‘cloud’ post!)

This first photo was taken on the grounds of the Royal Livingstone Hotel.

A bench with a view

A bench with a view

This is the view from the bench – the spray from Victoria Falls.

The Smoke that Thunders

The Smoke that Thunders

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Photo a Week Challenge: Flare!


I love taking pictures of sunsets.  Every evening here is breathtaking and I have hundreds (possibly thousands?) of sunset pictures filed away in my not-so-organised filing system. So when I saw this week’s A Photo a Week Challenge: Flare I knew I would be able find something suitable. The problem was choosing just one photo!

I took this photo of a flock of African Open-billed Storks (Anastomus lamelligerous) a few years ago, while bobbing about in a boat on the Zambezi River – just above the Victoria Falls.

African Open-billed Storks

African Open-billed Storks

 

The Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge – Silhouette


The Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge – Silhouette

Photography is all about experimenting with light, and then positioning yourself (or your subject) in the right spot to achieve a certain effect. One such effect is a silhouette, in which an outline of someone or something appears dark against a lighter background. Silhouettes can be very dramatic and resemble black shapes without any details, but the effect varies from picture to picture.

Yello-billed Kites feasting on flying ants

Yellow-billed Kites feasting on flying ants

Crepuscular Yellow-billed Kites

Crepuscular Yellow-billed Kites

Midges dancing in the setting sun - Zambezi River

Midges dancing in the setting sun – Zambezi River

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Master of all he surveys

Master of all he surveys