Birthday Hike

We planned to celebrate Elaine's birthday in the mountains...in style....well not quite. For us a hot shower, real bed and full course meal is luxury, compared to tenting or sleeping in caves as we normally do. It does come with its disadvantages though, too many people and usually those of the wrong type as we found out. Without going into detail we never slept at all on Saturday night, continually woken up by noisy, inconsiderate and rude people, on a tourism conference hosted by the local government authorities. This bad experience left a bad taste in my mouth and a diminished confidence for the future of our country. The managers of the Lodge paid us back our money in full and were not prepared for the unorganized and disorder that happened that weekend.
All was not lost as we thoroughly enjoyed our hike up from Royal Natal National Park to Witsieshoek Lodge and back the following day. The hike up the Mahai Valley was great with all the rivers and waterfalls flowing strongly. We walked in mist most of the way, a blessing as the next day was a scorcher.

Our return hike was back through The Crack and down some chain ladders into the Mahai Valley and very scenic.

 We arrived back at Royal for a picnic lunch by the river. Thanks to the birthday girl Elaine, Thora, Mark and Irene for a nice time with lots of fun. To see the rest of our photos please go to.......http://richardhuntphotographer.blogspot.co.za/p/blog-page_24.html

Flowers & Thingies (Macro Photography)

Flowers & Thingies

This is an account of my introduction to macro photography. Father xmas brought me a new toy, a Canon 100mm L  f2.8 Macro Lens and this last weekend was able to try it out in the Drakensberg....more exactly on our hike from Royal Natal National Park to Witsieshoek Lodge. I enjoy landscape photography but the best time for good light is early in the mornings or late in the afternoons and because I enjoy all the thingies along the way have taken to macro photography to fill in the gap when the light is bad during the middle of the day. What I realized is that it is not easy to do macro photography on the move. I did take a tripod but after the 2nd photo stopped using it as it is time consuming, especially when walking with a group of hikers who have no interest in stopping continually. I soon found out that it is better to focus manually as the auto focus is very limited and does not work well when photographing close up. Most of the time I had the end of the lens about 8cm  from the subject and found out that even a 1mm movement changed the focal point in an instant.....so I practiced holding the camera as still as possible, taking a few photos of each subject which would end with maybe one usable photo. To get decent sharp images a studio type set up would be best, but of course all the beautiful thingies are hidden in the wilderness. The more I looked into the beauty around the more I was consumed in it, getting totally lost in my thoughts....totally drowned in the peace of nature. On the last hill just before Witsieshoek Lodge were the most flowers and the rest of the hiking group got there 1 hour before me, as a whole new world opened up before me!!  I would say that I am totally hooked on macro photography....just love it. I shot most of the photos on 200 ISO @ f2.8   so the fast shutter speed compensated for my shaking. Most of the photos have a very small area in focus as you see....I did this on purpose so as to achieve a light blurry feel to the photos, more artistic than exact. The bad blown out light during the day which is terrible for landscape photography, at times enhanced the macro photography giving it an airy overexposed look.

To view the macro photos I took please click on this link...   http://richardhuntphotographer.blogspot.co.za/p/blog-page_23.html