My camera was at the repair shop for much of this week, which gave me a great excuse to shoot more pictures with my iPad.
The perfect rose, shot in a garden in Northcliff. Once you get used to using it, the iPad is great for still-life/macro shots. Just find the perfect angle, hold your hand steady, and wait for it to focus.
Even though shooting photos with an iPad does not look very cool, I really, really enjoy it. An iPad might be clunky when compared with an iPhone, but it’s a heck of a lot easier to cart around than a Canon 60D. Using it to take pictures makes me approach photography in a different way. There’s no zooming, no wide angles, no aperture or shutter speed adjustment, no cropping, no dodging and burning. Best of all, there’s no card-reader. iPad photography is all about taking advantage of composition and light, which is what I love best about taking pictures. (The Instagram filters help too.)
Here are some of my favorite shots from the week, taken at the Lucky 5 Star and around Melville.
Cat on a parquet floor.
Yellow truck, yellow flowers. Seventh Avenue, Melville.
Sharp cat, blurred garden.
Black Coffee, in Melville’s Bamboo Shopping Centre. Possibly the most beautiful shop in Joburg.
Grilled veggie, pesto, and haloumi sandwich from the Service Station, also in the Bamboo Shopping Centre.
Jewelry for sale from a vendor on 7th Street, Melville.
One of my favorite shots ever of the Melville Cat. As Mia from Roets Uprooted commented recently, “Cats make such great Instagrams.” Especially this cat.
I’m not giving up my Canon just yet. But after two years of gluing my left eye to a DSLR viewfinder, it’s fun to get back to basics.
How have I never blogged about 44 Stanley Avenue, the coolest shopping and dining complex in Joburg, which is only five minutes from my house?
I guess it’s wrong to say I’ve never blogged about 44 Stanley; I’ve mentioned it countless times over the years (see here and here) when writing about specific restaurants or shops that are there. But I’ve never written a dedicated post about 44 Stanley as a destination and it’s about time I did – especially now, with the holidays upon us.
I’ve been dreadfully uninspired lately, struggling to think of anything I want to blog about despite having a long list of great ideas (many of which you, my readers, provided in September). I’m finding it hard to feel positive about life at the moment. But on Saturday Thorsten and I got the chance to visit Indwe Park, an indigenous garden and sculpture park in Braamfontein, and I knew I had my topic for today.
Given this week’s political nuclear bomb blast, it feels like a weird time to publish a light-hearted post about my recent (pre-election) jaunt through the United States. But I’m hoping you’ve have had enough of the U.S. election horror show – I know I have – and are ready (at least temporarily) for some wholesome American travel adventures. If so, please read on about my four-day visit to Maine, the northeastern-most state in the lower 48, with my sister, Susanna.
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It makes me smile, when I see it.