Lighter

I very nearly didn't take my camera with me to the Cederberg this weekend. As I packed the night before I decided that I wanted a complete break from all electronic devices, and that, now, includes cameras. But I woke wondering what had I been thinking, and left with my camera packed.
I spent a very enjoyable dawn and sunrise looking at the fyn-ness of the fynbos through my macro lens, happy with the knowledge that these photos weren't about the photographs, or about others seeing them later; they were purely for the enjoyment of the act of taking the photos: of light catching my eye, of my mind creating an image to show off that light, of looking through my lens, of deciding angle, composition and whether to click the shutter or not (something which seems to have become extremely rare with the trigger-happy nature of digital photography).
Most images have been binned, some may go to the stock library, a few will be shared with you... I hope you enjoy!

Female restio inflorescence

Receptacle of sunlight

(I haven't worked out why, but I'm more drawn to flowers that are past their prime, they tend to be more somehow more interesting. (There's probably some message there...)

Brunsvigia flowers showing off the sunlight.

The place... Sneeuberg viewed across the valley from the wildly erroded rocks on the lower slopes of Wolfberg.

That evening, sitting around the fire with some special friends, laughter, conversation and song, I tested the limits of the Nikon D800 in low-light photography, and was utterly surprised with the result of the naturally fire-lit portraits, which managed to convey the ambiance of the evening.

I particularly love this one of Nina contemplating the fire, with her dad looking on in the background.

(For the technically minded, the ISO of the photo below was was pushed 2 stops from ISO 6400 to ISO 25600 and shot at 1/20sec, f2.8 using the 70mm end of my Tamron 28-70mm.)