So I missed the sky challenge...

BigAl

...but I'll show some anyway. These are pictures around my hometown of Pretoria. Yuri asked me to show South African winter pics sometime back, so here they are:

looking south towards Johannesburg. The aloes flower in winter...




looking south-east. I live in the suburb in the centre of the pic...




looking north-east at downtown Pretoria (trying to get fancy with the sun :huh)...




looking north-west...




These pictures were all taken from an old fort which has been turned into a museum. A series of these forts were built to protect Pretoria from the British during the first and second Anglo-Boer wars...




One of the exhibits in the museum is this homemade cannon. It was made by blacksmiths who used the iron from wagon wheel "tyres" to make the barrel. You can see the bands on the cannon. When they got the barrel to be strong enough, it could hurl a 3kg shot up to 1000m. It was used to great effect against the English in the first war.




Hope you found this interesting, and thanks for looking

regards
alan

bfjr

Really neat series
Thanks for showing. I always like seeing what other places look like and you images here give me a good view of a place I've never seen, except on the Boob Tube and you know they never tell the truth.

Thank you

Andy

lovely set! thanks for sharing...

gpgold

BigAl wrote:

...but I'll show some anyway. These are pictures around my hometown of Pretoria. Yuri asked me to show South African winter pics sometime back, so here they are:

regards
alan

Alan,

Thanks for sharing. At a recent conference here in Los Angeles I spent some time with Mitzi Classen, a therapist who works with neurofeedback, she is from South Africa. I took her out to see some of the mountains (they're small) near Malibu, California. The name for the kind of environment is chapperal. She related to me that the area I took her to is very much like what she would see at home. Your series shows how true that is.

regards,

Gary

Yuri Pautov

BigAl wrote:

...but I'll show some anyway. These are pictures around my hometown of Pretoria. Yuri asked me to show South African winter pics sometime back, so here they are:

looking south towards Johannesburg. The aloes flower in winter...





looking south-east. I live in the suburb in the centre of the pic...




looking north-east at downtown Pretoria (trying to get fancy with the sun )...




looking north-west...




These pictures were all taken from an old fort which has been turned into a museum. A series of these forts were built to protect Pretoria from the British during the first and second Anglo-Boer wars...




One of the exhibits in the museum is this homemade cannon. It was made by blacksmiths who used the iron from wagon wheel "tyres" to make the barrel. You can see the bands on the cannon. When they got the barrel to be strong enough, it could hurl a 3kg shot up to 1000m. It was used to great effect against the English in the first war.




Hope you found this interesting, and thanks for looking

regards
alan

Alan, spasibo for your message - I nearly missed such an interesting post by you!
You live in a beautiful places!
Can we see your photo (next step?:-)
Yuri
P.S. what about water?
Yuri

USAIR

Al
Great group of photos

Thanks
Fred

Hauer

Very nice photo series! They bring back many memories as I used to live (amongst many other places) in Johannesburg too. Used to travel daily between Florida Park and Bedfordview via the western bypass! Can't say, I miss that!

Thanks / Baie dankie for sharing.

Cheers - Herman

Yuri Pautov

Yuri Pautov wrote:

Alan, spasibo for your message - I nearly missed such an interesting post by you!
You live in a beautiful places!
Can we see your photo (next step?:-)
Yuri
P.S. what about water?
Yuri

'your photo' means your selfportrait
'about water' means my question about clockwise/counter-clockwise turning of the water in a sink...

Spasibo,
Yuri

BigAl

bfjr wrote:

Really neat series
Thanks for showing. I always like seeing what other places look like and you images here give me a good view of a place I've never seen, except on the Boob Tube and you know they never tell the truth.

Thank you

We all know the disinformation given out on the tube

Thanks for looking Ben.

regards
alan

BigAl

andy wrote:

lovely set! thanks for sharing...

Thanks Andy!

regards
alan

BigAl

gpgold wrote:

Alan,

Thanks for sharing. At a recent conference here in Los Angeles I spent some time with Mitzi Classen, a therapist who works with neurofeedback, she is from South Africa. I took her out to see some of the mountains (they're small) near Malibu, California. The name for the kind of environment is chapperal. She related to me that the area I took her to is very much like what she would see at home. Your series shows how true that is.

regards,

Gary

Hi Gary, she's probably from Cape Town, which has pretty much chapperal type vegetation.

thanks for looking.

regards
alan

BigAl

Yuri Pautov wrote:

Alan, spasibo for your message - I nearly missed such an interesting post by you!
You live in a beautiful places!
Can we see your photo (next step?:-)
Yuri
P.S. what about water?
Yuri

Hello Yuri, you can see what the bird people call a butt-end-view of me in my avatar! A larger one is available off my smugmug pages.

I replied about the water on one of your threads showing the little girl with the tomatoes (I think). The tests I've done show counter-clockwise, but it's such a tiny effect, it's easy to disrupt. I will find out more for you.

thanks for your comments.

regards
alan

BigAl

Herman Auer wrote:

Very nice photo series! They bring back many memories as I used to live (amongst many other places) in Johannesburg too. Used to travel daily between Florida Park and Bedfordview via the western bypass! Can't say, I miss that!

Thanks / Baie dankie for sharing.

Cheers - Herman

Dagsê Herman, dankie vir die kommentaar!

I can't say I blame you for not missing the the traffic on the western bypass. It gets worse every year! You should see what it's like between Pretoria & Joburg these days.

thanks again
regards
alan

BigAl

Sorry for bumping this old thread up again, but I've been playing around with the maps and have mapped the pics, so you can see what the fort looks like from the satellite.

I've also mapped my beach pics.

It's quite painful fine-tuning the positioning, as it is pretty much a hit and miss affair. Google could look to implementing some kind of right-click which gives the coordinates under the mouse cursor.