Category Archives: Photography

Kilimanjaro Mountain Medicine Expedition 2016 – Photo teaser

A few photographs from the 2016 WildMedix Kilimanjaro Mountain Medicine Expedition, courtesy of our expedition photographer, Chanel Rossouw (@chanel_r).  More to follow!

WildMedic Blog: Aesthetic update & more images

I’ve been tweaking the aesthetics of the blog to improve the user interface and make things, well, prettier.  Have a look and tell me what you think!  It is now integrated to include more images, including my Instagram feed.  I am finding Instagram a very handy way of expressing photographic creativity:

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Let me know in the comments if you like the new interface and/or images!

Random Photo – Glacier Walking

A small group of glacier walkers is dwarfed by the magnitude of the ice as they descend towards the edge of the Perito Moreno Glacier, Argentine Patagonia.
A small group of hikers is dwarfed by the magnitude of the ice as they descend towards the edge of the Perito Moreno Glacier, Argentine Patagonia.

A quiet moment on call has me trying to make inroads into the photographs from our Patagonian explorations last October.   Here’s an image that was immediately emotive:  A group of hikers on a guided exploration of a small part of the Perito Moreno Glacier as dwarfed by the immense magnitude of the ice.  I love the mystery and majesty of glaciers; the idea of such harsh hardness being in constant flux, constantly flowing between accumulation and ablation while appearing immobile.  You can explore a glacier for an entire day, convinced of its permanence, and then return the next to find the landscape changed, fresh and beaconing with new discoveries.  The mute whiteness from afar disguises endless shades of blue, and the stark purity of the ice unfolds to reveal the pebbles and dirt it has collected along it’s course, like a child of the wilderness who can’t return from an adventure unsoiled.

Patagonia photos are coming…

Yip, the blog has been somewhat silent the last few months.  Life, in contrast and by way of explanation, has been very full.  I hope to post some more content soon, but rest assured that I am working on it in the meantime.  Here’s a random snippet:  Fran in Torres del Paine, Patagonia, looking epic (and relieved) in her First Ascent gear, descending from the (closed for winter) Garner Pass.

Fran looking epic in her First Ascent winter gear
Fran looking epic in the snow

Hyobanche sanguinea

Hyobanche sanguinea
The Cat’s Claw, Hyobanche sanguinea, photographed in the Witteberg Private Nature Reserve

Although I was mostly taking laid-back ‘holiday photos’ during our trip to the Witteberg Private Nature Reserve this past long weekend, the chance to photograph these two specimens of the fascinating “Cat’s Claw”/”Katnaels” plant Hyobanche sanguinea was too good to ignore.  The small bright red plants are easy to spot along the routes through the Karoo scrub, and their soft ‘furry’ texture really does remind one of a cat’s soft feet.  The lack of anything resembling a normal leaf puzzled me, and I was therefore interested to learn that H. sanguinea is in fact a holoparasitic plant, extending an underground stem which extends dendrites that tap into the vasculature of host plant roots, allowing the parasite to extract water, minerals and substrate.  A single Cat’s Claw can grow to 15cm (most we saw were less than 5cm) and can tap into many different host plants.  More info on the plant and related species here.  Like so much in nature, beauty hides the savage truth…