Page 17 - Cape-Camera-March-April-2021

Cape Camera March/April 2021

February 2021 Outing

(sitting – from left) Doug & Kim Stevens, Kumar Paramasivam,Colleen & Mike de Villiers, Trudi & Nicol du Toit (standing – from left) Roger
Trythall, Marianne Meyer, Steph Hughes, Anna Morris, Richard Goldschmidt, Judith Dodds, Robert Maginely, Barbara & Detlef Basel, Neels
Beyers. Photo by Joyce Goldschmidt.
Exploring the beauty of the Franschhoek valley

by Richard Goldschmidt

A fairly late notice of an The convoy then headed off on the Robertsvlei gravel road, the
outing to Franschhoek on back road into Franschhoek. Half way along one nears the Berg
Sunday 21st of February River Dam again and the idea was to see if we could get water
resulted in a great response scape images from that angle. Time was running short and we
from our members, with 20 found we would have to walk quite a way, so we decided to
of them being able to at- rather move on.
tend. It would have been Detlef, however, went off exploring on his own and found an-
more if not for one mem- other road to the water which allowed him to drive all the way
ber getting the date wrong, there, much to the rest of us’ later resentfulness when he told us
and others feeling ‘out of about his good luck. We congregated at the Hugenout Monu-
sorts’. We were blessed with ment for the challenge of who could take the best photo. Un-
early morning drizzle and fortunately, officialdom had locked the gates and so we had to
hence a partly cloudy sky use our long lenses from afar.
and cooler weather. The idea then was for each car to go their own way to explore
All the cars gathered at the the farm roads or to go into the town to see what they could
intersection of the R310 shoot. An hour later everyone was invited to get together at
and R45 promptly at 10am the Rickety Bridge vineyards and restaurant for a late lunch.
and we set off in a convoy,
Photo by Kumar Paramasivam with the first stop being the The owners did us proud, and our convivial and leisurely lunch
old railway bridge that crosses the Berg River. One objective was only finished after 3.30pm.
of the day was to take pictures of our forthcoming set subject, People then headed off in different directions, with some going
‘Water in the landscape’. The Berg River disappointed, but the over the Franschhoek Pass to photograph the Theewaterskloof
railway bridge was a bit of a hit. Moving on, we turned off the dam in the late afternoon.
R45 and headed up to the Berg River Dam, where we crawled Contrary to what people may think, Franschhoek valley is dif-
through a hole in the fence and photographed the Dam and sur- ficult to photograph. Farms are all fenced off and have high
rounding mountains. hedges, power lines run across the landscape, and the town it-
We found some good scenery along that road that was worthy self is busy with tourists, most of the old architecture has been
to stop the cars for and try our luck with landscapes. That done, ‘commercialised’. Anyway, I think all of us enjoyed the outing . I
we retraced our route back to the R45 and headed to the well- certainly saw some amazing infra-red photos from Kumar and
known ‘Lavender Cottage’ to see how we could photograph it have high expectation of Roger Trythall’s photos as he seemed
differently. The gate being open, some of us took a few steps to be coached by Steff Hughes on achieving perfection.
onto the property, only to be chased off by farm security, so that We were fortunate on our choice of weekend to visit as the next
was fairly short lived, but we got some shots. In future we need weekend all the mountainous areas that we had photographed
to find out when the lavender fields are in bloom before we try went up in smoke in the devastating fire that burnt for days.
again.
Cape Town Photographic Society 16