Meerkats.. one of my favourites…

A phone call from a friend had me drop everything .. dash home for my cameras and off the the Golf club… No, Ernie Els, or the like, had not shown up, but the young meerkats had come to visit…

700 odd photos later, mostly taken on 3 per second setting, I had a bag full of interesting photos… they are so fast and that special moment is difficult to capture on single shot…

They soon got used to me being among them and played away checking every now and then to make sure I was keeping a look out for eagles and hawks… when they looked at me I looked to the sky as though I was the look out on duty… they’d also check to make sure I was doing my job and then got back to their playing with each other… I felt extremely privileged when they came over to check my scent…

Or maybe they thought my feet stank as the meerkat quickly past and scent marked my takkie… well lets put it this way he peeeed on my shoe…

But it was their playing and mock battles that fascinated me and is going to bore you for the next few posts… here’s a sample…

HEY BULLDOG! LOOK!

Hello Ohio…. thanks for loving me

Why do they grow so quick..??

As I paged through a few files today I came across these photos… and asked the question, why do they grow so quick?

This is my youngest Grand Daughter, who just continues to grow and grow…

From this….

To this, in no time what so ever…

I hope she slows before she competes with this…

My problem is … as fast as she grows … I grow older…

To publish or not to publish.. that is the question..

Apologies to William Shakespeare… hell if he can read this then good luck to him… Once more I have reached a cross road in my book scenario…

When I began with the book it was to share stories from my growing up, something my family felt I should do for future generations of our family… this was never done to be published, but my writing took on a life of its own and the more Linda read the more she encouraged me to write with the intention to publish….

I wrote and re wrote and then did so all over again. My English was terrible and this I felt would be the deciding factor “To publish or not to publish”.

The Good Lord put Anneli’s blog on my email list and after quite the while I had found an Editor… I think she regretted taking on this book in the beginning.. her question to me “do I understand the passive word or passive verb”, brought tears to my eyes and my answer being “what are you talking about?” I think brought tears to hers. But it gave her a better understanding of my terrible knowledge of the English language… However with perseverance she turned my book into something I love..

Then came the questions from others “Are you going to include photos?” My answer in the positive was made without even thinking it through…

A book with photos is going to cost between $ 69 and $ 89… this puts it out of the market before we begin.. yet without photos, or maybe just pencil sketches we come to a publishing cost between $5 and $8… far more reasonable… but would people be interested in my story, my escapades and experiences? I’m not sure of the answer to that….

So do I publish this as a book and eBook and follow with a coffee table photo book later, is now what I have to decide… a coffee table book of my photos is a lot cheaper when not including 300 pages of my stories… What to do, what to do, is where I find myself… could this giraffe give me the answer?

Maybe I should hop on a plane and go somewhere … maybe I’ll find an answer…

Until I come to a decision … I will continue to bang my head against the wall….

Back to the Past…

How often do you return to look at certain photos you’ve captured? Having nearly 60 000 photos saved on my computer (I really need to delete the bad ones, that would reduce it to about 20 000) I often page back through the files.

One that I always spend time looking at is the file with over 200 photos I took when finding the flamingos in the middle of the city… I really love the captures I got that day and will never delete a single one (bad or not.)

So here are a few I do enjoy, you might have seen them before….