All sorts of things:

I've had a birthday (12/12, last Saturday) and spent it on the top of Table Mountain. I left home at 8 to join the first cable-car going up and then walked +- 1 hour to the highest point; Maclear's Beacon, where I stopped for some rest in a little shady cave, before walking back via a different route, giving me extensive scenic views to either side of the mountain top. Always breath-taking and always wonderful!

Last week I did a job in Stellenbosch and it was hot hot hot. On my way back I stopped off at Spier, where I took this photo of the young owl at Eagle Encounters. Apparently the owl is 7 weeks old in this picture...

My mother ... at age 96 she is suffering through an outbreak of SCABIES at her care home this can only be due to poor hygiene practices there... horrible to think about, nasty little skin parasites that make her itch and itch and itch! YUK. Thus I have been avoiding her - no kisses, no hugs, no outings in my car, all for fear of the little mites infecting my family too. Of course that makes me feel guilty at neglecting her, because I know that my visits are the highpoint of her existence. Awfully frustrating.

The year has surely flown by in a flurry of speed. We've had very high winds here on Sunday; reports state that it reached gusts at 178 km/h causing damage to our house and many other structures, as well as smashing yachts at the marina and blowing the roof right off a school building. Front page news.

I'm proud of my two wonderful children : my daughter who has worked very hard and earned the praise of her superiors at the advertising agency she works at as a designer; and my son, who has completed Grd 9 with good marks and will be entering his final year of high school in 2010.

Go visit them too and

I wish all of you a wonderful end of year, happy holidays and a relaxing time with family.

Please understand that I may not have time to get back to all of you who comment or kindly fav my work. Do know though, that it makes me very happy that you enjoy my work and I appreciate all comments and wish to thank you all very much.






Please respect copyright - © Irene McCullagh 2005-2009
All rights of this gallery are reserved to *substar* - Irene McCullagh. None of the images may be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted or uploaded in any way without my written permission. You may not alter or merge an image to create a derivative work. My work does not belong to the public domain. Thank you.

All sorts of things:

I've had a birthday (12/12, last Saturday) and spent it on the top of Table Mountain. I left home at 8 to join the first cable-car going up and then walked +- 1 hour to the highest point; Maclear's Beacon, where I stopped for some rest in a little shady cave, before walking back via a different route, giving me extensive scenic views to either side of the mountain top. Always breath-taking and always wonderful!

Last week I did a job in Stellenbosch and it was hot hot hot. On my way back I stopped off at Spier, where I took this photo of the young own at Eagle Encounters. Apparently the owl is 7 weeks old in this picture...

My mother ... at age 96 she is suffering through an outbreak of SCABIES at her care home this can only be due to poor hygiene practises there... horrible to think about, nasty little skin parasites that make her itch and itch and itch! YUK. Thus I have been avoiding her - no kisses, no hugs, no outings in my car, all for fear of the little mites infecting my family too. Of course that makes me feel guilty at neglecting her, because I know that my visits are the highpoint of her existence. Awfully frustrating.

The year has surely flown by in a flurry of speed. We've had very high winds here on Sunday; reports state that it reached gusts at 178 km/h causing damage to our house and many other structures, as well as smashing yachts at the marina and blowing the roof right off a school building. Front page news.

I'm proud of my two wonderful children : my daughter who has worked very hard and earned the praise of her superiors at the advertising agency she works at as a designer; and my son, who has completed Grd 9 with good marks and will be entering his final year of high school in 2010.

Go visit them too and

I wish all of you a wonderful end of year, happy holidays and a relaxing time with family.

Please understand that I may not have time to get back to all of you who comment or kindly fav my work. Do know though, that it makes me very happy that you enjoy my work and I appreciate all comments and wish to thank you all very much.






Please respect copyright - © Irene McCullagh 2005-2009
All rights of this gallery are reserved to *substar* - Irene McCullagh. None of the images may be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted or uploaded in any way without my written permission. You may not alter or merge an image to create a derivative work. My work does not belong to the public domain. Thank you.

I attended a big air show at Bredasdorp Air Force Base Overland last weekend. On my own I set off at 4:30am
on Saturday morning to be on the airfield at 7am. I had obtained media accreditation and was to attend a briefing.

The weather was patchy - dry windy spells and rain squalls. To cut a harrowing story short: a +- 50 year old English Electric Lightning ZU-BEX from Thunder City [link] crashed, pilot Dave Stock unable to eject. I have been finding it very hard to get past this event. I stayed overnight at Napier - barely able to sleep, replaying the events and since then have been editing photos from the day and have been in touch with air crash investigation officials, to whom I've given a disc of my hi-res images in sequence for them to piece together a time-line.

Should you have any interest in the air show photos, I have put them in my gallery here: [link] (Select Air Show from the menu)

The pilot, Dave Stock, was a 46 year old father of two, veteran test pilot with 15,900 flight hours. Heroically he steered the sticken jet (reporting hydraulic failure) away from the big crowd and attempted to eject, but trajically was unable to and perished with the craft.

Last night I reached melt-down after spending hours reading tributes and letting my tears flow.

RiP and great respect.


+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~

Please understand that I may not have time to get back to all of you who comment or kindly fav my work. Do know though, that it makes me very happy that you enjoy my work and I appreciate all comments and wish to thank you all very much.






Please respect copyright - © Irene McCullagh 2005-2009
All rights of this gallery are reserved to *substar* - Irene McCullagh. None of the images may be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted or uploaded in any way without my written permission. You may not alter or merge an image to create a derivative work. My work does not belong to the public domain. Thank you.

Unfortunately the subject line does not refer to those lovely candies, which are not available here ;-(

Well hello my friends. As usual I've been pottering around doing this and that and not getting around to dA at all.
Thanks to all who have visited my pages, left kind comments and favourited my work, I do appreciate it very much!

This weekend my father would have been 102 years old. I took my 96 year old mother for a very pretty drive. She could barely manage the 20 paces from my car to a bench - it's really so sad seeing someone you love just fade away.

BUT Summer is supposedly coming soon. Monday we had a bad night of thunder, lightning, huge gale force wind and lashing rain. It was officially termed a "hurricane"; something we really don't normally here here in Cape Town. It caused 5 deaths and a great pile of damage including blown off roofs. Our garden looks like a war zone and a gate ripped off its hinges.

I've been doing more event photography of belly dancers (my jelly belly title comes from this).

I'm busy editing these photos at the moment; hope to get them up on my website soonest.

Anyway : this is just a quick wave at everybody! Lots of love all around

Please understand that I may not have time to get back to all of you who comment or kindly fav my work. Do know though, that it makes me very happy that you enjoy my work and I appreciate all comments and wish to thank you all very much.






Please respect copyright - © Irene McCullagh 2005-2009
All rights of this gallery are reserved to *substar* - Irene McCullagh. None of the images may be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted or uploaded in any way without my written permission. You may not alter or merge an image to create a derivative work. My work does not belong to the public domain. Thank you.

My mind and the rest of me have parted company several weeks ago. I'm really not 'cracking it', so to speak. My mum hovers between physical healing and mental decline. She's in her high 90's and has lost the will to live... it's really draining on an emotional level, and physically also demands a huge lot of my time and is an endless financially headache, what with the Med Aid collapsing and huge accounts rolling in constantly.

Going out and taking photographs cheers me up temporarily in an introspective type of way - I find post-processing therapeutic, especially if I can listen to music in an attempt to clear my head while doing so.

On another note : I'll probably be off-line for most of this weekend, due to rearrangements of my desk and work-space.

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Please understand that I may not have time to get back to all of you who comment or kindly fav my work. Do know though, that it makes me very happy that you enjoy my work and I appreciate all comments and wish to thank you all very much.






Please respect copyright - © Irene McCullagh 2005-2009
All rights of this gallery are reserved to *substar* - Irene McCullagh. None of the images may be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted or uploaded in any way without my written permission. You may not alter or merge an image to create a derivative work. My work does not belong to the public domain. Thank you.