Author: DMcA

In April 2025 I visited Moravian Tuscany, a beautiful part of Czechia to the east of Brno, which itself is in the south-east of the country. This area exhibits a unique folded landscape, seen only in Moravia, the original Tuscany region of Italy, and in the Palouse in northwestern USA. Apart from being a very attractive wine-growing region, this area is famous for some classic landscape views, usually involving a small element of the folded landscape in dappled sunlight. There are three recommended times for visiting: April, when the landscape is largely green, May, when dramatic reds from poppies and crimson clover appear, and September, when the landscape is golden and brown. The April photos are shown in this album.



I arranged to go back again in May to capture more shots of this amazing landscape, but with a splash more colour. This time I went with a different Czech photographer: Emil Čelustka. Emil has probably done the most to popularize this area, and he has personally discovered numerous unique locations. He is an excellent guide and has over a hundred amazing spots he can take you to. We were very lucky with the weather on this trip, I got all the shots I was looking for, and had an amazing time. I highly recommend Emil as a guide and as a photography tutor. This album contains the best of the photos from my May visit.



Unlike my previous guide in this area, Emil is a full-frame shooter, so I brought along my Nikon Z7 full-frame camera, with a new 150-500mm Tamron lens and my trusty 24-200 Nikon medium telephoto. The camera performed well, although I would say with no better image quality than the much smaller and lighter Olympus OM-3 from the earlier trip. I normally include detailed geolocation data on every photograph, but have omitted it here, as the exact location for these shots is part of the local guide’s stock-in-trade, so I don’t want to give this away.





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Budapest has the most beautiful river front of any city I have seen. This is both because of the magnificence of the buildings, constructed when the Austro-Hungarian empire was at its peak, and the absence of intrusive modern buildings near the waterfront.



The daytime weather was almost cloudless for the whole weekend. This was not ideal for river scenes, but I took several shots of the iconic chain bridge that joins Buda to Pest, and the spectacular architecture on the Buda side. In the evening these amazing structures were lit with a golden glow which set against a jet black sky made quite magical images.



These photos were taken with my OM-3 camera, and the Panasonic 14-140mm (28-280 FFE) or the Olympus 9-18mm (18-36 FFE). I am increasingly impressed by these two lightweight travel lenses, and can see no quality impact of using them versus my larger pro glass. They enable the OM-3 to be an outstanding travel camera, as good for discreet street shots as long exposure river scenes.



Budapest should be the perfect European city. It has beautiful architecture, great jazz and classical music, and excellent art galleries. It’s not perfect for me though because despite trying quite hard, I only had one above-average meal the whole time I was there. Hungarian food makes few concessions to those who want a lighter style, and alternative cuisines from other countries are almost all poor imitations and mostly downmarket. This is the only thing that stops me going back.



>Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience. And for information on the shot, be sure to click the little ‘i’ icon

After my April landscape photo trip in Moravian Tuscany, I took the train across Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary (three countries, no border control, no passport checks) to Budapest. I arrived on the Easter weekend, for my first visit to this beautiful city. These are street photos from the stay.



The weather was bright and sunny, and most of these shots were taken in the early morning, with the light low and strong. I took my new OM-3 camera for the entire trip. This is about the perfect travel camera for me; uncompromising performance for landscape and birds, but small, light and non-threatening for street.



My interest in street photography is in people and the story that can be told or the questions that might be raised by a single image. For the image to work, as Cartier-Bresson has said, the photographer needs to capture the “decisive moment”. My technique is therefore very similar to the one for birds in flight. This involves fast shutter speeds, high burst rates, and long focal lengths. From a sequence of shots of a scene, I chose the right expression or movement to capture the decisive moment, just as with birds in flight.



For all of these photos, I have provided a description about what I found interesting about the shot, and what you might look for in these and other street photos. Click the “i” button when looking at each photo, and you will get more insight into why I wanted to show you the photo. The “i” button also gives you information about the camera settings, and allows you to like or comment on the photo.



>Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience. And for information on the shot, be sure to click the little ‘i’ icon

Some photographs of small things from our March 2025 trip to Cape Town.



Most of these shots were of Autumn budding plants in our garden in Noordhoek. Many of them were taken in the morning, just after the irrigation had finished, so they are covered in little sparkling water droplets.



These are hand-held macro photographs, mostly taken at about a 2:1 ratio (full-frame equivalent) – which is to say that the image appears in the sensor at about double its actual size. Micro four thirds system cameras like my OM-1 are particularly suited for macro shots because they keep about twice as much of the image in focus as a full-frame camera. They are also very light and have excellent image stabilisation.



Despite that, macro images are not easy to take. The final images are composed of 5-20 separate frames, each of which has only a sliver of the plant in focus. By stacking all of these frames together, it is possible to get an image in focus almost from the front to the back. That’s the theory, but in practice keeping the camera stable for the sequence of shots is very hard.


Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience. And for information on the shot and the location, be sure to click the little ‘i’ icon

Sea photographs, from our March 2025 trip to Cape Town.



These are mostly long exposure shots of the southern Cape coastline. I have been taking seascape photos of this area for 15 years or more, and thought I had run out of locations. But this trip, my friend and neighbour Martin showed me several more, and inspired by this, I found other new views and locations I hadn’t shot before. Once again, this trip reminded me of the great beauty of the granite and sandstone geology of the Cape coastline.



Long exposure shots result in a lot of light entering the camera, and as a result, Neutral Density (ND) filters (a bit like sunglasses) are needed to get a normal exposure. Fortunately, my OM-1 camera has a unique computational photography feature called “live ND” that removes the need for most physical ND filters. This eliminates the risk of losing physical filters into the foaming briny (which I have done a great deal). All these LE shots were taken with live ND using a new and simplified workflow, which makes the normally complex LE process very fast and easy. I have written about this and the whole area of ND in a couple of recent posts on this site.



Another clever computational feature of the OM cameras is “live composite”. This enables the capture of moving lights across a scene, like star trails, car lights, or train movement. No other camera system has this, and it can be very effective. I have included three of these shots in the album, including one of the first morning train to Simons Town, which I am particularly pleased with.

Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience. And for information on the shot and the location, be sure to click the little ‘i’ icon

Beach people photographs, from our March 2025 trip to Cape Town.



The first set are from Fish Hoek beach in the southern Cape. This a favourite location for local families as it is on the Indian Ocean side of the peninsula, and the water is warm. It also has a great beachside cafe, and always an colourful array of people of every shade and age.



The second set was taken at Glencairn beach a bit farther down the peninsula. This is a popular surfing location, and close to my all-time favourite coastal breakfast cafe and restaurant. On this occasion there was a windsurfer absolutely flying up and down the coast. I had my birds in flight kit with me, and I thought that it might be interesting to use BIF techniques to capture the motion. It turned out quite well, and I think I caught her absolute joy and the drama of the scene.





Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience. And for information on the shot and the location, be sure to click the little ‘i’ icon

Some photographs of birds, mostly in flight, from our March 2025 trip to Cape Town.



The first set are of Cormorants. These birds are usually difficult to photograph in flight, as most of the time they just stand around and occasionally flap their wings. Even when they fly, it is low and fast and usually away from you. Plus they are very dark in colour – in fact I had thought they were black. . As a result of this, I have never got a Cormorant shot I liked. However, on this trip thanks to a great tip from my friend Martin, I visited the Inkata Island nature reserve and got more and better shots than I could imagine. Inkata is home to a colony of very active Cormorants. They were not only very busy, but also demonstrated their very dinosaur-like appearance, and great appetite for bits of twig. Not exactly cuddly, but very impressive.



The second set were taken at the Kom in Kommejtie and are of Sacred Ibis. The Sacred Ibis is my favorite bird, but I have taken very many shots of them in the past. Every so often though, they will oblige with a lovely flying position or a particularly magnificent demonstration of their surprisingly colourful wing feathers, so here are some of the best.

Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience. And for information on the shot and the location, be sure to click the little ‘i’ icon

A while back I watched a YouTube video about a Czech photographer, Marek Ondracek. He takes remarkable landscape photos using the Olympus OM-1 in high-resolution mode. I was so taken with his compositions and technique that I got in touch with him and arranged to spend 3 days in Czechia in April 2025 on a private workshop.



The area we went to is called Moravian Tuscany, and is to the east of Brno, which itself is in the south-east of the country. This area exhibits a unique folded landscape, seen only in Moravia, the original Tuscany region of Italy, and in the Palouse in northwestern USA. Apart from being a very attractive wine-growing region, this area is famous for some classic landscape views, usually involving a small element of the folded landscape in dappled sunlight.



Photographs of this kind are taken at very long focal lengths, often up to 400mm, which is unusual for landscape work, but which compresses the geographic folds to produce a very pleasing image. This was my first time taking this kind of landscape photo, and the weather wasn’t ideal, but I got some reasonable images, and learned a huge amount. I hope you like them





Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience. And for information on the shot and the location, be sure to click the little ‘i’ icon