The rock that made me roll.

After busy days on Thursday and Friday, I decided to relax, take some pics of animals at a nature reserve just outside Johannesburg.

This place is real nice, with tigers, cheetahs, white lions, rhinos, hippos, you name it.

I got some real nice shots, but what really sticks out from my day is the cheetah, I had The Citizen's 300mm F2.8, which is a big lens, and was taking a few shots of this cheetah when something seemed to rustle its feathers, so to speak. It got very angry, hissed, and the hair on its back stood on end, not wanting to lose the shot, I kept the camera to my eye and started to run for a new angle and ran straight into a very large rock, smacked my shins real hard and ended up rolling in the dirt. I manged to save the lens, but my legs were not that lucky.

I haven't had shins that sore since I was a youngster pretending to be good at skateboarding. I can just imagine that damn cheetah having a good laugh to himself.

Now I'm even boring myself.

You'll notice that I have quite a few entries on my blog complaining about the attitude of the police towards media - specifically me, I even thought to myself recently that I'm going to try not write too much about that anymore, but this ones a bit too hectic for me to ignore, as I find that the cops are constantly trying their best to hinder the media in their duties.

At a traffic accident, to stop me taking pictures Ekurhuleni Traffic Authority police jumped on me, choked me, bashed my head off the ground, kicked me, handcuffed me, locked me in the back of a very hot car for about an hour...
then they charged me with assault of all things.

I'm wondering if Ekurhuleni Traffic Authority police regard stopping a man from throttling you, as assault, anyway... chucked in police cells with a couple of house breakers, a thief, an illegal gun owner, a wife beater, and a man that I later found out murdered a man with a panga.

So, that was my day, it started out so well yet got so bad, so fast...

You'll also notice theres no pic with this entry, that's because I never got much of a chance to get a decent one, I was too busy getting roughed up, so sorry about that...

There's always one.

Police work on the scene of a cash-in-transit robbery in Malvern near Johannesburg.
There's always one, isn't there! When I get to this scene, I'm standing outside the crime scene-as I always do, I then hear this guy shout at me "WHO ARE YOU!", I duly tell him, he then decides he wants to fight, not being one to back down I proceed to take pics. This guy just carries on, damnnit, the guy would not shut the hell up, telling me his name is Koosie, (shock!), even though he is not even a cop, he works for Group 4 Securicor, I tell him to back off, and do his job as I am doing mine, then for some reason -he felt it appropriate to throw a fifty cent coin at me, I'm sure he needs it more than I do , but anyway. He thought it was funny, I guess.The cops couldn't be bothered this time, simply doing their job, so this time, unlike the last umpteen times, it was just some random idiot and not a cop hassling me.
You can't win, it seems.

Yet another victim

Emily Williams's guitar teacher, Michael George plays "Una Dia en Noviembre" during a memorial service for the twelve year old that was shot in the head during a gun battle between security guards and robbers in Randpark Ridge near Johannesburg.

Yet another victim, Emily probably didn't even see it coming, as she was in the back of her mothers car, when the gunfight broke out, she was probably looking forward to meeting her friend and going to school, but because of the scourge that we have in this country, she now lies dead underground, whilst the scum that are destroying this country are still alive...

God, how I wish we could could change that, bring back the death penalty, I'll gladly become the executioner and I promise you that I will sleep well everynight.

Jet Park fire

A large LPG fire at a chemical warehouse in Jet Park near O.R Tambo airport. This fire was huge, and it was raining quite hard, which makes me wonder just how immense this fire could have been on a dry hot day.

The barrier for the public was about 500 meters back , but as I was arriving, an ambulance was coming through, so I simply pulled a "Neil"- I get as close to the back of it and simply follow it through, as if I am supposed to be there. Nobody questioned me.

I stopped here with various forms of emergency workers and shot my pics, I was drenched, but the heat from the flame was still quite intense. This pic was put on the front page of The Citizen newspaper, unfortunately the printing let me down a bit...