Above all net beauty

This week Patti Moed of the esteemed Lens-Artist quartet encourages us to look up and share our interpretation of what we see; go-see what she sees.

Above all net beauty

I toiled with the idea to post a few print screens of the spreadsheets I was working on. The Lookup function in Excel is used a lot when working with data. Fortunately I realized in the nick of time that I actually do have a life and decided against an Excel tutorial…

My next option was to copy Patti as I have recently photographed the interior and the exterior of a church (be it a very different one). But then I realized I wasn’t brave enough to copy her and let that idea go (her surname Moed, translates to courageous in Afrikaans).

Saturday I took my daughter to a beautiful, but very expensive place – Stellenbosch. Expensive, as she is studying at Stellenbosch University next year… She wrote NBT (National Benchmark Tests) which is compulsory if studying there. As it takes a few hours I decided to go and capture something. Photography is such a testosterone driven activity with all the things you capture! It surprises me that the Lens-Artist quartet are female!

What I am featuring today I didn’t plan to capture, it captured me.

Soccer is known as The Beautiful Game (even before Christiano Ronaldo’s shirtless poses, ladies). Some sources claim that the great Pele was the first to coin the phrase, but it can also be due to a marketing ploy to claim just that. In South Africa there was a Cricketing marketing campaign built around the slogan: “I don’t like Cricket, I love it”. I grew up with Rugby and Cricket and Soccer was only introduced to me in my adult years at my workplace. It is actually quite incredible, the banter male adults can get up to in either supporting their team or shooting down the opposing team. I was into soccer for the banter and it was fun making an opposing teams’ supporters mad. Was fun – as responsibilities grew, time became limited, but even today there is a fantasy league at work based on the English Premier League (EPL).

But I wasn’t thinking of all of this when (unlike energetic soccer players) I ambled onto this field. Standing on this soccer field in the Jonkershoek Valley between 2 mountain ranges, on the first day which could be deemed Spring (weather wise), I realized that regardless of the quality of the soccer played here, it will always be beautiful.

The goalkeeper’s view

An opposing view

The Beautiful Game evolves around the beauty of a ball being kicked above and beyond the goal keepers reach, into the net. If a player manages this regularly the soccer community looks up at him and the Beautiful game loves him. Looking up at the trees I decided that a ball in the net is not a prerequisite for netting beauty.

Beauty in the net

Look up

Announcement by organizers: in the unlikely event that the game is boring, for today only we have special offer at no extra cost, look up and enjoy nature!

This soccer field has very limited facilities but if it should be rated, based on the beauty of its location, it may be the highest rated stadium in the world.

location location location

Beauty cycling in beauty, the road next to the field. Great place to jog as well

My daughter and I after her test enjoying something at Katjiepiering restaurant in the Stellenbosch University Botanical Garden. Of course this is a legitimate photo – we are looking up at the lens!

A song of ascents. Psalm 121

¹ I look up toward the hills.
From where does my help come?
² My help comes from the Lord,
the Creator of heaven and earth! 

Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” John 11:11 -12