Chavonnes Battery Blog - Page 2

TITLE: I could hear leopard crying in pain after it was shot
CATEGORY: Stenin Press Photo Contest: TOP NEWS 3rd Place

PHOTOJOURNALIST Ajay Kumar received an early morning call to say a wild leopard had been spotted near houses in Lucknow, India. When he arrived at the scene, he followed a crowd of people, including police officers, who chased the animal until it was cornered in a house. When a police officer fired at the leopard, Kumar captured the moment, which won him the third prize in the hard news category of the prestigious Andrei Stenin International Press Photo Contest. This remarkable image is one of 67 of the contest's award-winning pictures on exhibition at the Chavonnes Battery Museum in the Waterfront until February.

The grand old Castle of Good Hope and its coastal Cannon batteries like the Chavonnes Battery were the watchdogs that guarded Table Bay and its road-stead from invaders in the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries.

Foreign ships making landfall at the Cape were expected to fire a salute of blank shots on entering the bay, not only to signal their friendly intentions but also as a greeting. The salute would be answered by the coastal fortifications – on the understanding that a ship which did not fire a greeting might be met by a volley of cannon-balls.

Between its completion in 1724 and 1860 when its 16 big muzzle-loading cannon bellowed for the last time, the Chavonnes Battery fired innumerable such salutes on the arrival of visiting Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French, English, Swedish and Danish merchantmen plying the route to and from the Far East. 

On that day in 1860 when the battery thundered out its last its last salute for more than 140 years, Queen Victoria’s young son, Prince Alfred, pulled a lever that tipped the first load of rubble into the sea at the start of building the breakwater behind which the wharf's and quays of what is now the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront were to be built.

But since the early years of the 21st Century the mighty music of the guns has returned as salutes are fired from the Chavonnes Battery to mark various special occasions.

Jenny Stromvoll was awarded WINNER of the Compact Camera Category in the 2017 Underwater Photographer of the Year competition. Her image, ‘I’ve got my eye on you’, was taken in Mozambican waters with a Cannon camera.

She recently visited the Underwater Photographer competition photo exhibition at the Chavonnes Battery in Cape Town to view her handiwork.

A photo by Simon Norfolk depicts a gate at the U.S.-Mexican border. In this night-time image, Norfolk captured the flight of moths in neon light, their trajectory resembling twisted strands of wire. “And what is the light?” Little wonders. “Is it what we think it is? I don’t think the light is even what Americans think it is, not to mention people from impoverished regions in Central America. I think we’re all trying to fly to that light too.” [Myles Little]