Bishops in the Cederberg with a camera

Some Bishops pupils (wearing in their boots!) with geography teacher Phil Court, and Esther Mostert and Timm Hoffman from the PCU (Photo S. Jack)

Every year the entire Grade 10 class from Bishops Diocesan College in Rondebosch, undertakes an ‘Epic’ hike in the Cederberg mountains. This year is no different. In November, the Grade 10 class of 123 pupils will spend 16 days in the Cederberg area, split up into smaller groups and hiking along various routes, accompanied by their teachers.

One of these teachers is Phil Court, who heard about Timm Hoffman’s work at the PCU using repeat landscape photography, when he attended a talk Timm gave to the Friends of the Rondebosch Commons in October. This sparked an idea to explore adding a further aspect to the ‘Bishops Epic’, namely that of repeat photograph. Ultimately this lead to Timm Hoffman and Sam Jack giving a presentation to the Grade 10 class, before they headed off on their hike. Timm focused on a broad background to repeat photography and his interest in landscape change, and Sam focused on exploring how to locate a historical photograph and some advice for taking a well-matched repeat. Sam had also selected a number of historical photographs in the Cederberg which are in the vicinity of the routes that they groups will take, so that they can try and take a repeat photograph if they recognise the landscape on their route. Esther Mostert also attended the talk and had a poster up about the rePhotoSA project which she helps to manage and which engages with the public to contribute repeat photographs to the collection at the Plant Conservation Unit.

We hope that these talks have inspired an interest in repeat photograph in some of Bishops learners and that they will be able to take some repeat photographs during their hike in the Cederberg and thereby contribute to the growing database of repeat photographs, here at the PCU.

Article by Esther Mostert