I have never really liked American muscle cars. It has always been a very personal thing, but I’ve just never really seen the appeal. They generally look and feel like they were designed and built a million years ago, with stone-aged suspension, boat-like handling, and enormous engines that seem to have, in relative terms, very little horsepower. Agricultural is what they have always been to me, the sledgehammer approach. I am, however, far from enlightened when it comes to muscle cars, and today I got the chance to drive a Shamrock Cobra.

The first thing I noticed was that this Cobra was a manual. Off the top of my head, all the Cobras I have seen in the past have always been automatic, and so are many other muscle cars. Greeted by a bright red exterior, with tailpipes down both sides, almost as if to ensure that both driver and passenger get an equal earful of noise, the next thing that surprised me was the seating position. One sits rather high in this car, almost like one is sitting on it, as opposed to in it. I find this rather strange for a sports car, especially when compared to say, a Lotus 7.

New local car blog, Road and Race, which I sometimes write for as a guest author, posted an article today about the 2011 Range Rover Autobiography Ultimate Edition. Limited to just 500 units, and a price estimate of £130 000, this super-luxury iteration of the Range Rover features an interior made of specially selected materials, such as machined aluminium, hand-crafted soft leathers, and even teak.

The rear seating is the real treat of this vehicle. Besides fully independent and adjustable rear seating, complete centre console, full extended leather trim and special Kalahari wood inserts on the door tops, and aluminium laptop table, there are two Apple Ipads mounted on the driver and front passenger headrests.

The domain which hosts this blog was formerly dedicated to Adrian Stanford Photography, my photographic business which I have run on side during varsity. Part of the reason for migrating my photography website to this blog is so that I can contextualise my photographs, whether they are from a personal of professional exercise, with a blog post. This is the first of the aforementioned.

I have a group of friends from varsity who constantly seem to be hiking up to the top of Lion’s Head. The invites seem to flood in at least once a week, and I’ve always found myself otherwise occupied, or coming up with excuses to (for no real reason) avoid this activity. Anyhow, I eventually decided to actually commit to an invite, and tag along, camera and all.

It turns out the hike is super easy, being accessible to people of most fitness levels, and with the one or two chain-assisted rock climbs on the way up, rather fun. As you might have guessed by this stage, the last time I went up Lion’s Head was either never, or when I was very, very young, in both cases resulting in not knowing what to expect.

This past weekend, whilst showing my support for JMR Records by making an appearance on the set of the shoot for the ‘Lead SA’ music video performed by Purple Hearts / @PH_band, I was very quickly roped in to becoming a slave to the set. Instead of being a casual by-stander, taking behind-the-scenes photographs, I was designated the job of operating what’s known as a cherry picker, which was used to raise the camera man 8 metres in the air for the final part of the shot.