Safari Udate - Lake Manyara

I met my safari group this morning at Arusha Coffee Lodge, had a nice breakfast and loaded up the Land Rovers for the first leg of my second safari. Our destination was Gibbs Farm, in the Ngorongoro highlands outside of the village of Karatu.

The drive took a few hours, and in my vehicle I got up to speed on world politics and world events that have occurred over the past few weeks. For some reason I didn’t expect updates on Brad Womack, the current star of the tv show The Bachelor. Lol.

Our rooms weren’t ready when we arrived, so we took the oppportunity to have their wonderful coffee out on the veranda. The late morning breeze in the highlands is like no other, and it felt like coming back home. The staff at Gibbs Farm haven’t seen me in a few years, and it was great to be back.

Gibbs Farm is a quaint place to stay that has wonderful organic food for all of their meals, and I don’t lie when I say that the best, most fresh food in all of Tanzania is served there. I don’t know the current count, but I remember that they employ 100 to 150 peole from the surrounding area to help run the accommodation side of the business, as well as tend to the coffee and farming of food.

We went on our afternoon game drive in Lake Manyara National Park, and as usual the vervet monkeys and olive baboons were there to greet us when we arrived. Since the sun was getting low in the sky, we decided to leave the forest to see what was going on near the lake’s edge. Not much, actually. Just a bunch of Leopard Tours vehicles (yuck).

We did stop to shoot a few giraffes at the edge of the forest, and I was hapy to get something from the afternoon. I have to admit that it was fairly slow, as we saw few elephants or giraffes. I was in Tarangire a few days ago, and there were tons of both on the other side of Lake Manyara, so that must explain the lack of them over here.

We had a wonderful dinner at Gibbs Farm, and I could see the jetlag on my guests’ faces, and we turned in early for the night. Tomorrow is Ngorongoro!

Safari Update - A Day off?

Today I said goodbye to my safari group from our Ngorongoro Camp. I had great time getting to know those whom I had not met before, and also a great time reconnecting with past travelers of mine. I know that I have one of the best ‘jobs’ on the planet, and one of the biggest bonuses is being able to say that all of my customers I can also call friends. 

After I said goodbye to my guests, Troy and I headed over to Tarangire for the day and night. The purpose for the side trip was to shoot compelling video of the Thomson Safaris camp as well as to get some footage of their happy customers, camp staff and guides.

Upon entering Tarangire, the first thing we saw was a few very large herds of elephant. It was like a welcoming party, since they must all know that my favorite animal out on safari is the elephant (giraffe is a close second). The Tarangire River was flowing freely, which was the first time for me to see it overflowing in many years. A good sign, for sure.

We arrived at camp around lunch time, after a beautiful drive around the edge of the Ngorongoro Crater, past the Iraqw people’s town of Karatu, across the Maasai Steppe and into Tarangire National Park. The temperature this afternoon was, well, much much warmer than any of the past week or so.

We shot video all around the camp, primarily with my new Cinevate Atlas 10 slider, as we were after a high production value end result. I will try and post some samples on Vimeo when I return home. We also shot video of guests returning from their afternoon game drive, as well as a staged dining scene amongst the large and ancient baobab trees. Again, the Cinevate slider was used as much as possible, as well as simple straight shots with no movement on the slider. We captured some great interviews with the staff, and recorded audio on my Roland R-09 via a wireless lav mic setup.

Tomorrow I will be back in Arusha to shoot some video of the Thomson Safaris office staff, and then on to Arusha Coffee Lodge for dinner and then to greet my second safari group as they arrive from overseas. I will not post an update tomorrow, due to my having nothing to say. It’s a first, I know!

Safari Update - Ngorongoro

Today is this safari’s last day of game drives, as my safari group will be going home tomorrow. We were up at 5:30, and we were ready to get to the bottom of the crater at 6am, when we are allowed to do so.

Again, we met up with the lion pride along the Munge River and spent a few moments taking inventory of what we had to photograph. We noticed that most of the pride was missing, so we looked around with our binoculars to see where the lion cubs were. We spotted a few lions up on Mawe Meusi (black rocks) and headed in that direction.

Well, we hit pay dirt. As we drove up all 4 lion cubs were running and jumping all over each other, while the adult females and 2 adult males ignored them. The show lasted for at least minutes, and this was one of those challenging photo situations where they would run behind and amongst tall blades of grass. Talk about autofocus hell. They wouldn’t stay still long enough to manual focus, so my approach was to bump the ISO from 800 to 1600 and stop down the lens to f/11. Why? Depth of field. If I missed my focus point I could rely a little bit on an increased DOF to bail me out.

The drive around Ngorongoro is amazing, because you think you are close to the middle, but you aren’t. You also see things in the crater that may be less common somewhere else, like lions hunting in the middle of the day. I like my guests to have their best day on their last safari day, so we worked hard to find something unique and uplifting. We watched the moments after the birth of a baby thomson gazelle, and sat and watched his first steps. Gosh, how amazing it is to watch the first few minutes of life outside of the womb. It took a little while for the little guy to get up, and once he was up his mother would walk a little to make sure he was getting strength in his legs.

I ran into some friends of friends today from South Africa, and you should check out their blog. They are driving across Africa in 70 days, and they are updating their blog on a daily basis. www.serengetitrip.com. We chatted for a while in the middle of the crater, and we parted ways after a good chat. It rained heavily this afternoon, and I ended up taking 2 of my guests back to camp early as they were under the weather. The rain on my tent was one of those things that felt foreign to me, as I have spent the past 8 days on a fairly dry and dusty safari. Very refreshing, to say the least.

Safari Update - Ngorongoro

I woke up 5 minutes before one of the staff came and brought hot water to the tent, and I cherished that 5 minutes of silence. The Ngorongoro winds were minimal, however the chill had settled in and I didn’t want to get out of bed. I felt alive this morning, as cool elevations often do, and once I was up and running I could not wait to get to the bottom of the crater. Uh, more like caldera. But I digress.

There is a pride of lions that hunts along the Munge River, and I often see them coming down from the crater’s edge at dawn. They hunt in the upper reaches of the northern Munge River at night, as their is a pasture that often has zebra, wildebeest and cape buffalo at night.

Well, we had great success today, as we were down at the bottom of the crater by 6:15 and over at the Munge a few minutes later. They were already inactive by that time, but we did notice a fairly noticable wound on a male cub. Poor guy. He did have a full belly, but I don’t like to see wounded animals. That’s just how I approach wildlife viewing and I tend to have a soft heart in this area.

General game was found throughout the morning, from buffalo to zebras to large bull elephants. The main highlight for me was a serval cat who was hunting along side our vehicle. I haven’t seen a serval in a little while now, so it was a good sight to see. He was actively hunting and eventually jumped high in the air to come down and catch his prey.

We also came very close to a mother black rhino and her subadult, and this was likely the closest I have ever been to a black rhino in the crater.

On our way to Ngoitokitok spring for lunch we found a lone cheetah (a total of 11 so far on this safari) in the grass. He was actively hunting, so we moved off and eventually continued on for our picnic.

After lunch I went back to camp a little early to shoot some video of the Thomson Safaris camp, as I need some more marketing video clips that can be assembled into a 2 minute video for my web site.

I took the time to clean my gear, clean my sensors and download my images from the past 2 days. I often skip downloading for many days, as I work with the staff to make sure all goes as planned. This takes time away from my own photography, unfortunately. It is my job, though, and I really love it. I work hard for my customers and trust that it is noticed.

Safari Update - Gear Used

Rather than give a morning wrap up of what we saw this morning, I thought I would write about the gear used by my safari group, as well as a few comments about them.

This safari has 11 participants, plus Troy (my assistant) and myself. The gear used is roughly split 50/50 between Nikon and Canon. We also have a Panasonic shooter, who has a pair of GH2 bodies and a GF1 for grab shots.

In the Canon camp we have 1DsMk3 bodies, 5DMk2, 1DMk3, 7D, and a few Rebel bodies. In other words a good sampling of the current available cameras on the market. Troy is primary shooting with the 7D for wildlife video, as 60p is preferred over 24p or 30p in many situations.

As far as Canon lenses go, we have 500mm, 100-400mm, the new 70-300mm, 70-200mm and smaller zooms. No issues whatsoever at this time with either cameras or lenses.

In the Nikon camp we have many D3s bodies, as well as D3, D700, D3x and D7000 units. The D7000 is the most intriguing to me, primarily based on the cost and ability to do video. We have had a D3s temporarily die on us, but it was caused by the dropping of the camera in one of the vehicles. All seems to be better after cleaning around the mirror (mirror was stuck).

The Nikon 200-400mm is the most popular Nikon lens in the group, and we also have 500mm, 600mm, 70-200mm, 28-300mm and other smaller lenses. The Nikon 80-400mm rarely shows up on these trips, as it has horribly slow autofocus. Nikon, please please update this lens.

We are all using bean bags to support our lenses, as they are the most stable and morphable solution out there. A gimbal could work, but you have to work fast. I have concerns about a gimbal head in the types of vehicles we are in, as they are slow to setup, the angle is often sub-optimal, and moving from side to side isn’t easy. In southern Africa they work great, though.

One of the most useful accessories I bring is gaffer tape. Before I leave home I make small rolls of tape that I can put in every camera bag pocket I can find. It helps with fixing eyepieces in place, image stabilization / VR switches and the fixing of sunglasses if broken. Almost every person on this safari has had their IS or VR button turn off without their knowledge. This happens when shooting in vertical mode on a bean bag. Gaffer tape to the rescue.

75 percent of the travelers are using Gura Gear Kiboko bags. The others are using various products from other brands.

Storage is a big issue on these trips, and a few people are shooting more than they anticipated. I always bring a few extra hard drives to loan out, just in case. As I migrate to larger and larger external hard drives (I am now using 1TB), I have extra drives in 250GB and 500GB to loan out if needed. I prefer that people bring laptops over Hyperdrives and Epson storage devices, as reviewing images at the end of each day is a great learning tool. We mostly have Macbook Pro laptop computers, and a few Macbook Air and PC laptops. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is the gold standard, with a single person who is using Aperture. One person is new to shooting, and hasn’t decided to go PC or Apple yet, and also between Lightroom or Aperture.

So that’s the technology in a short entry!

Safari Update #7

We left the Serengeti today, and made our way to the Ngorongoro highlands. Along the way we stopped at Lake Masek to photograph sparring giraffes, as well as a larger family group that was walking along the water’s edge. After a half an hour, we continued on our journey to the Ngorongoro Crater, which took much of the morning and into the early afternoon.

We stopped at the Oldupai Gorge (not the incorrect spelling of Olduvai), for fuel at the top of the crater rim, as well as for a picnic lunch. We ate underneath one of the largest fig trees I have ever seen, which provided more shade than I had ever seen from one. Truly marvelous. My guests commented on how green the crater is, as well as how much they liked the cool weather. It was probably 65F this afternoon, and I watched the crater floor as the passing clouds created shadows that looked like the spots of a dairy cow.

We arrived at camp around 2pm, and we took a nice rest until the light was good enough to go photograph some local Maasai near our camp. At 4:30 we loaded up and made our way to a boma nearby. Saitoti met us outside, asked us to come in and mingle around for a while. I helped Troy shoot some portraits, as he needed help with the strobe light setup. We used Pocket Wizards with his 580EX flash, with the flash set to manual. We mostly shot at 1/4 power, with the flash around 3 to 4 feet away from our subjects. He had a great time, and I was glad to help. The local ladies really like the Polaroid shots we gave away, and I should bring a small printer with me next time. I think Canon makes a Selphy model, which is battery powered.

I was happy to see that everybody was having a good time, and we went back to camp after 90 minutes of laughing, dancing and chit chatting.

The sunset was beautiful tonight, and I can tell that it will be cbilly tonight. No clouds equals chilly morning temperatures, for sure. The dinner tonight was local fare, with nyama choma (grilled meat), sukuma weike (spinach), maharage (beans), rice and chaati bread. My favorite Tanzanian meal at the end of a long and fruitful day.

Serengeti Safari Update - Ndutu

Today was our last full day in the greater Serengeti ecosystem at a place we call Ndutu, and it was one of the most photgraphically rich days we have had on the safari. Read on!

Just outside of camp we stopped for bat-eared foxes, and unlike most I have photographed in the past the 5 individuals were curious about us and didn’t run away. Typically they are quite shy and skiddish, and these were a welcome sight for me, as I don’t have enough quality photos of them.

Cheetah were next on our sighting list, and we watched 2 adult males walk the swamp edges for more than an hour. With a respectful distance, we watched them jump across water, play with each other and rest when they needed to rest. It was a great hour of entertainment, and the highlight was watching them both drink at the water’s edge with their eyes looking our direction. Oh, and their reflection in the water was the icing on the cake.

When they sat down to rest in the shade, we waited for 30 minutes to see if they would give us another show, but it appeared to be it for a while. We moved back to the main area of the swamp, and located the lion pride with the 3 cubs again. They were happy to be sleeping, so within minutes we found our next photo op that would last the remainder of the morning: zebras at a watering hole.

We photographed zebras coming and going in and around a large watering hole, and every few minutes a group would get spooked and would run through the water back to the safety of dry land. What great photos can be had in these situations, and it takes patience to get the right shots. I think I burned 10gb of memory in 1 hour, which is a significant burn rate for me. I just don’t shoot that many images, and I had to seize the opportunity.

After our lunch and midday rest, Troy and I spent a few minute shooting video testimonials from some of our travelers, as well as short interviews with the guides. Troy is shooting all of the video, and I am just acting as producer / interviewer. We did bring along high quality Sony wireless lav microphones, which really helps with the production quality. Audio quality is very very important!

We found a pride of 9 adult lions out on the open plains, who were seeking shade underneath a large acacia tree. Not much happened, but we were able to shoot some 60p slo-mo video of lions yawning, which may turn out to be interesting to see. After a little while we moved on and saw another 2 adult male cheetahs. They were extremely skiddish, and we left within a few minutes, as they weren’t interested in being near us.

On the way back into the acacia woodland near Lake Masek, we watched 2 adult male giraffes fighting. I have seen many many sparring giraffes, however this scene was an aggressive fight that could not be considered sparring. Male giraffes yse their necks and heads to deliver blows to each other, and timing the best time to take photographs can be tricky.

A short trip around Lake Masek followed, and we stopped a few places to shoot the flamingoes in the warm afternoon light.

Serengeti Safari Update #5

Today was our first full day in the Ndutu area, which is technically part of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, however it is still part of the greater Serengeti ecosystem. The NCA has more relaxed rules when it comes to offroad driving, which is a double-edged sword. It works great when you are all alone and have found something you would like to photograph, however if there is a ‘high value’ subject like cheetah then it can be challenging. Why? Because the natural tendency is to have a clear view of a subject, and that can turn into encircling a subject with vehicles. Responsible safari outfitters, like Thomson Safaris, know better than to do this, however some of the other less reputable and knowledgeable guides may not know what the best practice is.

We met up with yesterday’s lion pride with the 3 young cubs, however they were in the tall green grass in the middle of the marsh and it was difficult to get a good view.

We continued out onto the open plains, and spent time scouting for cheetah. Our hard work paid off, and we located 3 adult male cheetahs. We sat and watched for the rest of the morning, or about 4 hours, as they would sit up and take notice of the surrounding game. It took some time, and the 3 boys walked off to investigate and mark some trees nearby. After that, one of the cheetahs jumped up into a dead acacia tree, and he surveyed the area from his vantage point. It was awesome. High fives all around, as it was a great view of such a beautiful and graceful cat.

After lunch we went back out in the afternoon heat, and went straight for the wide open plains to the south and east of Lake Masek. We spent the whole afternoon following the wildebeest, as the were lined up and moving in single file lines. This is the part of the Serengeti that I find thrilling: herds of wildebeest and zebra.

As far as photography goes, my main goal was to use dramatic light to illustrate the wildebeest, and backlighting or 3/4 lighting (the sun is 45 degrees off of coming straight into the camer) was the right tool for the job. Wildebeest have a light-colored beard that lights up like fire when backlit, so this was my approach. This means that I had to find wildebeest that were walking at a 90 degree angle to the sun, as I wanted them walking across the frame and with their bodies sideways to the camera. I only found a few good opportunities to shoot in this manner, but it was what I was after.