Heading back to Africa!

I am heading back to Africa this afternoon for another safari adventure. I am leading a safari for 10 people in the country of Botswana. We will be splitting our time between 3 camps, all in and around the Okavango Delta. I have a 3-day extension to Mombo at the end of the safari, which will certainly be a treat. We have scheduled a decent amount of helicopter time from my friend Peter Perlstein of Okavango Helicopters, and I hope we are able to come home with some great aerial wildlife shots. One can only hope.

I will have no access to email during my safari, so please understand that I will reply to all emails when I return.

Wide World Magazine

Wide World Magazine in the UK has just published an interview with me, as well as an article on travel photography. Here are the links:

Wide World Magazine - front cover image of my Elephants and Clouds image.

Wide World Magazine - Interview with Andy Biggs

Wide World Magazine - "How to Take Better Travel Photographs" by Andy Biggs

Namibia trip report (Part 5 - Namib Rand and Wolwedans)

This is the 5th trip report from my latest safari to Namibia You can read my Namibia trip report (Part 1 - Skeleton Coast) entry, Namibia trip report (Part 2 - Serra Cafema) entry, my Namibia trip report (Part 3 - Namib-Naukluft) and finally my Namibia trip report (Part 4 - Lüderitz and theSperrgebiet) if you have not already done so.

After two successive mornings of shoots at Kolmanskop, it was time to fly over to the NamibRand reserve, one of the most beautiful locations in Namibia. The NamibRand reserve has some excellent wildlife, albeit sparse. This is one of the areas where you one can take wildlife-scapes of gemsbok (oryx) amongst green and yellow grass and also small red sand dunes. We spent two nights at the luxurious Woldedans Dunes Lodge, and it was a great opportunity to spend some time photographing landscapes, as well as some wildlife. On our only full day in the area, we had overcast skies for almost the entire day. This made landscape shooting a challenge, however soft light is actually a positive as long as you don't include the sky in your photographs.

From an equipment standpoint, the area lends iteself to longer lenses for both the wildlife and the landscapes. The Sony 70-400mm lens was on my camera most of the time, and the images that I captured need a fair amount of processing for me to be happy with them. Given my schedule as of late, I suspect this will get punted into August or September before I have the time to work on them. Kind of sucks, but I am working hard on Gura Gear business, running a safari in Botswana and doing color consulting work for Moab by Legion Paper.

Wolwedans Dunes Lodge, amongst the red sand dunes

The Mars-like landscape of the NamibRand. We had an amazing show of light and clouds on our first evening.

The dining area at Wolwedans Dunes Lodge.

Cheese.

Namibia trip report (Part 4 - Lüderitz and the Sperrgebiet)

This is the 4th trip report from my latest safari to Namibia You can read my Namibia trip report (Part 1 - Skeleton Coast) entry, Namibia trip report (Part 2 - Serra Cafema) entry and finally my Namibia trip report (Part 3 - Namib-Naukluft) if you have not already done so.

After Sossusvlei and the Namib-Naukluft Park, the first safari group and I flew back to the capital city of Windhoek. I said goodbye to everybody and headed back to the Olive Grove for some relaxation, laundry service and emails. After a few hours I saw some of my next safari group, and I went back to work and went back into 'host' mode.

The next morning we headed to the airport to board our private charter to Lüderitz, along the southwestern coast. Lüderitz is an unusual place, as it still has the colonial German feeling to it, and it is quite isolated. It is bound by the coast to the west, the impenetrable sand dunes to the north, and the Sperrgebiet diamond mining around to the south. There is only 1 major road in and out. The primary reason to travel there was for us to photograph the abandoned mining town of Kolmanskop. Kolmanskop (established in 1908) was not a huge town, but it was definitely a modern town in its heyday. It had electricity, a gymnasium, bowling alley and many other creature comforts of home.

On this trip I had a clearance issue for a 'working photographer' in the controlled diamond mining area, so the images below were pulled from some of my prior trips. There was some confusion as to who had applied for the work permit to operate there, so rather I put my camera down and helped my workshop participants instead of shooting.

The challenge with photographing at Kolmanskop is the extreme dynamic range. This is a great place to practice your HDR skills, however I have never liked any HDR output from my own efforts. For some reason I just don't like the look, and I would rather clip a highlight or have deep blacks, as it looks more realistic to my eyes. The abandoned buildings are an excellent study in reflected light, and there are extremely bold colors inside many of the homes. Most of my exposures from my visits to Kolmanskop are between 1 and 5 seconds with a 16-35mm lens. The Sony 16-35mm f/2.8 lens is head and shoulders better than the Canon 16-35mm series I or II, and almost as good as the Nikon 14-24mm, even though they aren't the same focal range. The Sony 16-35mm is also as good as my Nikon 17-35mm, which I use for most of my wild angle needs. For anybody traveling to Namibia, Kolmanskop is the only location where I have gotten away with a smaller tripod. All other locations are subject to winds, and a smaller tripod just doesn't work everywhere else. On this trip I brought my Gitzo 3540. My first trip to Namibia back in 2006 I brought a Gitzo 1258, and I quickly switched to a larger model after that.

Colorful streets of Lüderitz! It certainly doesn't have a feel of Africa when you are walking the streets. Many or most of the street names are still in German, not Afrikaans, English or any other local language.

Relic of the past

This image took some playing with to get what I wanted. There was so little light inside, and we threw sand up in the air to get the lines of light to be sharp and visible.

The tunnel effect? I was trying to capture soft, dappled light that was reflected all around the room.

I love this particular house, and I have photographed it many times now. I have tried both vertical and horizontal compositions in the rooms, and I never can get to a point where I am happy with either. This time I had the early morning light crossing over the sand in the background, which was a nice touch. Notice the intricate, hand-painted stenciling near the top of the room. Just amazing how nice their homes must have been in the middle of nowhere.

Power switch. Ah, nothing like power in the desert.

Namibia trip report parts 4-6 will be posted soon

I apologize for the delay on my remaining Namibia trip reports, as well as a more thorough review of the Sony A900 kits that I used for the trip. Our Gura Gear Kiboko bag is now back in stock, and I have been working to make sure that all backorders are processed properly, and that all customers are happy. I hope to have the reports online before I leave for Botswana later this week.

Olympus E-P1 Pen now in stock at B&H

I have been salivating over this camera ever since it was announced. B&H has some nice kits put together, and I am not sure which one I will choose. Here are a few options:

Olympus E-P1 'Pen' in Silver

Olympus E-P1 'Pen' in Black with 14-42mm

Olympus E-P1 'Pen' in Black with 17mm & Optical Finder

What makes this camera so exciting is its small size, it has interchangeable lenses, has a nice sensor, and shoot high definition video.

Gura Gear Kiboko is now back in stock

 

We were out of stock for a while on our Gura Gear Kiboko camera bag, due to unforseen high demand, and now have replenished stock in our warehouse. We are processing all backorders, and there are many of them, and this should only take a day or two to get all orders shipped out.

Thank you to everyone for your patience!!!

Namibia trip report (Part 3 - Namib-Naukluft)

This is the 3rd trip report from my latest safari to Namibia You can read my Namibia trip report (Part 1 - Skeleton Coast) entry and also my Namibia trip report (Part 2 - Serra Cafema) entry if you have not already done so.

After winding down our time at Serra Cafema, we took a long bush plane flight down to Swakopmund to fill up with fuel. We flew over the Cape Cross seal colony and turned the plane inward towards the huge dunes of the Namib desert. The absolutely huge dunes of the Namib-Naukluft Park greeted us as we prepared to land. The Sossusvlei / Deadlvei region always blows me away, and this time was no exception.

We spent 3 nights with my friends at Kulala Desert Lodge (Carina the manager is a great friend), which is the closest place to stay to the entrance of the park. It is extremely comfortable and the shorter drives into the park is definitely appreciated, as the area is vast and spread out.

I visited this area 2 times on this trip to Namibia, and I will only include the images that I took from this first visit. I have to admit that I had a very difficult time trying to capture the area in a different way when compared to my previous trips there. I looked at my images and, for the most part, I was unhappy with my experimentation and results. I am not sure why, as I was emotionally connected when taking the shots, but the images on my screen just don't match how I felt when I was taking them. This is the age old challenge for nature photographers, and I got hit hard on this trip.

Overall, I had such a great time on this segment of my Namibia trip. The participants, my co-leader JP, the landscapes, the lodging and all of the staff along the way. This was certainly a trip that I will remember for a long, long time, and I hope to dig a few portfolio additions out of my raw files. I just need to decide which types of images I am really looking for, as I have images that are very similar to those from prior trips, and also new types of images that are very different and are more challenging to process. When I put a portfolio together, I always make sure that the overall tone, color palette and feel are consistent through all of the images. My style of photography is changing right now, and I am not sure where it is going to end up. I am having fun playing around with different looks, for sure, but these new ideas of processing may necessitate my going back to my older Namibia images to re-process them to have a more consistent look and feel to them.

Longitudinal Dune, Namib-Naukuft Park, Namibia. Sony A900, 70-400mm, 1/30 @ f/11, ISO 100

Sand Slide, Namib-Naukuft Park, Namibia. Sony A900, 24-70mm, 1/15 @ f/13, ISO 100

Photographer in the dunes, Namib-Naukuft Park, Namibia. Sony A900, 70-400mm, 1/80 @ f/11, ISO 100

Dunes from above, Namib-Naukuft Park, Namibia. Sony A900, 24-70mm, 1/500 @ f/7.1, ISO 200

Dunes near Sossuslvei, Namib-Naukuft Park, Namibia. Sony A900, 16-35mm, 1/20 @ f/16, ISO 100

Repeating Triangles, Namib-Naukuft Park, Namibia. Sony A900, 70-200mm, 1/40 @ f/11, ISO 100

Photographers in formation, Namib-Naukuft Park, Namibia. Sony A900, 70-400mm, 1/100 @ f/4.5, ISO 100

Is this the new definition of a tripod? :-). Namib-Naukuft Park, Namibia. Sony A900, 24-70mm, 1/6 @ f/8, ISO 100

JP at Deadvlei, Namib-Naukuft Park, Namibia. Sony A900, 16-35mm, 1/160 @ f/8, ISO 100

Digging in for a shot, Namib-Naukuft Park, Namibia. Sony A900, 70-200mm, 1/30 @ f/5.6, ISO 100