Day 23 – Tuningi Safari Lodge, Madikwe Game Reserve, South Africa

Today was a day for giraffes and rhino, and when it comes to giraffe photographs I just don’t have enough great shots of my most favorite of mammals. One of the challenges when photographing giraffes is related to composition: a giraffe’s neck is so long that most of the time the long neck is intersected by a converging line in the background, the horizon. This doesn’t sound like a big deal, but the human brain has a difficult time with converging lines. An image that has discordant elements can often lead to an unsettling feeling to a viewer, even though the viewer cannot explain why they don’t respond positively to an image. Well, converging lines typically are not helpful in a photograph, yet these converging lines are omnipresent in nature photographs. Nature is inherently very messy. It is our job as nature photographers to try and make order out of chaos.

I have so many giraffe photographs in my library, yet very very few of them ‘work’ for me. Most of the time it is difficult to explain why, but an easy answer is that converging lines often spoil a photograph. Giraffes are typically found near their food source (duh), which are typically trees that are at least 3 meters tall. These trees often interfere with a clean shot. When I find giraffes away from their food source, they are either walking to another food source or water. My favorite photos of giraffes are when they are on the open plains, away from trees and bushes that can hide some or all of these majestic creatures.

Ok, on to today’s images. We spent some time photographing some giraffes at a water hole, and one of the challenges when photographing drinking giraffes is finding the best position to shoot from. If a giraffe gets nervous while drinking, it will stop drinking, lift its head and walk away. So one has to find the best position prior to drinking. My goal was to find a position that would accentuate the water that drips from the mouth of the giraffe, after the head comes up from the water. This requires side lighting to adequately illuminate the ‘slobber’, but we couldn’t line up the vehicle to make that work. The other challenge with this approach is that the giraffe head comes up from the water very very quickly, and would require at least 1/640 shutter speed to freeze the action. The background was fairly close behind our subject, and this also makes for a compositional challenge. The farther the background is away from the subject, the easier it is to blur the background. This can be a big deal, because a giraffe who is leaning down the drink often needs 6 to 10 feet of depth of field. If you are using a 400mm lens from 75 feet away, this may mean that you need to be shooting at f/11, f/14 or perhaps f/16 to make it work. These f/stops make blurring the background difficult if the background is too close to the giraffe.

Ok, enough technobabble. Here are some quick, unprocessed photos from today.

Note: All images in these daily blog postings are very very rough edits of the things we have seen, and I often omit the photographs that take too much time to process. I don’t take much time off during the day, as I am working with people with their photographic needs. All of my images in these posts will have to be re-processed when I get back home, and they are only included in these blog entries for illustration purposes only.

Giraffe drinking water

Day 22 – Tuningi Safari Lodge, Madikwe Game Reserve, South Africa

Today was a little warmer than the past 3 weeks, and it was very welcome. The sun came out in full force, and the morning warmed up into the 70’sF rather quickly. I had forgotten what it was like to wear shorts, even though back home I haven’t worn long pants to the office in at least 4 or 5 months.

This morning was a little on the quiet side, so I am focusing this entry on the afternoon’s sightings. I really enjoy the winter’s dining schedule, because morning brunch is typically served around 9:30 or so, high tea is at 2:00 and game drives leave around 3:00 or 3:30. Dinner is usually at 7:30, which tends to be within 15 to 30 minutes after getting back from the afternoon game drive. This is great, because I am typically wiped out at the end of the day and there isn’t too much time to mess around after getting back from the game drive.

This afternoon we took off around 3:30, and headed back to one of the more productive watering holes. We were joined by Gerry Van Der Walt and his wife Adele, so it was nice to have a casual drive with friends today. Gerry is a great photographer, and he also runs Photo-Africa.com, a great web site for photo enthusiasts who also love Africa.

Immediately after our arrival at the dam, we found numerous family groups of elephants. There were two large families, one small family and then some sparring bulls scattered throughout. It was a virtual playground of elephants today! I really enjoyed sitting back and just watching their behavior, and how they organize themselves when drinking water. What I mean is that adult female elephants really do look after their young, especially when a family is clumped up together and drinking from a small water source.

My attention quickly went towards two sparring males, and I really enjoyed watching just how gently they pushed each other around, because when they fight for real it can be quite violent.

After the fight, we moved around and noticed three lions deep in the mud. They had obviously taken down an impala, and were ripping it apart. This was definitely a fresh kill, and the challenge was that they were a little far away and not at a good angle for us. We couldn’t get a better angle, so we just sat and waited for them to finish their mud-crusted meal. It took some time, but they moved off the carcass after a while and made their way into the thick bush. I was able to grab one quick shot of one of the lions up on a hill, and the lion was about as muddy as a lion could ever get. She quickly hurried off into the thick bush, and we headed for sundowner drinks after we lost them a few hundred meters into the bush. 

What a great day!

Bull elephants sparring at the watering hole

Bull elephants sparring at the watering hole

Three lions eating in the mud

The lioness, all covered in mud from head to tail. Only her eyes and a little bit of her whiskers were showing

..and she scuttles off into the bush

Adele, Gerry and Leslie take a break

Safari-time!

Ok, I am off for Africa soon, and I will be all over the place. Here are a few places where I will be:

• Chitabe Camp, Okavango Delta, Botswana (1st camp on my first safari)
• Savuti Camp, Okavango Delta, Botswana (2nd camp on my first safari)
• Mashatu Game Reserve, Botswana (1st camp on my African Wildlife Photography Boot Camp)
• Rattray's on Mala Mala, South Africa (2nd camp on my African Wildlife Photography Boot Camp)
• Tuningi Safari Lodge, Madikwe Game Reserve, South Africa (to spend some time with friend Gerry van der Walt)

Unlike like most of my past safaris, I will be taking a few days off in between my first and second safari, and it will be rest that will be well used. I will have a BGAN satellite system on my safaris, which means I intend to update this blog frequently (daily?) from the bush. I did this a few months ago from Tanzania, however technology was easier there as I could update the blog from my Blackberry Bold mobile phone. I didn't upload any photos, though, as I was shooting film on that safari (long story).

The BGAN satellite is a very nifty piece of technology, as I can surf the web and send emails at 492kbps, which is plenty fast. The kicker is that it costs around $6 per megabyte, so I will only be using the system to read and send emails via a web page. I am renting the system from a friend, and this is a good way of figuring out if I should invest in the technology going forward.

If anybody has called Gura Gear or have sent us an email, you will likely be familiar with who Troy Covey is. Troy is my right hand man, and he will be coming on my second safari to shoot video. I am a video dummy, so Troy is coming to gather footage that we can use for marketing purposes. We want to convey what it is like to be on one of my photo safaris, as well as how people use our Gura Gear Kiboko bag. I know he is going to have to do tons of audio editing, as I tend to laugh a little too much. It is a personality flaw of mine, and now that I have admitted it I only have 11 more steps to go. :-)

Leslie will be joining me near the end of my second safari, and this will be the first time since 2004 that Leslie has been able to join me. Why the long wait? Let's just say that our having 2 boys in the span of 28 months can alter one's adventures in life. Leslie will be at Mala Mala and Madikwe with me, and I cannot tell you how happy this makes me to have her back on another adventure with me. Shared experiences is a good thing.

While in Madikwe, we will be spending some time with friend and photographer Gerry van der Walt, who runs Photo-Africa.com. I am not sure what kind of trouble we will find, but I am sure it will be fun whatever we end up doing. I just think that all Leslie wants to do is to sleep late and to not have little boys climbing all over her. At the same time I don't even know how to relax, as it isn't in my vocabulary. Relaxing usually means being out on game drives by myself with a guide and perhaps another friend or two.

I have tons to do before I leave next week, and near the top of that list is to update my 2011 safaris on andybiggs.com. I have a few more safaris to add, such as a June 2011 Tanzania trip with Chris Gamel, and an August Tanzania safari with Randy Hanna. If you haven't met Chris or Randy before, you should know that they are excellent trip leaders, photographers, instructors and all around good guys. I couldn't be more happy to be working side by side with them.