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

Day 7 –Savuti Camp, Linyanti Concession, Botswana

We left camp and drove north to the woodland, along the Linyanti River, and there we tracked an adult male leopard, known as the Duma Tau male, and we spent quite a few hours with him. He was relaxed and let us spend time with him as he was lying down on a termite mound. He left after a while and then he spent the next hour actively marking spots with his scent, and he eventually took a viewing position up in a n African ebony tree (jackalberry tree). His position was difficult to photograph, as he was on the end of a small branch in the canopy.

After some repositioning, we found a nice spot where we could photograph him as he came down the tree. This big male must have had a large meal, as he had a huge belly and moved quite slowly. After he left us, he headed towards the mopane forest and we disengaged and didn’t follow him. 2 hours was plenty, we thought.

On our afternoon game drive we left camp and headed towards an area known as Mmantshwe, which means ostrich. Since the Savuti channel is flowing again, the area is better for elephants and buffalo. There we tracked and located a single adult female lion, and for the first time in a few days the sun came out from the clouds and we had the best light one could ask for. She was obviously searching for something, and Goodman told me that she has a few 4-month old cubs and she probably was searching for them.

After an hour of following her along the edge of the Savuti Channel, we realized that her cubs were on the other side of the channel. Cha-ching! This meant that it was likely that she was going to cross the channel to reunite with them. The only thing we needed to do was to figure out where she would cross, and then make sure we were in the most optimum shooting position to take advantage of the crossing.

The lioness let off some mild roars, and the 2 cubs appeared on the other side of the channel. We moved our vehicles to a spot where we could watch her from a 90 degree angle, and we got lucky and also had the light over our shoulders. The water was a crazy cobalt blue, and the light on her was so amazingly orange, and I could hear the cameras shooting away in the background as she swam across the channel.

After a few minutes of watching and photographing the happy reunion, we moved away and stopped for a sundowner drink just as the sun was setting in the distant sky. What an amazing day. Absolutely amazing. These kinds of sightings are what make Savuti one of my favorite locations in all of Africa. There are other camps that produce just as many good sightings, and I cannot wait to visit them on future trips.

Tonight was a braai (BBQ) night at camp, and we dined in the outside boma, set by a roaring fire in the middle. Today was a great day, capped off by a wonderful dinner with happy guests.

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.

Duma Tau male leopard

Duma Tau male leopard

Duma Tau male leopard

Our beautiful lioness for the afternoon

Lioness about to cross the Savuti channel

Goodman, one of our amazing guides

Lets and Kane take a break from finding the best wildlife around

James and Joe take time to do some chimping

Day 4 –Chitabe Camp, Okavango Delta

We were out of camp early today, and spent the bulk of the morning photographing the animals and birds that make Africa tick: kingfishers along the water’s edge, herds of impala, warthog, hornbills, bateleur eagles, all 3 categories of vultures (rippers, gulpers and scrappers), zebra, wildebeest, elephants, giraffe and all of the other species that can fill up a day of game drives. I didn’t take any photographs this morning, primarily because I was working on teaching panning techniques to people, and how best to do pan blurs depending on each subject and how fast they are moving. It can take quite a bit of time to work on, for sure, but pixels don’t cost anything except temporary CF card space and battery life. If they don’t work out, just delete and try harder.

We had a challenge with the water today, and odds caught up with us and we got stuck for a while. It wasn’t a big deal, as we just went and took some dead wood, jacked up each tire and placed the wood underneath each tire and went on with our business.

The weather on this safari has been much warmer than anticipated, and most mornings aren’t any colder than 50F. The skies are usually cloudy for most of the day and evening, so the lack of clear skies and a lack of any cold fronts are preventing from the colder days. No complaints from me, for sure.

I spent the middle of the day after lunch teaching Lightroom 3 and Nik Software’s Viveza 2 plugin. I have found that this combination really works well for my own photography, and it is a great combination for wildlife photographers. Perhaps this is good content for a future blog post?

This afternoon we tracked a pair of cheetahs into the mopane forest, and it turned out to be the same adult male and female cheetahs from our first full day in Botswana. We had a difficult time getting clear shots of them, as they always seemed to stop in a location where we would have a tree or termite mound in the way. That’s ok, as it teaches patience and good things will come to those who try harder. As you can see I included a few shots of one of the cheetahs, as the other one was rarely in a good position to photograph.

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.

Grant, giving his best sour face

BB, one of our excellent guides at Chitabe

Whoops

Just a little behind-the-scenes of what goes on in between incredible wildlife moments: coffee