Showcasing the beauty of Mother Nature
I spent the Labour Day long weekend at Whistler, enjoying wonderful company and witnessing the marriage of two lovely friends 🙂 The weather was perfect, and the beer and wine were free flowing. I dragged up all my camera gear… and made very little use of it. I was simply too busy relaxing and socializing to spend too much time staring through my viewfinder.
But I did take a few photos…
I’ve been neglecting working on this blog for some time – and even though I don’t have much to say about these photos, I really need to get back in the habit of posting.
I spent some time out in Maple Ridge collecting a few final shots for a photography assignment, here are some of my favourites.
I’m currently taking another digital photography course, so I have been busy the last few weeks snapping photos to meet very specific parameters. I was happy as the assignment this week was for landscape photos, both natural and urban.
I don’t yet have a macro lens, but I do really like the results of the close ups shown below – even though they really make me feel as if fall is on the way.
On a larger scale, I captured this lovely sunset near an area where I normally walk Spencer. I often see ducks, geese, heron and the occasional hawk and bald eagle in the area, as well as coyotes if we head out early enough.
Londolozi is well known for the number of leopards they have living within the bounds of the property, and I was lucky enough to see three of them during my visit. They were elusive at first though, and it wasn’t until our third afternoon game drive that we finally saw our first leopard; the lions stole the show for the first half of our visit.
It was around 4:30 when Talley took a call that a leopard had been spotted with a fresh kill, and even though the viewing was not likely to yield great photos, we headed in that direction anyways, since we had yet to see a leopard.
When we found him, he was deep under some bushes with an impala ram. He had already had his fill, but was still working on pulling the fur off of the impala. The view from the vehicle was obstructed by the bushes, while I managed to get a couple shots and a short video clip, mostly I just watched.
We came across this leopard, as well as others, the next morning. The photographic opportunities and the story of that morning viewing were amazing!
I’ve not been having much success in crafting regular posts these days. I had planned on dedicating a post to birds in flight, but many of the photos I thought I would use do not look as crisp as I would like, and are now in the reject pile. Besides, it seemed a bit discriminatory towards those birds I have had the pleasure photographing that do not have the gift of flight.
So instead I’ve put together a rather random selection of birds to feature this week, and fingers crossed I will have both the time and inspiration for something more next week.
So without further ado…
I’ve just finished a blog post for Londolozi’s guest blog page, and now it is time to get back to keeping up my own page. Except I’ve got a touch of writer’s block.
I’ve been trying to think of what angle to take, what animal to highlight, and right now, nothing is coming to me at all. But these past few weeks, I have been working on a photo book project with my Mom, so I thought I would post a few of the pictures we have selected to include so far.
I headed out at 6am on Saturday, armed with a travel mug of coffee, my camera, tripod and ND filter, in the hopes of practicing some long exposure landscape photos at the Pitt River. My intention was to work on techniques that when converted to monochrome, renders the water looking misty and any clouds in the sky ethereal. But the BC weather foiled me again – it was TOO NICE. I won’t complain about that, ever, I just couldn’t photograph what I had hoped to.
I’ve noted the settings that I have used and some of the combinations may seem a bit odd. I was playing around in manual mode and while it was bright, I was in the shade. Since I had my tripod, I went with the one thing my instructor repeated a good half dozen times in class “If you have access to a tripod, you have no reason to use anything other than ISO 100.”
The river was smooth like glass and a lovely Great Blue Heron sat on a pillar in the water the entire time I was out, giving me the opportunity for some lovely shots of both the hills and the water, and the heron. I’m sure I’ll be back to African animals later in the week, but I was pretty happy with these shots, taken so close to home.
Hey you – made you look! You probably weren’t expecting a post dedicated to Rhinos, were you?
Part of my desire to see a Rhino was based on fear. Fear that if I waited too long, they would be poached into extinction. I certainly hope that doesn’t happen. At last count, 273 had been lost in Kruger National Park this year alone. It makes me feel sad and dismayed that people cling to these outdated, and patently false beliefs about the power of Rhino Horn (or Bear Gallbladder, Tiger parts…) Sadly, as long as there is a market for these items, people will continue to brutalize animals.
The first time I saw a Rhino, it was somewhat anti-climatic. We were just about to stop for sundowners, and there they were…. It was one of those sighting that I had to be told where to look, and I still didn’t see them at first. They were far from us, in the tall grasses and amongst some bushes, in the falling light. Blackish grey blobs in the distance. Even at 300mm zoom, I couldn’t get a decent view of them. It didn’t help that the group of three was so focused on grazing, not a single one raised their heads the entire time we were stopped. It was exciting to know they were there, but I really didn’t get a sense of them at all.
It wasn’t until our last evening game drive that we had a proper opportunity to watch the rhinos and get some good photo opportunities. I was surprised by how close we were able to be to them in the vehicle, but they were completely unconcerned with us. We were completely captivated viewing them, and they were completely captivated by their grazing. I had heard previously that rhinos have terrible vision, and looking at them up close, it is easy to understand that fact, as they appear to have very small eyes in proportion to their body size, and they always look to me a bit squinty, like they need a strong pair of glasses.
This little bird captivated me from my first sighting, but proved to be a difficult photography subject for the first couple of days. Obviously there was the usual scenario – that birds don’t necessarily sit still long enough for photographs. Then I had overcast weather or flat out rain that did not do the colours justice, or fading evening light. But in the end, I managed several lovely shots, one of which is now framed so I can see it every day.
From Wikipedia:
“The Lilac-breasted Roller (Coracias caudatus) is a member of the roller family of birds. It is widely distributed in sub-Saharan Africa and the southern Arabian Peninsula, preferring open woodland and savanna; it is largely absent from treeless places. Usually found alone or in pairs, it perches conspicuously at the tops of trees, poles or other high vantage points from where it can spot insects, lizards, scorpions, snails, small birds and rodents moving about at ground level.[2]
Nesting takes place in a natural hole in a tree where a clutch of 2–4 eggs is laid, and incubated by both parents, who are extremely aggressive in defence of their nest, taking on raptors and other birds. During the breeding season the male will rise to great heights, descending in swoops and dives, while uttering harsh, discordant cries.
The sexes are alike in coloration. Juveniles do not have the long tail feathers that adults do.
This species is the national bird of Botswana and Kenya.”
This is the photo that I have framed 🙂
I look forward each week to the Londolozi photo blog. It brings me back to a place I loved and whets my appetite for a return trip. This week James mentioned two things that got me thinking. The first was a computer problem causing photo access issues – a great reminder to hook up my portable harddrive and do another backup (plus a secondary backup in case of a serious meltdown). The second was a photo he included that he noted was a photographic failure, but the story of the sighting was amazing (check out the week in photos #80 on the Londolozi site). Had I not had the explanation, I wouldn’t have gotten the full impact of the photo. Which got me thinking about the lion cubs we saw while at Londolozi.
The photos I have of the cubs include some of the most shockingly poor photos I have taken. Out of focus, odd colour, motion blur when there shouldn’t be, depth of field that was inappropriate for the situation, highly grainy & filled with noise… Honestly without the story behind the photos, people would probably think one of two things:
1) “That is the first time this person held a camera… and it didn’t go well.”
2) “The photographer was drunk.”
I can assure you that this gem was taken by someone, who although is in perpetual learning mode when it comes to photography, has definitely held a camera before, and was also stone cold sober (in fact, I’m quite certain I have managed far more in focus photos than this after a glass or three of wine. (I have no idea how I managed to cut her feet off and make her float.)
So why, out of 98 photos, did only a handful turn out?
The weather was poor when we headed out for our afternoon game drive – the ponchos went on right away, and I actually took my iPhone with me in case I couldn’t get my Nikon out (note to self, I need to get rain gear for my camera for the next trip). We found tracks of a lion pride, and followed them up through the trees and a dried riverbed, and eventually found the pride – with four adults and 7 cubs. As we had been driving, the weather got steadily worse. Lead gray skies, pouring with rain as well as cold and windy. Perhaps Mother Nature just wanted to ensure that the people from BC felt right at home in South Africa! I finally extracted my camera from beneath my poncho and instead of trying to coordinate manual settings, I just put it on auto – and the camera couldn’t focus (the joyous “Subject too dark” message – and wanting to us the flash on a subject 20+ feet away). Back to manual mode, I found that to get a correctly exposed photo,I would need to use an exposure time of around 2 seconds. Long exposures are great – with stationary objects and a tripod. Playful lion cubs? Not so much. So I snapped away using the slowest time I thought I could manage, and mostly just watched. Because when Talley and Freddy started saying things like “This is special – we don’t see this everyday” it was all about the experience. The camera was definitely a secondary consideration, and not something that would take my focus off the scene.
The lion cubs played in the rain on a fallen tree – they climbed, wrestled a bit – they entertained us immensely, and the rain and cold didn’t matter at all. They stayed in the area a good 20-30 minutes before setting off. We were also lucky enough that day to see an old female lion, who has since passed on.
The lions gave us great viewing opportunities at Londolozi, from the mating pair on night one, to the beautiful male I wrote about earlier, to the playful cubs, and rounding out with a male and female stalking impala as we drove off in the transport on route to the airport (actually a male watching a female stalk impala). Not to mention the calls we heard throughout the night each night we spent at Londolozi.
Below are a couple of the shots I managed to salvage. The nice clear shots will have to live on only in my head – unless I’m lucky enough to see such a sight on my next trip, with far more favourable lighting conditions.
