Showcasing the beauty of Mother Nature
We’ve had some beautiful weather the last few days, and my road is finally clear of icy and easy to walk, so I’ve been getting the dogs out for nice morning walks. The morning twilight and sunrise have been beautiful, but since I didn’t have my camera with me to capture them, I went through some of the many images I have left to edit, and found a selection that shows some of the beautiful colours I have been enjoying.
Now that I have moved my editing back to Lightroom, I’ve rediscovered quite a few images that I had flagged in my quick collection as ones I wanted to edit, from my trip to South Africa in 2019. The first four images are from that trip, and the last three from my recent trip to Zimbabwe in 2022.
While a lot of time has passed since 2019, I didn’t spend much of it on photography during the Covid years, as I was otherwise occupied in graduate school (during my free time from work) and when I did have time for photos, I was exploring using Capture One during that time period.
Coming back to Lightroom feels both familiar and very different at the same time, and I definitely need to spend some time relearning the familiar tools, and learning about all that has been added in the intervening time. I felt a sense of accomplishment working through these images and only completing the edits within Lightroom, not moving on to familiar plugins available in Photoshop.
All of these images were shot as long exposures around midday or early afternoon, using an infrared filter and then converted to black and white. It is something I want to work on more as I really enjoy the look of the shockingly bright foliage and inky skies.
Taking a break from African wildlife to work on a few images of the wildlife that I saw during my Alaskan cruise. That trip was far more about landscapes than wildlife, but after the brutally cold weather and recent dump of snow we’ve had, I just didn’t feel like editing snowy landscapes.
I’d previously posted some whale images, which you can find here if interested. The whales were definitely top of the list of what I hoped to see on my cruise, so I couldn’t leave them out of this post. These sea lions were spotted on the same whale watching cruise.
While on a combination train and bus journey of the White Pass into the Yukon, our group spotted a family of 3 black bears along the roadside (a mama and 2 older cubs) and then a second sighting of a solitary bear. Getting photos out of the window of a bus isn’t the easiest, but at least I captured a decent shot of one of the bears.
Bald eagles are incredibly plentiful in Alaska. Before I left the ship for my tour in Juneau, I spotted a half dozen, along with probably 50+ gulls, swopping around the waters just off the side of the ship, going after whatever small fish were in the harbour. After a sight seeing trip to Mendenhall Glacier, our group headed to a smaller marina to get onto a whale watching boat, and this bald eagle was hanging in the parking lot, not even remotely concerned about the people or cars coming and going.
After wild dogs last week, I decided to work on the few jackal photos I had this week. Jackals are fairly common on safari, but on this past trip, the jackal sighting I had were of moms and youngsters, which was very cute to see. These images were taken just before dusk, and we had only a minute or two at the sighting before they were gone.
Like elephants (featured in my previous post), wild dogs are a firm favourite to spend time with on safari. I’ve been so fortunate to see wild dogs on the majority of my trips (East Africa in 2016 being the only time I didn’t see them) – which I know is not the experience of most people. My very first guide cautioned me about getting my hopes up to see wild dogs, mentioning that she had talked to clients who had never seen them despite multiple trips, but I have looked at the desire to see things in the wild as a someday request, not something that will make or break a specific trip (and I did end up seeing wild dogs on that first trip, during a day trip in Chobe Park in Botswana).
I spent a few days in Madikwe during my last trip and saw two different wild dogs packs on a couple of different sightings. A morning sighting where the group was active and on the move, and an evening sighting where the pack was quite chill. All of the photos below are from the evening sighting. If you are interested in seeing the other images of wild dogs posted from this trip, you can find them here and here. And you can use the search bar for wild dog posts and find a variety of posts from over the years. I’ve not looked through those archives, but I am guessing they all mention how lucky I am to see wild dogs so frequently.
I was drawn to elephants today, and wanted to put together a bit of a variety of images, so I have a few in colour and a couple in monochrome to share today. While I have a decent catalogue of elephant images, these are all from my most recent trip to Africa in 2022.
My trip to Alaska was very early in the season, and the majority of the humpback whales that summer in the region were still in transit. Even though the chance of seeing whales was lower, heading out on whale watching trips was still high on my list of things to do. While I didn’t have the opportunity to see dramatic breaches or bubble feeding, I did get to see multiple individuals, including right from the top of the cruise ship while entering and exiting Yakutat Bay, during our day of scenic cruising to see Hubbard Glacier.
As you can see from the images, I was very fortunate to have amazing weather whilst in Alaska. I took scenic whale watching excursions in Icy Strait Point and Anchorage, and saw multiple whales on both excursions. In speaking with some people on my trip that had done over a dozen Alaska trips, they said May carried a good chance for nice weather, and July & August better opportunities for whales, but more rain. I’m pretty happy with the choice that I made.
I felt like some colour on a dull day, so small birds with bright feathers it is. The lilac breasted roller remains one of my favourite birds to spot on safari, and I was quite excited on my past trip to have the chance to see other types of rollers as well. I didn’t get great photos of the other rollers, but included them anyways to show the variety of colours.
It was unfortunate to only see the purple roller and racket tailed roller high up against very bright skies, but at least I did get the racket tailed roller at the right angle to show off the interesting tail feathers.
These weaver images were taken in different areas; the southern masked weaver is wide spread and they create very interesting nests that often hang over water. The males are in charge of construction, and the females in charge of determining if the nest is up to standards or not. When you come across a large colony, you will often see nests that have been abandoned partway through construction.
Today I selected a few images from my time cruising around Hubbard Glacier during my trip to Alaska in May. I’m guessing in a month or so, when the snow has settled in here at home, editing images of snowy landscapes may not have much appeal, so I wanted to tackle a bit while I was inspired.
As for this day of scenic cruising, I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect blue sky day. While it was very foggy while out in the open water, it cleared dramatically as soon as we entered the bay, and stayed that way until we left again in the afternoon, and then we were back into the fog.
As for home, there has been a brief glimpse of the winter to come, but thankfully for the next few days at least, we are to be above zero each day.
I find kingfishers to be fascinating birds to watch. I always enjoyed it when I spotted them during my walks along the river when I used to live near Vancouver, and especially love to see the large variety of kingfishers whilst travelling in Africa.
On my last trip, I was fortunate to see 7 varieties of kingfishers, and to get photos of 6 varieties (a woodland kingfisher still stubbornly remains on my mental images to capture list).
While some of the images from this trip weren’t as good as previous (such as the pied & giant kingfishers) I wanted to get as many of them as I could in one post, as it shows the wonderful variety of size and colour. And despite the name, not all kingfishers fish. Some prey instead of small amphibians or insects.
