Category: South Africa

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2018-02-19: Revisiting Old Work

Before I get into today’s post, I wanted to say sorry for the lack of activity over the past week. I made the plunge to move to a new self-hosted website so I could combine my blog and gallery (something I have wanted to do for over a year now). And while the internet does make everything appear to be instantaneous, moving 4+ years of blog posts, migrating a domain to a new hosting provider and setting everything up just takes time. Especially when you aren’t a web professional! My gallery is very much a work in progress, but the blog is up and running as usual, and fingers crossed my followers have been migrated over properly so someone, besides my Mom, has the chance to read this 🙂

I was hoping to get this posted yesterday, but the Happiness Engineers at WordPress just finished with the behind the scenes work to get my followers transferred to the new site.  So this post is better late than never.

Given all the behind the scenes work I have been doing, I am really glad I didn’t choose a topic that required me to get out shooting this week.

The photos below don’t have much rhyme or reason, other than they caught my eye when scrolling through my picture folders with the thought that I might be able to make something a bit better out of it now than I could when I shot it.

I hope you enjoy today’s selections, once I get the gallery up and running, I’ll post a note about that and start looking for some feedback on the redesign.

The steely gaze of a vulture perched on a dead tree. I didn’t do much to this; a little cropping, and a bit of work to bring out the texture in the feathers. April, 2013.
If you are in South Africa in November, when the leatherback turtles begin nesting, I would highly recommend the experience of going out to try to see them. It is such an epic experience; but not the best for photography, especially in the rain. The shots I captured were more proof that I was there then anything, and I really didn’t try editing them originally. Here I didn’t do much other than try to bring some of the texture back to the sand and correct the strange colour cast caused by red-lamp flashlights plus camera flash. For a sense of scale, this turtle is basically the size of a VW Bug; it weighed approx. 600 kilos.
Kalahari the cheetah climbing a hill under a dreary late afternoon sky. I loved the vantage point of the images I shot at this time, but the harsh light made them a challenge to work with. October, 2014.

For the then and now section this week, I chose this image of the Sand River at sunrise captured in 2013 on my first journey to Africa.  I actually quite like the original edit that I did, so I tried to interpret it in a bit of a different way, focusing on the warmth and the fog on the updated edit.

Sunrise on the Sand River – original edit.
Sunrise on the Sand Rover – updated edit.
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2017-11-30: WPC Experimental

I am a few days delayed in posting for this topic, but I wanted to play along anyways.  The photo prompt last week was experimental, and it gives me an opportunity to share some of the images I call my Artistic Impressions.

It’s timely, as I was just listening to a wildlife photography podcast that I really enjoy, discussing photographic art as opposed to straight “documentary style” wildlife photography.  I thought the comments of the host, Gerry Vanderwalt, were absolutely spot on.  His take on it was use your wildlife images in whatever way you choose to create the art you want to make, but just be very clear when presenting it to let people know that what they are seeing is not reality.

Now, I don’t think anyone would mistake any of these images for reality, and the comment was more aimed towards compositing work, but, I really do feel that people should create whatever moves them.  If reality didn’t match how the moment made you feel, then turn your images into something that does invoke the feeling of the moment.  Just don’t try to claim it is something that it’s not.

Anyways, on to the images 🙂

 

ground hornbill
A watercolour style take on a ground hornbill at sunset.  I loved the posture of the bird and the shadow on the termite mound, but found the image to be less sharp than I would have liked.  Turning it into one of my artistic impression images allow me to play up what I liked most about the image.
20170511-DSC_4585 copy
If an elephant visited one of my dreams, I think it would look something like this.
20170426-P1020703 copy1
A cormorant perched on the edge of the Atlantic, with seals frolicking amongst the waves.  
20170426-P1020699 copy
A small part of a large seal colony in Namibia.  The weather along the coast was dull and blustery, and many of my images left me flat.  This take on the scene reminds me of surveying the area through the fogged and misty windows of our vehicle.

 

Please visit:
www.jennifersawickyphotography.com for wildlife, landscape and nature inspired artwork.

and

https://shopvida.com/collections/jennifer-sawicky for textiles inspired by my photography.

 

WPC: Experimental

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2016-12-24: Photo Slideshow

Hi everyone!  I recently put together this photo slideshow for my photo club Christmas party, and thought I would share it here as well.

The photos are taken over the past three years, and there are several from each of my trips to Africa.

I hope you enjoy, Merry Christmas, and all the best for the coming year.

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2016-12-08: Birds of Southern Africa

As promised on Sunday, another selection of birds of Southern Africa.

Enjoy, and have a wonderful day!

lilac-breasted-roller-2
The beautiful lilac breasted roller.
yellow-throated-longclaw
A yellow-throated long claw seen at Phinda.
pied-kingfisher
A pied kingfisher in the reeds of the Okavango Delta.
lilac-breasted-roller
A lilac breasted roller… even the guide couldn’t figure out exactly what it was doing.
lappet-faced-vulture
A lappet-faced vulture seen in the Kalahari Desert.
guinea-fowl
Guinea fowl roosting in the treetops.
glossy-starling
A glossy starling.
common-fiscal
A common fiscal.
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2016-12-04: Birds of Southern Africa

I was going through my folder of edited photos and realized I have a large number of random bird photos ready to go.  Which is good, because I’ve not managed to get out and capture any of the local wildlife lately!

Even splitting the group of photos I found into two, I’ve still got a fair number of bird photos to post in the future!

I hope you enjoy, and have a great day!

magpie-shrike
A magpie shrike perched in an acacia tree.
lilac-breatsed-roller-3
A lilac breasted roller perching beautifully for a photo.
kori-bustard
A pair of kori bustards in the Kalahari Desert.
green-backed-heron
A green backed heron hunting along the edge of a dam.
brown-hooded-kingfisher
A brown hooded kingfisher.
african-sacred-ibis
A sacred ibis flies over on of the swamps of the Okavango Delta.
african-hoopoe
An African wood hoopoe.
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2016-05-02: Monochrome Monday

20160502_Monochrome Monday
This African Hoopoe was tucked into such a shady spot of the tree, trying to do anything with the photo in colour just didn’t work. But I really like how this high contrast black and white edit has turned out.
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Lilac Breasted Roller

The lilac breasted roller is one of my favourite South African birds – it has such a wide variety of colours in its feathers.  While I saw quite a few on my trip, usually it was while we were driving and they were flying away – not the best opportunity for capturing a photo.  Here though, I lucked out.  A bright sunny day really brings out the feather colours, but the flat white sky also serves as a good backdrop.

1/500sec, f7.1, ISO 500
1/500sec, f7.1, ISO 500
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