The photo challenge this week was to show something, or someone, sweet. If that isn’t an invitation to share photos of elephants, I don’t know what is. Or maybe that’s just me. 🙂 So here are a few images featuring some adorable baby elephants seen last year on my trip through Southern Africa.
Happy Monday to all! For my first monochrome Monday post of the year, I decided to share not only my favourite animal, but an image that I recently printed for a display in my home. I love surrounding myself with images that evoke memories of wonderful times and fantastic adventures. I reuse old frames over and over again, some needing to have duck tape on the back to hold everything together, but it allows me to update images whenever I want. I have loads of photo displays throughout my home, from beautifully framed large-size matted prints, to unframed 5″ x 5″ cardstock images arranged in groups of 25 images. As I move throughout my home, I’m taken back to beautiful places and inspired to plan the next adventure.
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.
Isn’t this little guy just the cutest thing you’ve ever seen? I spotted him on my last afternoon in the Masai Mara, and while he started out acting all tough, he soon realized that we weren’t any type of threat, and relaxed completely.
This big bull elephant was the last animal I saw before heading home from my last safari adventure. We came across him on our way back to camp for a quick breakfast before our flight out. He was moving swiftly along the road, and in musth as well, so we stayed well out of his way. He stopped briefly to check us out from afar, grabbed a small trunkful of sand from the road and let it fly before carrying on his way. The way the light was falling, the sand almost makes it look like he is surrounded by confetti.
We were lucky enough to spend about an hour with this breeding herd in the Namibian Desert. They spent time grazing on devil’s thorn and then went down into the riverbed for a drink and a mud bath. After that, they were off, and we headed back to camp for breakfast.
It was a soggy day flying from Phinda to Ngala, which was my second to last stop on my trip. It’s tough thought o be too upset about rain in locations where it has been desperately needed for years, and besides, we only had two days with any rain over a four week period, which is pretty fantastic from a sightseeing perspective (especially in an open vehicle). I have spent time at Ngala previously (you can check out some past highlights here if you want).
We only had two days at the camp, but they were filled with lots of laughs with our wonderful ranger Lee-Anne, some fantastic game viewing, and really great meals. The first game drive was a soggy one, but we didn’t let that get our spirits down, and we ended up seeing both lion and leopard on the same game drive – not too shabby!
I hope you enjoy a small selection of the photos that I took at this beautiful property.