Vultures – Jennifer Sawicky Photography

February 27, 2019

2019-02-27: Wordless Wednesday

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February 19, 2018February 20, 2018

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.

December 4, 2016

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.

October 9, 2016

2016-10-09: Holiday Photos

Every month the photo club I belong to has a photo topic of the month, as well as being able to submit a further 5 photos for review and discussion. Since all I have captured since I returned home are a few grainy images of one of the local deer (and lots of my dog) I thought I would share them here as well. I am hoping to get back into the swing of things with my “What I’ve seen this week” Sunday post very soon.

Until then, I hope you enjoy some images of Uganda and Kenya.

dsc_9372-edit — This image stirs up so much for me. I can almost smell the fever trees and the acacia and the scent of the elephants, I can almost hear the rumbles, the crunch of branches and chewing of leaves, I can almost feel the warm of the sunlight. Working on these images takes me right back and gives me a mini mental holiday 🙂

dsc_0137-edit — Three young male lions had taken down a wildebeest in the night, and shortly before I shot this, all three were still picking away at the carcass. There were a half dozen jackals hanging around, trying to figure out how to safely get close enough to grab a morsel or two. This one only took another step before turning away.

dsc_9851-edit — Witnessing a river crossing involves a lot of waiting, and then a lot of chaos in a short period of time. I’m looking forward to sharing more about this experience!

dsc_4453-edit — Just like human babies, the mountain gorilla infants that I saw were incredibly curious, and explored their world by touching everything.

dsc_9570-edit — A lappet faced vulture lays claim to a wildebeest carcass that looks to be little more than some fur and bones.

p1010245-edit — The repeating lines of tea fields near the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in Uganda.