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.
Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.
An elephant in the desert. Hoanib Skeleton Coast Camp, Namibia. April, 2017.
A few old boys at a water hole near Nxai Pan in Botswana. The one spraying mud was the first one there, and when seeing him we thought he was an absolutely enormous bull. But then these other individuals came along and he was forced to make way for them, deferring to their larger size.
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 🙂
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.If an elephant visited one of my dreams, I think it would look something like this.A cormorant perched on the edge of the Atlantic, with seals frolicking amongst the waves. 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.
I was a bit delayed in getting this posted, so I will keep this post nice and brief. Just an elephant at their scratching tree to start the week. I think elephants are a good way to start any week 🙂
An elephant at a tree that was being used as a scratching post by the whole herd. Kenya, September 2016.
