Five Wildlife Images

As you have seen, and read in yesterday’s post, I change the five slideshow images at the top of the blog every month.

It’s always an interesting exercise to go through my images to choose five for the slideshow.  Here are the images I chose for February and a few thoughts on each.

I shot this image almost two years ago.  It was a pretty quiet, overcast day out with not too many major photographic opportunities.  We stopped to have a look at and shoot some images of a group of zebra on the side of a road when they slowly started crossing.  The perfect leading line of the road immediately came into play and all we had to do was wait for the right moment.  This was one of the last animals to cross and after stopping for a split second moved off the road.  The overcast conditions made for a pretty easy exposure as full on sunlight would have made the road a lot brighter but in this case matrix metering did the job.

The Springbok is one animal I have not had the pleasure of photographing all that often but I was lucky enough to capture this image in the Namibrand Nature Reserve in Namibia.  This male was following a group of females and was moving parallel to us for quite some time.  Again, it turned in to a waiting game ad I waited for him to walk into an area where the background would not distract from the image.  He was walking on the base of a sand dune and even though he did not want to go and pose on the top of the dune I was able to click the shutter as he walked through this dry, grassy patch,  Love the texture of the grass and the flash of color on his side.  Namibia, definitely heading back there not too long from now.

I was not sure whether to use this image or not.  I reckon it is a very powerful image even though technically it is not quite up there.  I shot this at midday, in very harsh African sunlight, when Gavin Tonkinson, one of the contributing photographers on Photo-Africa, and I sat with these two brothers for almost the entire day.  They were hanging around an old wildebeest carcass and every now and then they would have a full on go at each other to get to the last bit of meat.  It was spectacular to watch a scene like this but because of the very strong shadows, from the midday sun, quite difficult to shoot.   We played around with many different angles, modes and exposures and in the end I still like this shot even with the harsh shadows.  If only we could have photographed this scene a little later in the day when the sun was closer to the horizon. Imagine nice golden light on the two angry lions faces.  Those eyes would have just came alive.  Oh well, I still like the image.   If only…

This is an image I shot almost four years ago and till today it is one of my personal favorites.  After watching a massive breeding herd of elephants browsing around our vehicle on a rainy afternoon, the matriarch decided it was time to go.  As one, they all started moving away from us.  The hazy conditions made for quite a moody scene and this image was the result.

I have not done a lot of macro photography.  I shot this image, of an Elegant Grasshopper, about three years ago.  That particular year there was millions of these colorful pests around.  It was one of the few times that we took quite a bit of time to photograph the smaller things even though it was hit and miss kind of stuff.  One of my goals for this year is to do a lot more macro photography, with some of the new toys I now have, so as a way to remind myself of that I decided to add this image to the slideshow as well.

Quite a diverse mix of images but that’s what wildlife photography should be all about.  Would love to hear your thoughts and which image you like the most.

More soon.

Gerry