In wildlife photography you often find moments that you just could not predict.

This was one of them.

Nikon D7000, Nikon 300mm VR II, 1/160, f/4.5, ISO 800

Now, apart from the fact that it is completely despicable that anyone would just toss a beer bottle out into the bush, this image did bring a smile to my face.

What would call this image?

Until next time.

Gerry van der Walt

PS:  No lions were harmed in the making of this image and bottle was safely recovered.

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Was looking for a specific lion image when I found this one.

Nikon D3s, Nikon 300mm VR II, 1/160, f/2.8, ISO 2500

We were driving home after an afternoon game drive when we came around the corner the lioness and her two youngsters walked on the road straight towards us and then disappeared off into the bush.

Made a few quick settings and fired off one frame as they past through the vehicle’s headlights.

Yes, this image is all about the female but you cannot deny that the little guy in the top right corner makes the image!

Forgot all about this one, as it was just one frame, so it as great to find it.  Almost like finding R100 in your pocket after your jacket has been washed!

Until next time.

Gerry van der Walt

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The best wildlife possibilities seem to happen around suck and dawn as this is when all the most sought after subjects are out and about.

So that bring us to, yeah you guessed it, low light ability and noise.

Having equipment that allows you to shoot during these challenging times and still produce quality results is truly priceless.

At the risk of this digressing to another Nikon vs Canon debate, the Nikon D3s has surely got to be the outright leader when it comes to photographing in low light.  In the past I have done a few post showing what kind of quality is possible as ISO settings of as high as 102,400!  Check out this and this post to see some of the results.

I have also done a similar post where I show the result of photographing a lion cub with a Canon 1D Mark IV at an ISO of 6,400.  Check it out here.

So now, yesterday we found the exact same cubs as in the above posts at the exact same place at more or less the exact same time.  Perfect!  A chance to give the Canon 1D Mark IV another go a low light shooting.

Check this out.

Canon 1D Mark IV, Canon 70-200mm IS II @ 200mm, 1/200, f/2.8, ISO 12,800

So, at an ISO of 12,800 the 1DMV did a pretty good job of photographing the little guy in fading light conditions.  As with the D3s shot, the sun was already down when I photographed this lion.

Before you ask, yes.  This is the final version which has undergone a little bit of noise reduction, sharpening and other adjustments in Lightroom so for a fair comparison here is a close crop of the original RAW file.

Still not bad at all right?

The next step is going to be to test the D3s and 1DMIV on the same subject with the same settings and see how they perform, in a real wildlife photographic situation.

Final thoughts?  The1DMIV does a pretty damn good job in low light conditions but I reckon, based on what I have seen so far, the D3s still takes it.  Let’s see what happens in the next post.

Any thoughts or comments?

Until next time!

Gerry van der Walt

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Lion Cub

Nikon D300, Nikon 80-400 @ 400mm, 1/400, f/5.6, ISO 800

Madikwe Game Reserve

Until next time.

Gerry van der Walt

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Leopard Cub

Madikwe Game Reserve, 28 December 2007, 17h53

Nikon D50, Sigma 50-500 @500m, 1/500, f/6.7, ISO 800

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The leopard is definitely the holy grail of African wildlife photography.

I photographed the above youngster a few years ago and as I was looking through an image for this post it caught my eye.  The look in the young cat’s eyes.  The empty space on the left   The foot in the corner of the image.

Working in Madikwe I have not had a lot of great chances to photograph leopard.  Gonna have to put together a trip to the lowveld soon!

Remember you can click on the thumbnail for a larger view.

Busy day.  Time to dash.

See ya tomorrow!

Gerry

Finding a great subject in great light is why every wildlife photographer spends hours and hours out in the field.

Yesterday evening, about 15 minutes before the sun dropped below the horizon, we found four young lion cubs on a high west-facing dam wall.  The mathematics was quite simple.

Cubs + 15 minutes to sunset + west-facing = magic!

Apart from the amazing golden light there was another added bonus that lifted the scene from amazing to photographic nirvana.  The golden light was not only falling directly on the young cats but it was also bouncing off the water.

If you look at the shadows in the photograph you will see that there are two.  The dark, smaller shadow is from the direct sunlight while the softer shadow is from the reflected light off the water.  It almost looks like a studio shoot but I assure you, this was taken in the wild!

The last few days have been absolutely great for wildlife photography so lots of new images lined up for blog posts and stock library.

Later this week I will be posting details on ‘Wildlife Photography 101’, a new 2-day workshop we will be launching in September.  Exciting stuff!

See ya tomorrow!

Gerry

When is enough really enough?

This weekend I spent a bit of time following the links to various different photography sites.  I am not referring to people’s own sites where they showcase their own work but rather photo sharing sites where you can upload your images where a community of people then rate of comment on your pics.  It’s all fine and well uploading your work to all these sites, for whatever reason, but when is it enough?

Apart from this blog I try and do regular updates on Facebook and Twitter and that’s about it.  Honestly, I don’t have enough time to still go and upload some of my images to all these other sites as well.  Tried Flickr, liked it, but just got a bit much trying to post images there as well not even mentioning any other sites.

So my question is this…

Do you think that uploading your work to as many photo sharing or photo communities as possible is a good thing or should you rather keep your work in a central place with just a few links here and there?  I am not sure either way and I suppose you could argue both sides of the coin.  Not referring to stock sites where the intention is to sell your work but the photo sharing sites or photo communities.

On the one side I quite like the idea of my work being all together on a single site and not spread out all over the web.  Surely this makes it easier to create an identity for you and your work.  Perhaps more exclusive?   Then again, to have your work out there on as many sites as possible surely gets your images noticed by more people?  More noticed yes, but does it not make your images loose that special bit of ‘you’ if they are all over the place?  I can think of a few very well respected photographers that have their own site where they showcase their images and that’s about it.  Does uploading your images to as many sites as possible make your images less ‘unique’?  Does flooding the web with your work make your image loose it’s magic because it can be seen everywhere or is it just another part of modern photographic marketing to get your name out there?

Make no mistake, there are some amazing photo sharing sites out there, some of which giving you great learning opportunities, but even if just from a ‘not-enough-time’ point of view, for now I think I will keep my images together on this site with a few posts and pictures here and there.  Perhaps when I find time I might post them on more sites.  Or maybe not.  What do you think?

During my surfing this weekend I found some amazing black and white photos in between some great wildlife images and that kinda inspired me to play with black and white again.  Creating striking and powerful black and white image is truly not as easy as the click of a button.  It has to do with the image you start with, vision and your processing skills but to mention a few.  I quite like the ‘recipe’ I used to get the above image of a lion cub on a kill.  Similar to the image below but it’s never quite the same.  The image you are working on needs to guide you towards the final final black and white version but I suppose the same questions could pop up.  When is enough really enough?  No doubt I will be playing with a few more and I somehow have a feeling that, as soon as I find the time, there is a black and white project in the pipeline.

Will be back tomorrow.

Gerry

Parenting

Madikwe Game Reserve, 4 April 2010, 18h03

Nikon D300, Nikon 80-200 @ 200mm, 1/320, f/2.8, ISO 800

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Grabbed this shot a few evenings ago as a pride of lions walked down a road straight towards us.  The five cubs were all over their mom which made for some very funny moments.  She tried, running, biting and growling but they just would not let give her a moment’s peace.  Great sighting.  The sun had just set directly behind the lions so I waited until they were close enough for me to not include any sky in the image as it would have burnt out completely.  Once the burnt out sky was out of the equation I quickly changed to centre weighted metering, focused on the the middle of the group of lions and fired away.  For me this is a great example of wildlife photography content rather than a fine art type image.  Gotta love these moments!

More soon!

Gerry

Busy week, busy day so gonna make this a quick one.

Judging by the comments Mitchell Krog’s guest post yesterday was very well received.  Apart from truly amazing images Mitchell shares some amazing insights into his approach to wildlife photography – thanks Mitchell!  My original post today was going to be on mistakes, or missed shots, in wildlife photography and how to learn from them which picks up nicely on Mitchell’s post but just not enough time so will have it up early next week.  I will be going on leave for two weeks from next week Thursday so will be catching up on a lot of posts I have been wanting to put together but for now one last pic for the week.  Grin and bear it… Kinda how I feel today!

Gotta run so see ya all on Monday!  Have a good one.

Gerry

Sometimes things just work out and when you have options it’s just so much better.

Yesterday morning we spent almost two hours with a pride of lions consisting of two large males, two females and five cubs of about 4 months of age.  Great sighting which included lions feeding on a wildebeest, lions roaring, cubs playing, females smacking males and the list just goes on.  What made things even better is that all of this took place in the early morning sun which meant we had fantastic light to work with.  Every now and then a lone cloud would drift across the sun which left us with a golden, diffused light before the direct light would come through again.  Stunning light with which to photograph wildlife.

The lions were literally all over the place which gave us the opportunity to move around and position ourselves to make the best use of the changing light conditions.  We filled up quite a few memory cards and what was specifically nice was that, after we had a number of solid image, we could start playing around and experiment with different angles, exposures and compositions.  In wildlife photography a well exposed, clean and technically sound image is always on the top of the list but there is always room for images that are sightly different.  Images that make you look twice or draw you in because of that special something.

Out of all the hundreds of images I shot two stood out because of that something.  The first was an image of the two males who were in the process of giving each other a bit of brotherly love as they licked and cuddled after their breakfast.  These to guys have a bit of a reputation as bad boys due to their temper and history of fighting and injuring other males in ‘negotiations’ about territory.  You might also recall a post I did last week called Heavyweight Fight which showed two males lions having a full on go at each other. Same two males, so to see these two large cats get cozy again was a great sighting.

Shot during one of the cloudy moments, for me there are three things that make this image stand out.  The tongues, the way the male on the right is looking at his brother and single open eye on the other male.  Your gaze keeps on moving between these three elements and what also helps is the diagonal lines created by both the lions heads leading down to the tongue.

One of the other images that stood out for me was one of three future bad boys.  Well from what we could see at this young age I think they were all boys.

These cubs, and there two other siblings, were in serious play mode which kept out shutters working overtime.  The three youngsters had just finished attacking each other when suddenly, as if a referee blew a whistle, they all stopped and started off in their own direction.  I shot this specific image just before their breakup and when I looked at the series of images afterwards it was the repetition of tails that caught my eye.  I did crop the image slightly during post processing and in this situation I felt quite comfortable placing the group of youngsters in the middle of the frame as there is a lot happening due not only to the tails but also the implied movement by the one cub and stare of the front one.  Not (exactly) planned like that but worked out great!

Whether you like it or not, luck remains a huge part of wildlife photography but you still have to make sure you pay attention to the basics in order for that luck to help you to create images with that little something extra.

Will be back with another post which includes a few new images that have been uploaded to the Photo-Africa Stock Library and more details on tomorrow’s guest post.

See ya later!

Gerry