Wild Dog Pup

Madikwe Game Reserve, 22 December 2008, 06h23

Nikon D300, Sigma 50-500 @ 230mm, 1/400, f/6.3, ISO 400

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Seeing this whole week has been made up of Daily Photo posts, why stop now?

Finding and photographing one of Africa’s most endangered animals has got to be on the top of every wildlife photographer’s list.  During the last week, finding the guys in this photograph was our main goal but no luck.

The reason I chose this image from 2008 for today’s post is twofold.

Firstly, this last week I spent some time in Madikwe with Andy Biggs and one of his favorite animals to photograph is the African Wild Dog.  So Andy, there you go – we really do have Wild Dogs in Madikwe!

Secondly, and I will be releasing all the details very shortly, today I nailed down the details for a number of photographic safaris for 2011.  One of them is a 5 day photographic safari in Madikwe, from 5 to 9 May 2011, where we will be focusing on finding and photographing the Wild Dogs.

Madikwe has got to be one of the best places in Africa to view and photograph Wild Dogs and with the rates I have been able to secure, photographers can be assured of affordable luxury, awesome photographic possibilities and sharing time in the African bush.  Gotta love it!

I have lots to do this weekend as I finalize workshop and safari dates but hopefully there are some photo opportunities in between.

Have a great weekend!

Gerry

Wild Dog Fight

Madikwe Game Reserve, 8 May 2008, 08h12

Nikon D50, Sigma 50-500 @ 150mm, 1/640, F/6.3, ISO 640

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Going back to 2008 for this one.  We were out on a cold winters morning when we found a large pack of Wild Dogs who just finished killing a young Kudu.  Most of the action was over but with 16 dogs to the pack there was not really enough food to go around.  Some of the younger dogs were running around with pieces of kudu leg and every now and then they would drop it, have quick ‘negotiation’ as to who it belongs to and carry on.  All of this took place in front of a waterhole which was fantastic as it kept the dogs from running away from us.  With one of Africa’s most endangered animals running side to side in front of our vehicle you cannot help but get caught up in wildlife photographic bliss.  We got a lot of amazing shots that morning but to this day this is still one of my favorites.

Tomorrow is Thursday which means it’s guest blogger day on Photo-Africa.  Make sure to check back as Paul Lindenberg shares images and stories about photographing elephants in the Chobe National Park in Botswana.  Paul shares his experience of going up to Chobe to photograph ellies for research purposes but, as any photographer would, take the time to shoot some pics for himself as well.  Great read so make sure to check back tomorrow as Paul goes ‘On Assignment’!

See ya on Friday!

Gerry

For me, in the beginning, it was about pretty pictures and a love affair.

The affair began simply enough–on the final night of a last minute-two day safari to the Masai Mara–in a safari truck filled with student tourists, parked next to an acacia tree housing a lazy leopard.  The cat had no intentions of getting up, and we had to leave the park.  A duvet of stars spread out above me, and the primal roar of lions echoed in the distance-my heart was instantly stolen.

And so commenced my wildlife photography.  I was a ‘people’ photographer, now hooked on a continent, and also quite obsessed with spotted cats and cameras. At the time, I was a good people photographer.  I could capture “moments” and portraits.  Shooting wildlife?  Never crossed my mind. But, the obvious way to get back to Africa was on a safari, taking pictures.

The trips to Africa began, and the first days in the bush after long absences were like a Wild West shoot-out for me.  Sleeping lions?  Rat-a-tat-tat-tat went the shutter.  Impala herd?  Three gigabytes gone.  Zebra stripes?  More pixels exhausted. Hundreds of fish eagle portraits, dozens of midday shots of giraffe; I filled every second on the vehicle with shutter noise. Each time I returned to the US from a safari, I’d scour my images.  I am a decent editor, so I knew which ones to choose. Everyone loved them. My mother thought they were the best compositions on earth.  My father beamed.  I had parties and showed my friends who ‘ooohed’ and ‘aaaahd.’  But somewhere between my third and fifth trip, something inside me changed.  I was no longer satisfied with my images–ironic, as I’d taken them. I had stunningly pretty pictures of Lilac Breasted Rollers, and leopards in trees.  There was nothing wrong with the images. They were well lit, and well composed. Sure, the cats were different, and spot patterns were unique, and the light varied a bit, but a leopard face was a leopard face.  It hit me. I had these shots already.  At the time, I didn’t know how to fix that.  I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

I am a photo editor by day; a photographer all the time. I know what makes a good photograph, as I’m surrounded by the highest standards, the best images and the best photographers in the wildlife photo industry-on a daily basis.  Unlike most photo editors,  I also know what it’s like to be a photographer: emotionally attached to images and experiences.  I know what it’s like to look at my own images that are “almost there”, and I know all the excuses I use to keep those files from the trash bin.  But, as an editor, I know there’s another pro out there who actually already has the shot I almost got-and has already won some award for it.  The combination makes me my own worst critic.  Which, in hindsight, was the reason I kept going back for more.  I was missing something in my own images, something that others had figured out how to capture.

It takes time to begin to learn that photography, if you want it to be, is more than just an exercise in shutter depressions.  It is more than just taking images.  For me, this lesson was an accident. Five trips back and forth to Africa, and a few key experiences later I began to understand the nature and satisfaction of the photographic wildlife game.

Two years ago, I spent two consecutive weeks in Zimbabwe with the unique opportunity to follow African Wild Dogs. I had no interest in the dogs as a subject (and secretly figured that I’d be able to see a spotted cat at least somewhere during that time), but the opportunity was in front of me, so I went along for the ride.  For two full weeks, morning and afternoon, I followed dogs.  We napped with them in the heat of the day, and raced alongside them at dusk; we watched while they greeted each other as the sun came back over the horizon.

I was forced by circumstance to ignore every other photographic subject, and forced to quell the urge to take ‘pretty pictures’ of everything we were speeding by.  I was forced to relax, and forced to focus.  I was forced to give up the need to constantly shoot, and was forced to figure out when to shoot.  We had one subject-it was my only choice.  The first week, was filled with pretty portraits of dogs.

And then, I started to shoot.

I became driven; by the shots I missed, and the shots I didn’t have yet, by the behavior I was learning but had not yet been smart enough to capture.  I wanted the chase, the kill, the greetings, the licking, the frolicking and the blurred motion. I wanted dogs on green grass, and puppies and play.  My editor side kicked in-I was going to be brutal to myself-if it wasn’t 100%, then “DELETE.”  There was a tomorrow, and I would try again.  If I could say,  “I already have that shot,” then I needed to look for new ones, and new ways.  I didn’t want pretty shots.  I wanted compelling ones.  I wanted ones that others didn’t have.

And that’s when it hit me.  The feeling I’d been missing in my images was now clear: there was no Intimacy, and there was no Time.  I’d never taken the time.  I had been a ‘drive by shooter.”  It finally clicked-this time in my brain.  This was how I wanted to shoot; in horizons lined with black storm clouds, in the wind and pouring rain; in air too hot to breath, and mornings too cold to get out of the sleeping bag.  The only way to truly capture behavior is to witness it in all situations.  The dogs were dealing with their environment, and the only way to tell their story, was to be doing the same as them.

It’s a simple equation.  Time.  If you are not there, you can not capture it, and if you don’t spend the time, you won’t know HOW to capture it.  Time teaches behavior, and behavior teaches anticipation.  Anticipation of behavior, let’s you better position yourself for the possibility of shot you don’t already have.

The beauty of photography is that it is completely subjective.  There is nothing at all wrong with ‘pretty pictures.’  But, if you want to create a solid body of work, or a thorough portfolio of a subject, you must push yourself further.

Find a subject-like it or not-but, stick with it.  Shoot that subject at night, shoot it in the rain.  Shoot your subject with a long lens and a macro.  Shoot it at slow shutter speeds. Get on the ground.  Get in the air.  Use a pole cam and a remote.  Study what others have done, and then try everything they haven’t.  The more you work one subject, the better your images will get.  Spend the time, go back again and again and you will reap the rewards.

I’ve finally graduated from the portraits, and pretty pictures.  Today, getting the images I want, means day to day with my subject.  I didn’t know that until I actually did it, and for me, living on a continent 14 hours away, makes it a much more difficult task. Two years and many trips later, I’m still not done with my dogs. I don’t yet have all the moments that I want.  But, I do have a solid, intimate portfolio of a highly endangered species that has not only taught me how to shoot, but how to fall in love all over again-cats might just have fallen to number two-I never did see that spotted cat in Zimbabwe.

Thank you to Gerry who has given me the space to tell this story. He asked me last week to post something here today.  I’d given him this subject, but taken no note of the date. The irony is, that today, May 13th, the June issue of BBC Wildlife Magazinegoes on the stands.  Inside, you will find 7 spreads of my Wild Dogs.  I showed the dog portfolio on a whim, and BBC thought they were strong enough to run.

So, if you didn’t believe before, time (and effort!) does help you create better images.  It put mine on the pages of a publication that was once an unattainable dream.

Keep shooting-it’s worth it.

Karine Aigner

Karine’s Links:

• Website: Karine Aigner Photography
• Blog: Karine’s Blog

The Madikwe Game Reserve has got to be one of the best places in Africa where you can photograph the Africa Wild Dog in the wild.

In 1990 the IUCN listed the Wild Dog as Endangered and it has remained that way until today.  This from www.iucnredlist.org –  ”African Wild Dogs have disappeared from much of their former range. The species is virtually eradicated from West Africa, and greatly reduced in central Africa and north-east Africa.  The largest populations remain in southern Africa and the southern part of East Africa.  Population densities in well-studied areas suggest that between 3,000–5,500 free-ranging wild dogs remain in Africa (< 2,500 of these are mature individuals). Population size is continuing to decline as a result of ongoing conflict with human activities, infectious disease, habitat fragmentation.”

Quite sad to think that the most efficient predator in Africa will probably not be around for much longer and that is why a visit to the Madikwe Game Reserve is not complete without a sighting of these amazing animals.  The reserve in the North-West province of South Africa has become famous for it’s Wild Dog sightings.  So much so that the Wild Dog has become the unofficial ambassador of Madikwe.

Being out in the field everyday, I have had the pleasure and privilege of spending a lot of time photographing these amazing animals and have been able put together a growing portfolio of Wild Dog images.  On a side note, Madikwe can prove to be quite a challenging place to create ‘classic’ wildlife images mostly due to messy backgrounds.  This is not to say that getting great wildlife images is impossible.  On the contrary.  By thinking a bit, taking a second to assess the scene and plan your shots the photographic possibilities in Madikwe are amazing.  Sometime difficult but from extreme close ups and open grasslands to rolling hills and thick bush, Madikwe has it all.  More on this at a later stage.

Photographing theses very mobile animals can at the best of times present quite a challenge and to get good images you will need to be quick on the draw and know your equipment.  You don’t want to be fidgeting with your camera settings when these guys take off after a prey species such as impala.  Even if you are lucky enough to find the pack laying up in the thickets their multi-colored coats and dark faces make for some interesting exposures riddles.  Most of the time your camera will do an ok job of assessing the light int he scene but as I mentioned it in this post, it is all too easy to underexpose the animals face leaving you with dark eyes that blend into the face and a very lifeless image.  There are a lot of photographic tips and tricks that will help you in creating better Wild Dog images but will post those once I have finished work on the workshop notes.

A few weeks ago we set out to photograph the Wild Dogs of Madikwe and after a relatively short search found them on the eastern slope of a small hill.  Not being able to get up the rocky slope we decided to sit and wait for the pack to get active, something that normally happens late afternoon.  As we sat waiting, the late afternoon sun was shining straight into our faces but we had no other choice but to wait for the pack to start moving.  Every now and then one of the dogs would get up, walk around and throw themselves down on the ground again.  Even though, on this particular afternoon, we were hoping for some action shots this gave us the perfect opportunity to shoot some different Wild Dog images.  The grassy slopes of the hill combined with the serious backlighting made for some challenging shooting conditions but as long as you stay photographically open minded out in the field you will be able to get some good images.

Being slightly lower than the dog, I was able to get this shot as it moved along the hill.  Even though you can barely make out the detail on the dog’s dark coat there is no mistaking the species.  The tufts of grass initially seemed like quite a distracting element but it actually works quite well in placing the animal in it’s natural environment.  When I shot this image the sun was still quite high leaving not only a nice bit of rim-lighting around the Wild Dog but also a pretty washed out background.  Still worked out well though!

This image was taken about an hour later as the dogs were starting to regroup.  The sun was no just above the hill leaving me holding my cap to try and block the low incoming sun rays from hitting my lens.  The exposure on this one was a bit easier as the background was not as washed out as earlier leaving much richer colors all round but still some nice rim lighting around the animals.  If anything I would have liked the dog on the left to have turned his head slightly to the right so that both sets of ears were the same but, for me, the white flash of the tail makes up for it.  Quite a simple image that some people might not even attempt to shoot but a true representation of Wild Dogs – in the wild.

For a whole lot more Wild Dog images click here and if you want to read up more on the full account of the Wild Dog’s red list status on the ICUN website click here.

If you are keen to come to Madikwe to photograph the Wild Dogs let me know as I have a few photographic safaris planned for later this year.

Bye 4 now!

Gerry

African Wild Dog

Madikwe Game Reserve, 27 Feb 2010, 06h29

Nikon D300, Nikon 80-200 @ 200mm, 1/640, f/3.5, ISO 800

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Photographing one of Africa’s most endangered carnivores is definitely a highlight when visiting the Madikwe Game Reserve.  On this specific morning we had just left the lodge when a group of Wild Dogs burst out of the bushes and ran down the road straight towards the rising sun that had barely broken the horizon and apart from a soft golden glow, we did not have to much light to work with.  If you look closely you will see a very small bit of rim lighting around the ears of the three dogs.  Normally photographing Wild Dogs require quite a bit of attention to your metering and exposure settings as it is not all that easy to get the dark eyes to show up properly on the black face, something that can make or break your image, but the above image was a lot simpler.  As there were no harsh shadows and I did not have to worry about the eyes I simply used matrix metering, followed the dogs as they ran down the road and fired away.

With a number of workshops and photographic safaris in the pipeline, let me know if you would be keen to come to Madikwe to photograph the African Wild Dogs!

See ya tomorrow!

Gerry

Friday finally brings a very busy week to an end.

In between all the meetings, trip to Johannesburg and admin I have still been able to capture a few decent wildlife images.  Our good run on lion sightings continue and this week we got to spend a lot of time with five young cubs, their mom and the pride males.  Fantastic sightings and some brilliant photo opportunities.  On top of that I have also been processing a number of images from the hospitality shoot I did at Cleopatra Mountain Farmhouse a few weeks ago.  As a wrap up to the week, below is a slide show featuring not only some of the lion shots but also a few random images from the hospitality shoot images I have been working on.

[slideshow id=3]

One of the most difficult things is to choose which images to showcase on your site or portfolio so in stead of spending hours figuring out which images I should include, the Friday slideshow is purely a fun thing to which images that catch my eye, for whatever reason, gets added.

Aperture 3

A little while ago I downloaded the trial version of Aperture 3.  The hype about Apple’s new image processing software has been quite something and, as with anything Apple, it is bound to keep on drawing quite a bit of attention.

Up until now I have been using Adobe Lightroom for all my image cataloging and processing purely because I work on both Mac and PC and Lightroom is a dual platform program, making things a whole lot easier.  Since I got my iPhone and started doing a lot of my processing on my Macbook Pro I have been very open to anything Apple so I thought I would have a look at what Aperture 3 has to offer.  Being used to Lightroom it took me a few minutes to look around and find all the basic controls and start looking through and processing a few test images but one thing is for certain – Aperture definitely has that Apple magic.

Even though I can find my way around Lightroom with my eyes closed, I found Aperture’s user interface to be elegant, intuitive and easy to use.  It would obviously be unfair to compare the two after just a brief look so for the next week, which is a bit quieter than the past few days, I will only use Aperture to catalogue and process my images.  There are already a few features that I reckon is pretty nice and these include the skin smoothing brush, which can be used with surprising efficiency on certain wildlife images, and the slideshow maker is fantastic.

At this stage I have only put one image  through Aperture 3 just to check the process and it seems simple enough.  After opening the Wild Dog image on the right I did a few basic adjustments using the sliders on the left of the screen.   I then tested a few of the adjustment brushes after which exporting the final image.  Very easy to do and at first glance the results are pretty good.

I enjoy playing around with new programs and by the look of it Aperture has quite a bit of depth to it.  If you have had a look at Aperture 3 I would love to hear your comments.  Once I have given it a good working over I will share my thoughts on the blog.

At first glance Aperture 3 looks impressive but it’s gonna take a lot for me to change over from Lightroom. Let’s see how things go.

Other than that it has been a pretty quiet photographic week so gonna wrap it up.

To end off, one more image from the week that goes along with a quote I saw on Nick Coyne’s blog sometime this week.  Check out Nick’s site for a great mix of images and photographic quotes.  Some great stuff in there.

“You only get one sunrise and one sunset a day, and you only get so many days on the planet. A good photographer does the math and doesn’t waste either.” ~ Galen Rowell

Have a great weekend.  See you on Monday!

Gerry

After a weekend of meetings and trying to get stuck into processing a lot of images from a recent hotel shoot I have an interesting week ahead.  In between a lot of small projects that need some attention I will be making time to shoot a few specific images I need for upcoming workshops.  Looking forward to heading out on my own to shoot what I want, how I want to.  It is a luxury that I don’t always have so hoping for some good photo time!

During the weekend I was going through and organizing some of the images from last week and one particular image caught my attention.

This is the straight from camera RAW image I shot as we were watching a group of 12 Wild Dogs finishing up a young impala they killed about 10 minutes earlier.  The sun had just dropped below the horizon as the dogs were running all over the place, each one trying to keep a piece of the kill to themselves.  I locked onto and was trying to keep up with one individual as he took off with a piece of the carcass.  In the low light conditions I was already shooting at 1/125, with a 200mm f.2.8 lens, and ISO 1600 and tracking the Wild Dog in the viewfinder was quite a challenging task.  I was also shooting on Auto White Balance as the light during the last 30 minutes of the day changes all the time and instead of worrying about it decided to go Auto and change it later if necessary (as I was shooting in RAW) .  There were quite a few blurred images in between but this one felt like it had potential.  To me there was something about the dog running into the open clearing.  So here goes with the basic though pattern as I quickly processed the image.

When I opened the image in Lightroom I knew there was something in this image that could work but also had a few concerns.

First off the subject was slap bang in the middle of the frame, which was the result of me trying to keep up with the moving Wild Dog, and then there was also a few distracting elements.  The one dog who snuck into the bottom of the frame is the obvious one but then there was also the large piece of dead wood on the right of the frame.  In an image our gaze gets pulled to areas that stand out, whether light or dark, and to me this piece of wood was almost more of a focus then the dog I was trying to keep up with.  Difficult o keep track of all these things as you try and keep a fast moving subject in the viewfinder.

So, the first step was to crop to get it closer to what I originally ‘saw’ in the image.

Even after the crop there was still one area of the image that I was not sure about – the little piece of shrub in the top left corner.  On the one hand I actually quite liked it as it made you gaze jump between the dog and the top corner to where he was moving but in the end I decided to clone it out as well in order to keep the focus 100% on the running Wild Dog.  Still have mixed feelings as to whether I should have kept the shrubs but anyway – moving on.

From here I took the cropped image from Lightroom and made a few adjustments using a few Nik filter (which plugs very easily into either Lightroom or Photoshop).  These adjustments included:

• Contrast – Using Viveza I made a few small local adjustments to the Wild Dog which included upping contrast and saturation to make the subject stand out form the grass.
• Vignette – The second step was to add a vignette around the image in order to make the background, the entire area around the Wild Dog, to bring the brightness down and also pull the viewers eye even more towards the subject.
• Saturation – The last step was to up the saturation and warmth of the entire image just a little to get the image closer to that soft, golden late afternoon light.
  

Now once all the above adjustments were finished I sharpened the image every so slightly using a high pass filter which brought me to the final image.

Nice, but quite different from the first image.  Do you think that the ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ of the image has been compromised?  Does it not still show the essence of the original scene?

To me this image captures perfectly the scene we saw just after sunset a week ago and not just in my minds’s eye.  This is the shot I ‘saw’ as I was snapping away at the running dog, the image I wanted show as the final product.  I am very clear and open about the fact that I cropped and removed a few distracting parts out of the image.  With regards to the various color and contrast adjustments, this is a natural part of digital photography and something I believe you have to do and yes, the goal is to keep your wildlife images natural and at all times be honest about what you do to them during post processing.

I would much rather do some post processing work on an image and come up with a usable, yet realistic, wildlife image than end up with a shot that looks (sounds) like Marlo Brando’s character Terry in the 1954 movie On The Waterfront – “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let’s face it.”

Possible lessons from this post?

• Never delete images while you are out in the field as there could be a ‘contender’ in there somewhere.
• Look for images inside your images that might have something to offer.  Something that catch your eye.
• Don’t be afraid to crop, process and work on an image to create a ‘contender’.
• Be honest about what you do to your images during post processing!

I know there are many people out there who do not believe in ‘photoshopping’ their wildlife images.  Personally I think it is imperative to touch up contrast and saturation and perhaps crop should you have not been able to get it perfect in camera.  Not going to digress into this never ending discussion so will end off with a quote I recently saw on Scott Kelby’s website – “The photographers who don’t like HDR are the ones who don’t know how to do HDR—just like people who complain about the use of Photoshop in photography—those are people who aren’t very good at Photoshop. You don’t hear HDR experts complaining about HDR, just like you don’t hear Photoshop experts saying “There’s too much Photoshop!”

When you next look through your latest wildlife images, don’t forget to look for images that you initially overlooked but that could possibly work.  Look for a contender.

Gerry

Even though the year is just beginning, tomorrow my holiday officially starts!

I was going to do a few posts in advance and have them upload automatically during the time while I am in Thailand but then decided against it.  It would have been very easy to just go through my older images, select a few and post them with a few random thoughts on each.  Nice, but no – so I decided to just drop a few images in this post and leave it at that.  Even though I am psyched and ready for 2010 and have a lot of very exciting projects lined up I decided that I need a complete break from the blog in order to return with a whole fresh view, thoughts and approach to my blog posts.

In a recent post I wrote about sharing your work and I still stand by this, however…

We all reach a point where you feel like your inspiration bucket is running empty.  You start reaching this point you need to look at ways to refill this bucket.  You need to find a way to keep your own passion alive so that you can keep on creating, giving and most of all enjoy what you do.  I am very very happy about how Photo-Africa has been growing and it is only just the beginning.  Even though things are on the up, in a big way, I can feel that I have taken many images and written a lot of blog posts and this break is exactly what I need.  So tomorrow I am off to Thailand where I am going to eat lots of noodles, take a lot of tommy-tourist type images and just allow my inspiration bucket to fill up again.  One of the things I am doing when I get back is to reorganize my wildlife portfolio and this will in itself be a nice exercise which will lead to a whole different way of thinking and many new blog posts.

Tomorrow is Thursday so while I am sitting on a plane to Bangkok you can check in for the guest post.  You will recall that a few weeks ago Morkel Erasmus did a post on HDR and based on the positive response it was a great hit so tomorrow you can join Hougaard Malan as he gives you a whole different way to blend your HDR images in Photoshop.  Hougaard Malan started photography as a hobby in 2007 at the age of 19 and quickly fell in love with the genre of landscape photography at which he truly excels. Completely self taught from the internet, he progressed quickly and exchanged his hopes of becoming an engineer or architect to pursue a career in photography.  He funds his photographic endeavors through the stock industry and has been studying until the end of 2009 and will be shooting and travelling full time from 2010 onwards.  Hougaard’s work is out of this world and the step by step tutorial will give you an insight to how you can also add this little bit of extra pop to your images.  Inspiration deluxe and with a lot to learn make sure to pop in tomorrow.

I will be back next week Thursday to get back into the full swing of things.  Tutorials, assignments, workshops, guest posts, and of course wildlife images galore.  There are a lot of exciting things happening on Photo-Africa but for now I am going to say goodbye until next week!    I will still be doing the occasional update from Thailand on my Twitter page but otherwise enjoy the guest post tomorrow and if you have any specific topics or discussions you would like to see on the blog let me know.  Lots of ideas – endless possibilities!

Until next week!

Gerry

A big shout out to Morkel Erasmus for his guest post yesterday.  Some amazing images and it’s great to see all the positive comments.  If you have not yet check it out click here and then leave Morkel a comment with your thoughts!  Great post!

As I was looking through Morkel’s images and some of the images I shot during the last few days I started thinking about what it is in a scene that compels us to click the shutter.  The options are endless yet a lot of the times people just shoot one type of shot.  If you are lucky enough to spend time with animals in the wild take your time, look around and shoot the entire scene.

I captured the image above a few days ago as we sat watching around 12 Wild Dogs feed on a female Kudu they pulled down about 10 minutes earlier.  To say that there was a lot of action is an understatement as the Dogs fed, played around and chased a Brown Hyena all over the place.  So where do you start?  What do you photograph first?

The ideal, and this is only if you have time, is to start wide and then go closer.  First get a shot that shows the environment and sets the scene.  From there start looking at the various participants in the scene and then, once you have a nice portrait of the animal look for abstracts.  Look for stories within the frame that can fill the details or give a clearer vision to the story you witnessed.

The image on the right might at first glance seem quite brutal and dramatic but just take moment.  The focus is obviously the kudu skull but the addition of the Wild Dog’s leg in the frame tell the story.  By adding the portrait above, which might come across as quite harmless and innocent,  to this image you are start getting an idea of what happened.  Of the various ‘players’ that were involved in the drama.

I will be looking at this concept in a lot more detail next week as well as how to effectively crop your wildlife images.  Wildlife photography, at it’s core,  is about telling a story, about documenting nature.  When you go out into the field this weekend, try to photograph to tell the story.  Show the story.

Time for me to get going.  Heading out into he filed with a new toy, well kinda.  I got my hands on a Nikon 80-200 2.8 lens and I am very keen to see what it can do.  This morning I shot of a few shots with it and first impression is pretty good.  It is the old push-pull focussing mechanism and I am quite liking it.  Early next year I will most likely be getting the Nikon 70-200 2.8 VRII so until that time I will play around with this one.  Time allowing I will post a few images and thoughts on this lens during the weekend.

If you need more reading material for the weekend you can also check out a blog post on black and white wildlife photography I did for AfricaFreak by clicking here.  From the same site you can also register to download the e-book Safari Tips 101 which I wrote about here.

I will be back on Monday but for now go out and photograph a wildlife ‘story’. 

See ya soon!

Gerry

Neal Fischer has added a huge number of new images to the Photo-Africa Stock Library.   Here are a few highlights and remember that all images uploaded to the Stock Library have been taken in the wild places of Africa.  No zoos.  No tame animals.  This is the the real thing!

African Rock Python by Neal Fischer

Wild Dog Pup Playing by Neal Fischer

Hamerkop by Neal Fischer

Wild Dog Yawn by Neal Fischer

To view more of, or purchase any of Neal’s images visit his portfolio on the Photo-Africa Stock Library by clicking here.

More soon.

Gerry