A name that is certainly not unfamiliar in the natural world, is “The Kalahari”.

Many people, although they haven’t been there, have heard about this strange hinterland where African bushveld merges with Namib desert in a marriage that produces one of the most unique ecosystems in the world. Covering a massive 900,000 square kilometers and spanning across large sections of South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, this magnificent biosphere is home to a surprisingly large variety of life, from small to great and from root to mammal.

The Kalahari is a place of space, sand, silence and serenity. The space envelops you until you realise exactly how small you are in this vast expanse. The silence creeps into your soul and saturates you with a relaxation that is hard to describe. The red sand between your toes is surprisingly cool and makes you feel like you are now really in Africa. And then you experience the serenity…that deep-sighing “aaaahhhhh” feeling…

Now I’m sure many of my non-Southern-African friends are wondering: “What are the options for the intrepid safari-lover when contemplating visiting the Kalahari?” There are a few options indeed. If you’ve been to Botswana, you might be familiar with the Central Kalahari Reserve and places such as the Valley of Desolation, but the part of the Kalahari I want to introduce to you today lies to the Southwest of that famous park. I am talking about the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park.

A legendary park in the sense that it was the first “Peace Park” put in place after the initiation of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa, and it paved the way for many more like it. Essentially, the old “Kalahari Gemsbok National Park” in South Africa (which was established in 1931) was merged with the “Gemsbok National Park” in Botswana, to form one gigantic wildlife reserve that would reopen and protect the ancient migratory routes of the countless herds of animals that traverse this vast region, chasing the rains and the fresh grass.

Now, for all the “5-star safari purists”, take note that the Kgalagadi is a self-drive destination…which means you will have to do a little more planning than usual. However, it can be a very rewarding experience, as you rarely feel more in touch with Africa than when you are sitting in your tent listening to a lion roaring right outside it! There is something special about finding your own sightings, having to learn how to read the signs of the bush, of the animals, and to read the spoor of a lion made earlier that morning in the dirt of the road…to experience this you need to step out of the comfort zone of a guided safari!

On the Botswana side it gets even rougher – you have to take ALL your supplies (water as well) and rough it out in the bush along 4×4 tracks and sleep in unfenced camps with no electricity where the predators literally come through and sniff on your tent flaps.

Enough ranting – let’s get to introducing you to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park…at least the South African side. The park is situated in the most northwestern corner of South Africa, where Namibia, Botswana and the Northern Cape province of South Africa converge. Now what makes the Kgalagadi such an attractive photographic location is the wide open spaces – if you have a good sighting you can keep it provided the animal doesn’t disappear over the dunes.

The park is basically composed of 2 dry riverbeds (these rivers haven’t flowed in more than 100 years or so), with multiple waterholes set up in the Nossob and Auob riverbeds to help sustain the animals when the rains cease and the long dry season commences.

Let me forewarn you – I am probably going to go against all blogging convention and give you a visual sensory overload today…not because I want to show off as many of my images as possible, but because the Kalahari is one of those places where talking about it alone doesn’t even give you a whiff of what you will experience. Showing you visual images that transport you there – now that will get you considering this destination much faster, will it not?

A major drawing card of this wonderful locale is the amazing photogenic qualities of the landscape. The contrasts of deep blue African sky, bright red sand dunes, yellow and green shrubs and iconic camelthorn acacia trees make for amazing landscape photography and also sublime backgrounds for your wildlife and avian portraits.

To quote the South African National Parks website: “Red sand dunes, sparse vegetation and the dry riverbeds of the Nossob and Auob show antelope and predator species off to spectacualr advantage and provide excellent photographic opportunities. Kgalagadi is also a haven for birders, especially those interested in birds of prey.” Even if you aren’t that avid a photographer, be warned – what’s beautiful to a photographer is just as beautiful to the nature lover who just wants to sit back and take it all in systematically.

As the sun sets in the Kalahari, barking geckoes chirp you into darkness, and in the distance (sometimes VERY close) you will hear the yelping of black-backed jackals and the roaring of lions, and maybe you will even have night-time visitor…in the fenced camps there are usually black-backed jackals and Cape foxes who find a way in to come and scavenge, and in the unfenced camps even lions and leopards visit you while you are sleeping snugly in a tent or wilderness chalet. The climate is what you would expect from a semi-desert.

The summers get unbearable hot during the day, and the night is quite cool. This only changes slightly during winter, when daytime temperatures can still reach the 25 degrees Celcius mark, and the night temperature drops to below freezing point. Luckily most of the rest camps on the South African side have now got crystal- clear swimming pools to assist with the hot daytime temperatures. This see-sawing of extreme temperatures is part of what makes this place so interesting – never a dull moment!

Due to its remote setting it is recommendable to book yourself for a lengthy stay – since you won’t want to leave soon in any case once you have been here. You can find more information such as tariffs, availability, traveling options and so forth on the South African National Parks’ website (link provided below). Do not be put off by the self- catering nature of a trip to the Kgalagadi…half the experience is making your fire under the African stars and putting a juicy piece of meat on the grill to prepare for your evening feast.

There are so many possibilities for photography in this wonderful place. The Kalahari is in fact much more than just the place where the famous black-maned lions roam and where cheetahs chase down springbok in the dry riverbeds.The big cats are plentiful and well exposed, but if you focus only on them, you will frustrate yourself. The Kalahari offers a little bit of everything for your photographic portfolio…small adorable critters like meerkats and mongooses, rare sightings like the brown hyena and honey badger, a plethora of birding, unbelievable sunrise and sunset light and of course BIG skies!

And if you think the daytime skies are endless, wait till you see the covering of the milky way at night. With almost zero light pollution this reserve has a nearly unparalleled vista of the expanse of the universe at night. The only place I have seen MORE stars was at the bottom of the Fish River Canyon in Namibia!

Here are few shots that epitomize these characteristics.

I really hope that my photos, or my descriptions, or a combination of both have inspired and motivated you to make sure the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park is next on your hot- spot safari locations to gallivant off to. As you can see – I have really been taken by this place (and I have only gone twice since getting into wildlife photography – although another trip is on the cards already), and I hope some of that has rubbed off on you as you read this today.

Cheers for now!!

Morkel Erasmus

Links:

- Blog: SAFFAscapes (Exploring Southern Africa in HDR)
- Facebook: Morkel Erasmus Photography
- SANPARKS: South African National Parks

Andre Erasmus has just uploaded new images to the Photo-Africa Stock Library.

Leopard by Andre Erasmus

Leopard by Andre Erasmus

To view more of or purcahse any of Andre’s images click here.

More soon.

Gerry

I must be honest, I was a bit taken aback when Gerry asked me to be write a “guest photographer” blog for Photo-Africa.  After all, I am the one with the newish blog supposed to be asking guys like Gerry to post guest blogs on my page.  Nevertheless, I am honoured to do just that.

I guess my fascination with photography goes back to my school years.  I was always intrigued by that “makes-you-want-to-be-there” shot – you know? The typical, idyllic sunrise/sunset over the Snake River (a la Ansel Adams), or the golden light on a Kalahari Lion in the morning.  Those shots that make you wonder what the heck you are doing sitting in an office…

I had been raised in a family that was constantly looking for a reason to go to the African bush or to the ocean.  Annual trips to Kruger cemented a love for nature deep within me that is hard to explain to people who just don’t get it that you can laughingly slap the dust from your face, sit around a fire and listen to the awakening bush as the night draws near.

I had enjoyed taking photos with my ‘advanced’ point-and-shoot (I still have my trusty Kodak Z612 – it’s now permanently in my wife’s handbag for those rare moments when I don’t have a large camera slung around my neck), but it was not until purchasing my first DSLR camera in January 2009 when it all ‘clicked’ into place for me – pun intended.  Much like my picking up the guitar at age 17, it was a decision I had put off for much too long, I would come to realise.

Not long after starting to hone my skills as a wildlife and avian photographer – two fields which had become my primary focus, I started dabbling in proper landscape photography again – and was amazed by the complexity it entailed.  My constant yearning for growth in my new hobby-cum-obsession had me reading, browsing and posting like wildfire on various internet photography forums.  It wasn’t too long before I stumbled upon HDR photography.  If you don’t know what that is yet – it’s an acronym for High Dynamic Range.

A short synopsis is basically this – HDR is the use of various methods to blend multiple exposures of a single scene or shot in order to better capture the dynamic range of the scene (since your eye can handle much more dynamic range than a camera can with a single exposure).  For a great explanation and tutorial (not to mention some stunning HDR work), have a look at www.stuckincustoms.com.

All of a sudden I knew it – I had found my niche…my ability to make those ‘wow’ photos and to convey more accurately what I was seeing with my eyes, and even push the artistic boundaries a bit.  Since discovering this methodology, I have started to explore a great number of ways and application areas within photography to apply it to. It obviously doesn’t work with EVERY shot, but when it does work, boy does it come together nicely.

I will show you an example posted recently on my blog (www.saffascapes.blogspot.com). We had the privilege to hike the famed Fish River Canyon hiking trail in Namibia. On the morning of our departure, we spent some time at the main lookout point overlooking this majestic piece of earth. It was hazy and even drizzling in parts over the canyon, which made the photos come out dullish. Here is an out-of-camera shot for example.

Now – taking three exposures at different exposure brackets (typically -1; 0; +1 or -2; 0; +2 or a combination of both), and blending them together – you get this:

Amazing difference right??

Now, it’s one thing to apply it to landscapes where you can fairly comfortably take 3 to 7 exposures in quick succession without much changing (given that you’re tripod-mounted and the wind isn’t pelting at 100km/h!)…but my mind eventually started racing…what about applying this to other nature shots, like wildlife shots? Sure – you would get very few instances where the particular subject would stand perfectly still through multiple exposures…but that’s where the beauty of RAW comes in. By carefully playing around with the settings in your RAW converter, you will be able to ‘generate’ 3 exposures or more of the same wildlife scene, which would be good enough to use in generating your HDR image.

Let’s do this by way of an example…

Here is the out-of-camera shot of a cheetah we found walking along the Auob riverbed in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park.

The sun was behind some clouds, hence the dull appearance in lighting. No problem! I quickly generate one shot over-exposed and another which is under-exposed by 1 stop.

Now comes the tricky part, I pull all 3 images into a clever piece of software called Photomatix. There are various ways to skin this cat (pun once again, intended). A favourite among landscape photographers is to blend the exposures in Photoshop using layers and gradient masks. I like using that method as well, but for most shots I just like the ‘punch’ that Photomatix delivers as it renders your HDR for you.

Within Photomatix there are quite a lot of tweaks with which you have to experiment a lot since they have different effects on various photos. Once I’m happy with the result, I generate my HDR image. This, however, often looks very ‘plastic’, flat or oversaturated, depending on which tweaks I applied. I bring this image back into Photoshop for some more post-processing. I typically use a lot of curves, selective colour and selective noise reduction (Photomatix loves that noise!) to get the final image. I might even layer it upon the original exposures and punch back some detail as needed.

The end-result? A cheetah image that really pops, having an almost 3D look and feel to it.

Well, there you have it…a not-so-brief quick overview of how I get to my images – some of them.  As I said, I don’t apply HDR to every shot I take…that would be plain ignorant.  I do apply it to shots that have the potential to be “wow” shots, but just need to have the “oomf” brought to the fore. I am far from mastering it – but I do believe I’ve found something which sits nicely with what I want to achieve as a photographer, and I enjoy doing it.

I have plenty that turned out disastrous, but here are some of my other HDR results that have worked.  

I hope that these images inspire you to push the boundaries in your area of photographic interest. I will keep pushing mine!

Morkel Erasmus

Morkel’s Links

• Blog: SAFFASCAPES
• Facebook Group: Morkel Erasmus Photography

The last few days have been pretty busy but at least things are still all heading in the right direction.

I was looking for an image to go with the title of this post and, after a very quick search, this is the best I could find.  Not as artistically subtle as I might have hoped for but I guess you can get ‘busy’ from the image.   The image shows a game drive vehicle behind a massive swarm of Red Billed Queleas flying over the dam.   Even though these little birds are considered a pest they make for very impressive photo opportunities!

Was going to do a post on cropping your wildlife images but will be bumping this by a few days.  Tonight after game drive I will be driving through to JHB.  The main reason is to collect a few friends visiting from far away.  Australia and Japan to be exact.  Cannot wait to spend some time, catch up and take some pics with Steve.  Other than that I have to go and collect a few urgent maintenance related items for the lodge.  Yeah… it never stops!!  Oh, also picking up a new lens but a whole lot more on this soon.  Nice…

Tomorrow being Thursday, Morkel Erasmus will be doing a guest post on shooting Africa in HDR.  HDR is a very interesting topic as people either love it or hate it and it takes a great deal of insight and focus to create images that pop but still look natural.  By looking at the images that Morkel has included in his post I reckon he has nailed it.  Since receiving his article I have also played around with a few HDR image, something I have not done for a while, and whatever you think of it, it is still great fun and can give you a whole new way of creating and thinking about your images.   Make sure to join him tomorrow for ‘Southern Africa in HDR’.

In the meantime make sure to also go and check out all the new images that have been uploaded to the Photo-Africa Stock Library.  Gavin Tonkinson and Grant Marcus have been very busy and have uploaded more than 60 new images between them.  Some fantastic African wildlife images!  Click here to go and check it out.

Oh yeah, one more thing.  One of my older images has been selected in the Top 10 of Getawaty Magazine’s ‘Into the Wild’ competition.  Up until 14 December you can vote for the image so if you are on Facebook visit this link, become a Fan of Getaway Magazine and click on Like below my image!  Thanks!  

For now back to making lists, phoning, fixing and planning for my Joburg trip and then off on game drive.  The sightings this week has been fantastic and I have a lot of images to ‘play’ with during the next few weeks.  So remember to join Morkel tomorrow and I will be back on Friday.

See ya soon.

Gerry

Morkel Erasmus has uploaded new images to the Photo-Africa Stock Library.

Cheetah in Gold by Morkel Erasmus

Hyena Den by Morkel Erasmus

To view more of or purcahse any or Morkel’s images click here.

More soon.

Gerry

Morkel Erasmus has just uploaded new images to the Photo-Africa Stock Library.

Kalahari Oryx Battle by Morkel Erasmus

Hidden Hunter by Morkel Erasmus

To view more of, or purchase any of Morkel’s images click here.

More soon.

Gerry