I have said it before – one of the best ways to improve your own photography is to go and shoot with other, like minded photographers.

So, this morning I had the pleasure of heading out with a private client to assist him in taking his photography to the next level.  We spent the entire morning with a pride of 5 lions on a private concession to the east of the Madikwe Game Reserve and we had a fantastic time!

We found the 5 cats just before sunrise and even though a thick bank of clouds came in the way of some golden light, the diffused light gave us a lot to work with.

Challenging a client to up there photographic game is not only rewarding for them but for me as well.

It is just so easy to fall into a rut but having to try and stay two steps ahead of someone keeps you on your feet.  Photography is amazing in that there are so many variables you can play with in order to change your approach and having to think of different approaches to the same subject inevitably leads to knew ideas and new images.

Whether you decide to focus on new and different technical settings or just on the artistic side of things, I strongly believe that anybody willing to take the time to learn and spend time on their photography will improve and grow as a photographer.

Yeah, it’s as simple as that.

So, after a great morning of photographing lions playing, walking and hunting we returned to the lodge with a bunch of great images and many lessons learnt.

There are still quite a bit of clouds around but this afternoon we will head out again to work the sunset in whatever shape or form we get it.  You see, one of the discussions we had was how there are always, always, more options when you are out in the field with your camera.

Clouds, rain or the sun setting is no reason to pack up your gear.  I you know your equipment and you are keen to photograph nature you will find something to photograph.  The options really are endless!

Time to go and play around in Lightroom during our post processing chat and then off on our afternoon photographic excursion!

Will be posting more images during the week but if you are on Twitter you can follow along as we go!

Until next time.

Gerry van der Walt

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Links Mentioned in These Videos

• Blog Post – Let Inspiration Find You
• Pixelated Image – David’s DuChemin’s Blog
• Chase Jarvis Blog
• Follow Gerry on Twitter
• Photo-Africa on Facebook

As always I look forward to your comments, questions and suggestions.

Until next time.

Gerry van der Walt

Leopard in Madikwe

Nikon D3s, Nikon 70-200 VR II @ 170mm, 1/400, f/2.8, ISO 3200

Madikwe Game Reserve

Until next time.

Gerry van der Walt

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The Leopard is without a doubt one of the most sought after photographic subjects for anybody heading out on a safari in Africa.

The Madikwe Game Reserve, great as it is, is not known for it’s Leopard sightings with Lion, Elephant, Wild Dog and copious amounts of general game making up the vast majority of photographic subjects.

However, every once in awhile, magic happens.

Yesterday afternoon this young male made for some of the best Leopard photography opportunities I have had in quite some time.  That being said, he did not make it all that easy.

Initially he was fast asleep in a Boscia tree with our only decent view being from the eastern side.  This meant that we were photographing directly into the late afternoon sun so it took quite a bit of hands and caps to stop the sun from hitting the front of our lenses and causing very harsh lens flares.  Because of this the color in the RAW images was a little washed out but nothing a slider or two in Lightroom could not fix.

Now because sightings of a seriously chilled Leopard is not all that common in Madikwe it can turn into, well, a complete circus.  Don’t get me wrong.  The process if managed very nicely but with vehicles from all over the reserve arriving to get a glimpse of the elusive spotted cat which means that our ideal, of spending some quality photographic time with your subject, was not possible.  I like to watch, wait, appreciate.

So, after our into-the-sun session we decided to go for an early drink stop, always fun, and then return a little later once the chaos has subsided.

I find it amazing that many people, and I see this all the time, will arrive at a sighting like this, get their camera, fire off a few frames and are then quite happy to carry on having ticked off one of the Big 5. Hey, each to his own but a safari, not even a photographic safari, should be about spending time with your subject, immersing yourself in the experience.  I know this is not always possible, but the shoot and run approach of many guides and photographers will never cease to amaze me but hey, I digress.  Let’s get back to the images.

When we returned to the sighting our Leopard was very active.  Up the tree. Down the tree.  Scent marking.  Stalking impala.

We ended up spending just more than an hour with this amazing animal filling up quite a few memory cards with very special images.

However.  It was not all that simple.

The light was gone so we had to use a spotlight to light up the scenes and with us being the only vehicle in the sighting (bliss!) we had to do what we could with our own spotlight to create compelling images.

There was a lot of spot metering, low shutter speeds and creative compositions and in the end we got some awesome images!

The single light source, and occasional fill flash, made for a very dramatic, almost theatrical feel to our images as we put the Leopard in the spotlight.  Yeah, that pun was intended!

Here are a few of the more than 200 images I fired off last night.  Looking forward to working through more of these.

Beautiful animal.  Great images.  Amazing experience.

Apart from the absolute luxury of having a sighting like this all to ourselves, at the small cost of arriving late for dinner, we had a great time trying different exposures, different compositions, using different lenses for varying results and, for some people, learning more about metering for tricky lighting situations like this.

All in all a fantastic photographic experience and proof that Madikwe does in fact have Leopards!

Until next time.

Gerry van der Walt

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Last week I had a rare morning off so I decided to head out to one of the large dams in Madikwe for a bit of photography.

Yeah, I get out into the wild almost everyday but getting out there on your own is special.  You see, I strongly believe that as a photographer the conscious decision to head out on your own, without meeting anybody else, is one of the first steps to creating better images.  Yeah yeah, shooting with other people is the best way to learn but heading out on your own affirms your own commitment to your craft.  You are doing it because you want to do it.

How often have you had the opportunity to go out on your own to photograph nature but then in the end the warm duvet wins out as you turn around promising yourself that you’ll definitely go next time?

So after a very early morning alarm and a cold drive to the large body of water I arrived and settled in to photograph whatever nature decided to throw at me.  Actually, that’s wrong.  I knew that with the amount of water out there the likelihood of any animal images around the water was not that high so in the back of my mind I was hoping to photograph birds in flight.

Now birds in flight is something I have not done a helluva lot of.  It is a genre of wildlife photography that kinda scares me but that is exactly the reason I chose this as my mini-assignment for the morning.  All in all the bird life was pretty quiet.  I reckon that there is actually too much water and no real place for the waders along the edge of the water.

So, with that in mind I spent the next two hours at the water photographing birds in flight.

For me the morning was more a discovery of new equipment, techniques and generally just getting lost in my own photography.  Something I plan to do more of should I get the chance.  As I was looking through the images, even on the LCD screen, was that birds in flight create the most amazing shapes and when combined with lots of negative space can make for powerful, albeit simple, images.  Something that I seem to be drawn to recently.

Here are a few of my images from the morning.

Nothing mind blowing but, I would like to think, solid images of birds in flight.

Whenever I get another chance to head out on my own I will most definitely grab the opportunity to build on this and try my hand at some more birds in flight.  Great fun.

When you next get the chance to head out on your own, will you?

Until next time.

Gerry van der Walt

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Africa is known for it’s open savannahs, massive skies and huge diversity of large mammals.

In combination, or on it’s own, each of these make for amazing wildlife images and the amount of people who travel to Africa with their cameras attest to this fact.

Now of all the mammals in Africa, the large cats are the most sought after subjects and in Madikwe, where I spend most of my time, there is never a shortage of the largest cat in Africa.  Yeah, lion photography in Madikwe is awesome!

Or is it?

There is a massive difference between a great wildlife sighting and a great wildlife photographic opportunity.  Seeing lions in the wild is special in itself but capturing that moment with your camera is a whole different story.

When you are watching lions, or any other animals, in the wild your brain filters out all the ugly bits.  The little piece of grass in front of the lion’s face.  The horrible backgrounds.  Your mind processes the image, not unlike a quick edit in Photoshop, to give you the fantastic visual experience of seeing wild lions in Africa.  The stuff memories are made of.

The goal is obviously to capture that same visual beauty with your camera.  The challenge however lies in the fact that your camera can only create two-dimensional images.  The camera does not filter anything out.  The camera shows you the whole picture.  Unedited.

It is up to you, as the photographer, to work with what you have to bypass these challenges.  You need to create depth, or at least the perception of depth, in your images.  You need to decide what to include, or more importantly what to exclude, in your images.  You need to think about the choices you make, bit technically and artistically, before you click the shutter.

Coming back to Madikwe.  Even though it is a truly amazing reserve, it is a difficult photography destination.  Not impossible, just difficult.

There is a lot of sickle bush, probably one of the most horrible backgrounds for any wildlife subject, and there is a lot of it.  Really, it’s everywhere!  The bush is also seriously thick in places but I suppose one can argue seasonal changes as well.  This is obviously not something we can change so as a photographer it is something you need to take note of and try to work around.

Difficult, not impossible as there are some beautiful open areas and scenes as well and if you work at it you can shoot around the challenges.

You need to look for ways to create clean wildlife images with open, or at least non-distracting backgrounds.  There are a couple of ways to do this with some ideas being:

• Choose an angle that cuts out the messy background
• Blur the background with a shallow DOF
• Use the thickets and backgrounds to frame your subject or create interest

None of these are ideal but if you use them in combination you can still squeeze out some amazing wildlife images.

Difficult, not impossible.

Yeah yeah, I know that a stating point would be to discuss what makes a good wildlife image but for now let’s go with the basics.  Strong subject, open or non-distracting backgrounds, no unnecessary elements and then of course all the basic technical requirements such as exposure, sharpness, etc.

With all of this in mind, this blog post basically put itself together.  In two drives we has some of the most amazing lion sightings, which in this particular case led to some awesome photo opportunities.

Here are a number of lion images I took in a 24 hour period with some random thoughts on what I was thinking when I shot each image, how I worked around the environmental challenges and why I like the image.

Nikon D300, Nikon 80-400 @ 360mm, 1/1250, f/5.3, ISO 400

This female appeared almost out of nowhere.  We stopped, grabbed cameras and started clicking away.  The road she was walking on made for a great leading line, to draw the viewer’s eye to the subject.  The sickle bush and shrubs was visible on both sides of the road so I had to zoom in quite tight to try and eliminate as much as possible.  The lion’s stare and paw in motion also adds nicely to this full frontal approach.

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Nikon D300, Nikon 80-400 @ 150mm, 1/1600, f/5.3, ISO 400

Nikon D300, Nikon 80-400 @ 350mm, 1/2000, f/5.3, ISO 400

After cutting through the thick stuff we raced around to catch the lioness as she popped out at a nearby waterhole.  As she came out of the thickets we started firing away.  Even though the grass around her was quite thick a combination of shallow depth of field and even colored grass the end result was very pleasing.  Nice pose and, relatively, clean image.

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Nikon D300, Nikon 80-400 @ 340mm, 1/2000, f/5.3, ISO 400

Nikon D300, Nikon 80-400 @ 350mm, 1/2000, f/5.3, ISO 400

Not much else you could wish for here.  Great light, great action, beautiful lioness.  More tongue action would have been nice but hey, I can only shoot what I see.

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Nikon D300, Nikon 80-400 @ 400mm, 1/1600, f/5.3, ISO 400

This is the kind of shot many wildlife photographers wait for.  Good light, open eyes and tongue out.  The catchlight in the cat’s eye brings the image to life and the tongue, and water ripples, conveys movement and action.  In my perfect,like with the previous image, world I would have liked a little less mud in the water in front of her but hey, I can only shoot what I see.

Nikon D300, Nikon 80-400 @ 400mm, 1/250, f/5.3, ISO 2000

This was where the lioness was leading us.  Two young cubs waiting for mom to return.  By this time the light was almost gone so we had to push our ISO and hold very still to get anything close to a usable image.  The reason for including this image?  Messy backgrounds.  Yeah the cubs are as cute as hell but the background and shrubs detract from the subject.  Yeah, I’m probably being harsh as this is a cute pic. But it’s not a great pic – technically or artistically.  But as I have said before, and will say again, I can only shoot what I see.

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Nikon D300, Nikon 80-400 @ 370mm, 1/1600, f/5.6, ISO 400

The next morning we found this big guy.  He was soaking up the morning sun as we started clicking away.He was positioned perfectly, in an open clearing, but the background was very messy.  The answer?  Get in tight and focus your viewer’s attention on the subject.  Only the subject.  If anything I would have liked his eyes a little more open but he was chilling and none of us wanted to go and asked him to change.

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Nikon D300, Nikon 80-400 @ 300mm, 1/500, f/5.3, ISO 400

This female was laying just next to the big guy and must have just been coming into estrous as he was keeping a very close watch on her.  We tried a few different positions and shots but nothing really worked until she looked over he shoulder.  Nice pose but, as often happens with lion in bright sunlight, the highlight / lighter areas on her face blows out.  Still, this is what I saw and the goal was to get the image as close to that as possible.

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Nikon D300, Nikon 80-400 @ 150mm, 1/2000, f/5.6, ISO 400

A pretty stock standard lion image.  The two lions moved onto the reserve airstrip giving us lots of time to fire away.  Could not do too much else with this image as there was a large (messy) thicket just to the left of the frame so I framed on the cats, lost the thicket and clicked away.

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Nikon D300, Nikon 80-400 @ 130mm, 1/2000, f/5.3, ISO 400

Using a shallow depth of field  is one of the best ways to throw the background out of focus and make your subject pop out.  Aperture, distance from the subject and focal length used all play a part on the final result so I did the best with the equipment I had with me.

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Nikon D300, Nikon 80-400 @ 350mm, 1/500, f/5.3, ISO 400

Too often people bitch and moan when their wildlife subject is not looking directly at them.  Always shooting your subject from the front is the same as always shooting with the light over your shoulder – your results are always going to be the same.  When the lioness turned her head to the side the soft light, grasses and her pose just popped out at me.  Framed quickly and clicked the shutter for a different but very pleasing result.

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Nikon D300, Nikon 80-400 @ 400mm, 1/500, f/5.3, ISO 400

A few seconds later the lioness yawned and the shutters starting clicking.  Same idea as above but now with a bit of bite.

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Nikon D300, Nikon 80-400 @ 400mm, 1/500, f/5.3, ISO 400

If you have a static subject, you should always shoot in both landscape and portrait modes.  The change of orientation not only makes a huge difference to the look and feel of your image but it also makes you think differently and the moment you think differently your creativity starts working overtime.  Try it!  Loved this in color but, for me, the B&W version has it’s own, unique attraction.

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Nikon D300, Nikon 80-400 @ 200mm, 1/1000, f/5.3, ISO 400

This is a typical Madikwe lion sightings.  Lions all over the place but messay background and shrubs all around.  A straight up, clean lion shot is never going to work here so the next option is to shoot the story.  SHoot content rather than technical.  As the lioness started yawning, and I framed my shot, I saw the male hiding in the shadow of the thickets.  I zoomed out a bit and shot the story.  A shallow depth of field blurred the male in the background just enough not too distract from the female but still let my viewer see that he is there.  Yeah, there are burnt out highlights but, as mentioned, this image is more about content than anything else.  It tells a story.

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Nikon D300, Nikon 80-400 @ 175mm, 1/1000, f/5.3, ISO 400

The moment the two lions lay down in the shade I saw that there was a shot.  The background was messy but my goal was to show the two lions together rather than the large cats in their natural environment.  This choice immediately cut out the distracting background so all I had to do now was meter and wait for the right moment.

* * *

Nikon D300, Nikon 80-400 @ 175mm, 1/1000, f/5.3, ISO 400

And then another moment.  If only they wanted to do it at the same time!

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Nikon D300, Nikon 80-400 @ 400, 1/200, f/7.1, ISO 400

This is another situation that you will encounter often.  Normally your subject will not have as much grass in front of it’s face but when I saw this youngster behind the long grass I saw the shot immediately.  There is no doubt as to what my subject is but the shallow focus on the grass makes for an image that shows the lions ability to blend with it’s surrounding.  If there was only a few pieces of grass it might have been distracting but this image works.  At this point we could go into a whole long discussion as to whether it’s ok to clone one pieces of grass and branches but not going down that road.  I don’t.  Your choice.

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For a 24 hour period I was quite chuffed with the lion images I was able to capture.

The situations were not always ideal and the subject did not always do what I wanted them to d0 (do they ever??) but by being patient and managing the difficulties you can get some great images even if you are faced with thick bush, messy backgrounds and sickle bush.

Madikwe is a great reserve which offer amazing wildlife sightings but the photography can be tough at times butif you are patient, enjoy the moments and shoot what you see and you can walk away with some awesome wildlife images!

It’s difficult.  Not impossible!

Until next time.

Gerry van der Walt

* * *

The last few weeks have been wet.  Very wet.

All the water is fantastic for the bush and it is amazing to see how thick and green the bush is, especially for this time of year, but it tends to make wildlife photography slightly more challenging then under normal circumstance.  Does not make it impossible, just a little more challenging.  The animals tend to behave differently, your equipment gets wet and you generally feel cold and miserable but if you keep your eyes open there will still be photographic opportunities everywhere.

After a few requests I will be doing a post specifically on wildlife photography in the rain so will hopefully get around to that next week when I get to JHB for a few off days.  To jump the gun a but I thought I would post two images I shot yesterday morning.  We were just leaving the lodge when we bumped into a group of 5 spotter hyena walking along the road.  These often misunderstood creatures tend to be overlooked but with a slight drizzle and heavy mist hanging over Madikwe they seemed very much in place.  Almost like something from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. (Damn that goes way back!)

As we follow them on the road we came around a corner, they stopped and the shot pretty much made itself.  The tree, the curving road, heavy mist and two hyenas.  Click.

Gotta love it when a scene comes together.  We followed them for another 5 minutes or so when one of the scavengers stopped in a puddle and turned around to look at us. Again, subject in the foreground, curving road, objects in the background to complete the story.  Click.

Follow.  Look.  Click.   I wish it was always that easy to create moody, story telling type images.

Right, I have gotten this far in the post without using the ‘hyenas in the mist’  phrase so gonna leave it there for now.  Also had to resist the urge to make that the title of this post!  ;)  More on wildlife photography in the rain and mist next week.

Tomorrow is Thursday so make sure to join Paul McDougall, tomorrow’s guest blogger, for Living the Dream.  I met Paul, a 30 year old photographer from the UK now living in Kenya, on Facebook and am very pleased that he agreed to do a post on Photo-Africa.  In his post Paul writes about wildlife photography, setting up his business, safaris in Kenya, his future and some amazing wildlife images.  Great read so make sure to pop in tomorrow!

One more thing before I go. If you are in Johannesburg on 22 May, why not come and join me and Kerry de Bruyn for a fun and interactive full day photography workshop at the Inanda Country Club?  Places are filling up so check here for more info or just email me!

I’ll see ya again on Friday!

Gerry

Pangolin

Deon de Villiers from Jaci’s Lodge

Madikwe Game Reserve

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Pangolin

Deon de Villiers from Jaci’s Lodge

Madikwe Game Reserve

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Lioness in Madikwe

Charl Gammelin from Madikwe River Lodge

Madikwe Game Reserve

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Rhino Sunset

Charl Gammelin from Madikwe River Lodge

Madikwe Game Reserve

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Maropeng Youngsters

Grant Marcus from Tuningi Game Lodge

Madikwe Game Reserve

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Kgala Male

Grant Marcus from Tuningi Game Lodge

Madikwe Game Reserve

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Orb Web Spider

Gerry van der Walt from Nkurru Game Lodge

Madikwe Gane Reserve

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The Madikwe wildlife post willtake place every Saturday so if you have any wildlife images from the Madikwe Game Reserve that you would like to share you can email them to me along with the name of the lodge you work for or visited and links to your own website (if you have one).

Gerry

Old One-Eye

Madikwe Game Reserve, 6 August 2008, 19h24

Nikon D300, Sigma 50-500 @ 200mm, 1/200, f/6.3, ISO 500, lit with spotlight from the side and fill flash

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Wildlife photography has got to be one of the most interesting forms of photography.  Apart from subjects that don’t really want to do what you want them to do there is always the choice of going for the crisp, sharp, everything-where-it-should-be shots or to capture the raw moments as you see it.  It is the times when both of these come together that you end up with a winning image.  I reckon that at the end of the day it’s all content and sharing your experience or story with your viewer.  The above image shows one of the largest leopards I have ever seen in Madikwe on a zebra kill.  The kill was found this morning and from all the evidence it looked like it was killed by this big guy.  Unusual for a leopard to take down such a large prey but that’s what keeps going on safari interesting – you never know what your gonna get!  As the spotted cat went about his dinner we looked for gaps to shoot through and in the end this was the best view.  Yeah, I cut off the tail and a bit of his foot but for me this image is all about the face.  Not sure how or when it happened, but as you can see this old guy was called One-Eye for a reason.  The sighting was fantastic, the photography difficult but fun and in the end everybody walked away with some great story telling image.  Earlier this year this leopard was found dead close to a waterhole with a broken jaw.  By the time he was found hyenas had already found him so the exact cause of death and how he broke his jaw was never really found.  At least this magnificent cat lived a long life and gave many people amazing images and memories of a photographic safari in Africa.

Be back tomorrow!

Gerry

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