The devil is in the detail and when you are photographing live subjects that detail can be as small as the little bit of catchlight that brings life to your subject’s eyes.

When you take a photograph, specifically with reference to wildlife,  the idea is to convey reality.  The real, wild world you saw.  A living animal.  Easy yeah?  Well, most of the time!

When you include an animal, bird or a person in a photograph your viewers gaze will immediately focus on them.  Living subjects have a lot more visual mass than inanimate objects.  On a smaller scale, and depending on the size of the subject in your frame, your viewer’s gaze will then find your subject’s face.  The next step down, size allowing, is the eyes.

It has been said that the eyes are the windows to the soul.  Young lovers, and hopefully older ones as well, stare longingly into each other’s eyes.  A naughty young boy has a glint in his eye when he is planning how next to make mom’s day more ‘interesting’.

Get the idea?  The eyes.  It’s all about the eyes!

Now should you choose to show your subject’s eyes in your photograph, as it is most definitely not a prerequisite for great images, there is one thing that will assure your photo comes to life.

Catchlight.  That little ‘glint’ in the eye which in a two dimensional photograph conveys life and, when used correctly, even a little bit of tension.

An image without catchlight = lifeless.

In both the above image of two Bulbuls and the Forked Tailed Drongo at the top of this post, you can very clearly notice the little bit of catchlight.  When you first saw the images was it the first thing that you noticed?  Probably not, but now that I have pointed it out you can (hopefully) see the difference it makes.

Check out the difference between the following two images of the same bird.

A nice, clean image of a Pied Kingfsher but the eye has no catchlight which leaves you feeling that something is just not right.

Boring.

Lifeless.

Dead.

That little bit of catchlight in the eye makes the world of difference in bringing the Kingfisher to life.

The catchlight in all of the above images was a result of the sun.  You can, of course, use a bit of fill-flash to bring some life to your subject’s eyes but most of the time you will be able to use natural light.  The key is just to wait for that precise moment to click the shutter.

When you next have your wildlife subject lined up in the viewfinder, take note of that little bit of catchlight.  A little goes a long way!

Catchlight does not only come into play in wildlife images but can make the world of difference when you are shooting portraits as well.  Check out the following two images.

I am sure you will agree that the top image seems quite lifeless compared to the bottom one.  All the result of a little bit of catchlight in my subject’s eyes.

With people it is much easier to use a little bit of flash to get the eyes to come alive but don’t write off the slightest change of position.  Ask them to tilt their head a little or look in a certain direction.  Small change, large improvement!

As I said earlier, a little goes a long way!

See ya tomorrow!

Gerry

I spent yesterday in the Pilanesberg Game Reserve with the specific goal of photographing birds.  Even though it is the middle of winter, the amount of this water in this picturesque reserve makes for amazing bird watching and therefore, bird photography.  Didn’t get workable shots of all of them but I saw Greater Flamingoes, Capped Wheatear and quite a few yellow-morph Crimson Breasted Shrikes.  Great viewing.

Overall I am very pleased with the resulting images even though the images I had in mind did not quite materialize.   It helps, when you head out for a day of photography, to have a goal.  An idea of what you want to photograph.  And how.

A lot of the time things don’t work out exactly like you were hoping for which means you need to still keep your eyes open for other photo opportunities.

Either way, prepare yourself for a serious dose of frustration!  Especially when you are photographing birds.

They never sit still or exactly where you want them.  They take flight too soon or too late.  They fly in the wrong direction.

But you gotta love it!

Here are a few of the images I got of a small Malachite Kingfisher.  Found this little guy early in the morning and even though he was busy hunting, did everything he could to not sit in the sunny spots I was hoping for.

Eventually I had to play with some fill flash as he favored a little cove nest to the road and right in the shade.  Took a few attempts, as he did not sit still for too long, but so far I quite like the results.  Looking forward to checking out the rest of the photographs when I have a moment.

Anyway, tomorrow is Worldwide Photowalk day so if you are walking somewhere in the world, enjoy!!  If you are joining me for the Melville walk, I’ll see you nice and early in the morning! (I will send out a message confirming meeting time and place.)  Looking forward to a fun morning of photography!

I’ll be back next week with more images from the Pilanesberg and, hopefully, a few new ones from Madikwe as well!

Been a helluva week but some sense of normality should return next week! Have a good one!

Gerry

Eye contact, the slight tilt of the head and soft lighting can take a good image to the next level.  All too often people will have the opportunity to photograph a lion in the wild, take their photograph and move on.

You have to wait.  Wait for your subject to look at you.  What for the slight tilt of the head.  Wait for that special moment.

Nikon D300, Nikon 80-200 @200mm, 1/1000, f/2.8, ISO 200

I photographed this young male a few days ago in bright, overcast conditions – ideal for photographing lions.  With Africa’s largest cat being very easy to expose correctly, the overcast conditions makes the difference to the highlights in the image.  It makes the whiter, lighter areas pop nicely without killing the pixels and leaving burnt out parts in the photograph.

When you are out on safari and have the opportunity of photographing a lion up close – hurry up and wait.  Get your camera and settings ready quickly and then wait for the right moment.  The right look.  That very slight downward tilt of the head.  Meter off the area between the large cat’s eyes and nose and you cannot go wrong.

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

See you tommorow!

Gerry

Some of the other species that was mentioned as possible icons included giraffe, cheetah and elephant but by looking back at Photo-Africa over the last few weeks it seems that lions still rank up there as some of the most photographed animals in the African bush.  I personally enjoy photographing rhino but during the last while the perfect opportunities have been few and far between.   Lions on the other hand have been plentiful and during this weekend we saw more than 18 lions so I decided I might as well go with it and post more big cat images.  We saw lions feeding, lions playing, lions fighting.  And the best of all we had some pretty amazing light along the way.  Bonus!

The highlight was on Sunday morning when we sat watching a pride of 11 lions on and around a giraffe carcass when one of the two dominant males suddenly took a dislike to something his brother did and bam!  All hell exploded for about 10 seconds as the two male lions had a full go at each other.  Brutal, powerful and unbelievably exciting.  I was able to shoot about 7 frames during this heavyweight fight and will post some of these later this week but for now something a little more subdued.

The best way to watch and photograph lions is to sit and take your time to wait for that magic moment when the right facial expression meets great light.  I took a break from processing the images from last weeks hotel shoot to check through some of my lion images so here are four of the images I got this weekend.

‘Annoying Fly’

This young male was resting off to one side of a giraffe carcass.  One of the flies, of which there were many, kept on buzzing around the youngsters nose which made the cat bite at the air over and over again.  The nice thing about this was that each time the lion lifted his head to snap at the fly he would pause to try and get a fix on the little pest.   These pauses, which lifted the cats head form behind the flowers in the foreground, allowed us to pre focus on the area where the lion would be, check exposure and fire when ready.  Even though he was not in full sunlight it was still very bright out which allowed for a nice even exposure throughout the entire frame with even the little bit of sunshine at the top of the image not really distracting from the subject.  Oh, you can see the fly just off the cat’s nose.

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‘Innocence’

This young cub was resting in an open clearing with his mom and brother late Friday afternoon.  Mom was still out cold but the two youngsters were awake and paying attention to every little thing that moved.  This image shows the cub staring at a crow that just landed off to the side of the small pride.  It was already quite late and there was a very light cloud cover so I set my white balance to cloudy which warmed the image up enough to keep the colors quite intense.  The other option would have been to drop the saturation and go for a black & white image but I quite liked the final result.

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‘Into the Sun’

This was the first image I shot on Sunday morning.  We were following three young lions on their way back to the giraffe carcass after having a drink at a nearby waterhole.  The three youngsters almost never stood still and kept on pouncing on each other.  This particular young male stopped right next to our vehicle and stared at his two siblings as they were play fighting in the grass.  Luckily for us they were staring directly east of us which meant that the young lion was staring directly into the sun.  Meter off the bright fur on the face. Click.

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‘Who’s Next?’

This is one of the males that was involved in the heavyweight fight mentioned before.  The interesting thing is that this was the day before the fight so their little altercation was perhaps not so little.  The big guy just finished feeding on the giraffe carcass and was cleaning himself up in the shade of a large thicket.  The large shady area meant that we did not have to worry about fighting with exposure too much and full frame metering did a pretty good job.   There was a slight reflection from a nearby piece of white rock that bounced just enough light on to the side of the lions face to create a little bit of depth and help the texture in his face to come alive.  Mean looking fellow in between all the pretty little the flowers!

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Not bad for a weekend and as soon as I make some headway on my image processing I will have a few more images to post.  The one thing that is very important in animal portraits is getting the eyes sharp and in focus and in all of these images I was lucky enough to do so, even though the first and third ones were close.  Would be quite keen to find out – which of these is your favorite and why?

I have a load of images to work through and will post one or two of these as I get them done.  Other than that I am going to specifically be looking to shoot something other than lions for a few days – depending of course what the light does!

See ya soon.

Gerry

Spotted Hyena Portrait

Madikwe Game Reserve

(Nikon D300, Sigma 50 – 500 @ 100 mm, 1/250, f/4.5, ISO 400)

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Was working through some older images when I came across this one.   A very different shot of a Spotted Hyena which shows an almost innocent side to these often misunderstood animals.  After walking past our vehicle he stopped and turned his head just enough for the early morning sun to make the texture of the fur around his neck and head area come alive.  When you are shooting wildlife side lighting can make a huge difference to the look and feel of your image.  Textures, shape and contrast all benefit and can make a normal, everyday subject suddenly come alive.  Use the light!

More soon.

Gerry