Month: December 2019

Dec

2019

2019 Top Twenty-Five

December 31, 2019

Happy 2020 to you all! I can’t thank you enough for all your enthusiasm and support. It means the world to me and keeps me motivated.

Tomorrow we ring in not only the New Year but a new decade. I’m looking forward to new adventures, photographic and otherwise. January will start off with equestrian competitions on the West Coast. We anticipate some boating adventures throughout the year from our floating base in Dana Point, California. And I’ve already booked a June photo workshop in Scotland with Denise Ippolito to photograph seabirds (puffins and gannets), and another trip with Denise to Bosque del Apache next November for the amazing migrating sandhill cranes and snow geese. Who knows what other interesting subjects will find their way in front of my lens!

But on this last day of 2019, here’s a bit of nostalgia – presenting my Top 25 Most-Liked Photos from social media for the year. Click your way through each captioned image to view in high resolution and to read more about it.

Thank you again for your interest and participation. I look forward to sharing much more with you this coming year.

Cheers,

CLICK FOR PHOTO SLIDESHOW

Dec

2019

What Are the Odds?

December 24, 2019

I’ve been sharing my ten most-liked photographs from 2019 over on social media, counting down to the final unveiling tomorrow (Christmas Day), but here’s an early reveal for my subscribers. My #1 Most-Liked Photo for all of 2019 is this image of Tira, the one-in-a-million genetically mutated zebra foal.

I started this blog with the intention of highlighting all ten images, but I got to thinking about all the pieces that had to fall in place to actually capture this image, and it led me down a mental detour. So my Top Ten feature is postponed until next week, and today’s post is devoted to Tira and what it takes to capture a photo like this.

As photographers, sometimes it is our privilege to be in just the right place at just the right time to capture something extraordinary and unexpected. We are afforded the great good fortune to not only witness a special moment but to be able to record that moment with our cameras, creating a memory indelibly frozen in time that can be shared with the world thanks to the magic of photography. Such is the story behind my #1 Most-Liked Image of 2019, titled ‘One in a Million’, that we were so fortunate to see and record during our Kenya visit.

Of course, as serendipitous as moments like this are, they cannot totally be chalked up to sheer luck. You can’t capture a photo of a zebra in Africa unless you actually go to Africa which requires days of travel logistics to get to and from. You can’t take a picture without a camera, and a good picture generally requires a good camera. Photographers spend significant amounts of money arming themselves with the best equipment and then suffer the physical wear and tear of schlepping all that gear around the world, usually weighing heavily on their backs. Then there are the uncivilized hours that afford the most beautiful light – before dawn mornings and evening sunsets when breakfast, dinner, and cocktail hour are all sacrificed in subservience to our craft.

Even with all that groundwork invested in capturing that special moment, it still comes down to the most important ingredients of all to make that image sing: an artistic eye, knowledge of composition, and a level of skill encompassing the technicalities of photography.

And yet, still there is sheer luck. Just a week or so before we departed on our long-planned trip to Kenya, the national news organizations picked up the story of a newly born zebra foal with a startling stripe pattern. We soon realized he and his mother were in the Maasai Mara National Reserve, our destination. Nevertheless, the game reserve is nearly 600 square miles in size. What, we thought amongst ourselves, were the odds that we would be able to find this unique creature and capture it with our lenses? But we hoped, and we made it clear to our driver/guides that this baby zebra was at the top of our bucket list.

Sure enough, our knowledgeable guides took us right to him two days in a row, to photograph to our heart’s content. After those two days, we turned our attention to the pursuit of the many other wild creatures on our list. A week or so later, we heard that the zebra foal and his mother had crossed the river out of the game reserve and into Tanzania and the wilds of the Serengeti. What are the odds that a trip planned more than a year in advance would land us within photographic range of this unique creature during such a narrow window of time?

More about this special foal. He is nicknamed Tira, after Antony Tira, the Maasai guide who first spotted him. The majority of experts say that this unique coat color is a form of pseudomelanism, a genetic mutation that affects stripe pattern. Hopefully, Tira will grow to adulthood, but he faces challenges. He has clearly been accepted by his mother and into the herd, but his unusual coloring will cause him to stand out to predators, rather than camouflage him in a maze of stripes. It is also possible that he may be more vulnerable to disease-carrying biting flies, as one theory says that a zebra’s stripe pattern deters flies from landing on the host. All we can do is wish him well and be thankful that we were given the opportunity to see and photograph this very special animal in person.

Dec

2019

Lion Lore

December 9, 2019 – Africa Blog #9

During the brief window of time when the Mara’s early morning light was golden, allowing us to shoot our subjects backlit and rimmed with light, this very imposing lion strolled into range of our lenses.

I am not a lion expert, or an African wildlife expert, by any means. I gleaned my information from the drivers, guides and workshop leaders who live and work in this amazing realm, so foreign to our Western world, and generously shared with us a brief glimpse of their envirionment. Once home I engaged in online research to try to get my facts straight – although the Googled facts I found don’t always mesh with each other!

I posted this photo on my Facebook page and it was shared in turn by a Kenyan who identified this big cat by his Maasai name, Lolparpit. Lolparpit is quite famous, one of the most successful lions to have ever lived in the Mara. His name means ‘Big Hair’, which is certainly appropriate for this fellow. It is believed that the purpose of the male lion’s mane is the protection of his neck and throat in territorial fights. A full and luxurious mane indicates success on the battlefield. Female lions prefer to mate with males with dense, dark manes, a sign of strength and fighting success in male-to-male confrontations.

Lolparpit is currently one of the dominant males of the Double Cross/Enkoyonai Pride in the Maasai Mara along with his brother Olbarnoti (which means Smaller Boy). Lolparpit and Olbarnoti were both born in 2005 in the Ridge Pride, and from what I have learned online they are quite possibly the oldest lions still surviving in the territory. A wild lion only lives for 10-15 years so the brothers are certainly at the upper end of the longevity scale. Usually, the old males ultimately succumb to injuries sustained in battle with younger, stronger cats for control of a pride. In captivity, lions can survive for 20-25 years.

That said – some simple statistics. A lion weighs anywhere from 300-550 pounds, males being significantly larger than females and averaging 420 pounds. African lions stand 4 feet at the shoulder and measure about 9 or 10 feet from nose to tail. Their main prey is the ungulates, hooved beasts like the wildebeest and zebras who populate the African grasslands in great numbers, but they will eat anything they can catch from ostrich eggs to buffalo. If they can catch it, they will eat it. A lion can devour 70 pounds of meat in just one meal. The lionesses are the providers who stalk, tackle and take down the prey, but the males feed first and the cubs are last in the pecking order before the scavengers. Adult lions sleep some 20 hours per day, although to our eyes the cubs appeared to be in perpetual motion!

Lions are considered a vulnerable species and could be extinct by 2050! Loss of habitat is a leading contender for blame, but poaching, disease and climate change all contribute. Because they can be a threat to domestic herd animals like cattle and sheep they are often shot and killed as predators. The game they feed on is also dwindling, again due to loss of habitat and a free-range environment.

A lion pride consists of two or three male lions, several females, and cubs ranging in age from newborns to teens. When young male lions approach sexual maturity, somewhere around two years of age, they are ousted from their birth pride and have to make their way alone, or in coalition with other rejected males, until they develop enough strength and machismo to challenge the reigning male lions and fight their way back into a pride. A successful challenger will kill the cubs sired by the loser. The Darwinian concept at play is for the DNA of the dominant male to replace that of the defeated, ensuring that the gene pool in succeeding generations reflects the influence of the strongest of the species. Some lionesses, however, have been known to employ clever strategies to protect their cubs, even disguising their parentage, in an effort to protect them from assassination.

Lolparpit himself exemplifies this concept. He has sired countless offspring who themselves are passing his genetic makeup on to future generations. Two of the most dominant coalitions of male pride lions, a group of 6 brothers and a group of 4 brothers, were sired by him as well as numerous daughters.

His life story documents a fascinating history of association with different lion prides through the years, based on his wins and losses in such territorial battles. Through them all, he shared his dominance in coalition with Olbarnoti. These two old grandfathers, even if separated for a lengthy period of time, still greet each other with affection when they meet as shown in this YouTube video.

Apparently, Lolparpit was badly injured a few months ago in a fight and there was doubt as to whether or not he would survive. But the KWS (Kenya Wildlife Services) vets stepped in, and here he still is looking glorious in old age. It was a privilege to see this icon of the Maasai Mara.

Dec

2019

Desert in Winter

December 2, 2019

The holiday season always catches Southern Arizona residents by surprise. In October we are just starting to enjoy temps reliably not in the triple digits. We’re still wearing shorts and basking in balmy warm sunshine while much of the country is getting its first dusting of snow, if not a blizzard or two. By Thanksgiving we might get our first frost, and then suddenly Christmas is upon us and we are not emotionally ready for the transition!

My favorite trees, the cottonwoods, seem to share this attitude. They cling to their fall foliage well into December or even January. Finally a winter windstorm will blow the last clinging leaves away, but by early February their crowns start to shimmer green as new leaves sprout, months before any other native tree species.

But as desert dwellers we treasure the rare moisture that the winter storms bring. Wildflowers germinate, forecasting a colorful spring. The usually dry riverbeds begin to flow, fed first by the rain and then maintained with snowmelt from the mountains. Cacti and deep-rooted mesquite store up enough water to get them through the dry, hot summer to come.

Most of the images in this collection were taken last New Year’s Day. A winter storm had blanketed the Tucson valley with heavy clouds. It was a gloomy grey day and the mountains were hidden away from view. I had a new 400mm prime lens I was itching to try out. I kept peering out the windows, hoping for a ray of sunshine. Finally the clouds began to lift just as the sun started to set, briefly lighting up the newly snow-covered peaks with shades of rose and magenta before nightfall turned all to grey again.

Click to view this week’s featured gallery Desert In Winter. This is a secret gallery, visible only by following this link, that I am sharing especially for my readers and supporters.