Carol

07
Feb
2020

Photographer Mom

February 7, 2020

As I photographer I wear two hats. First, I love to travel in pursuit of scenic nature and wildlife subjects. I’ve ventured far afield with my camera gear by automobile, airplane, and boat, from the South Pacific to the Arctic to Africa, from desert vistas to underwater realms. I have struggled to come up with a simple label that could summarize the variety of my subject matter, until recently a mentor suggested Wanderlust and Wildlife. Perfect!

And second, I am a lifelong horse person. My mother was a horsewoman, I grew up with horses, and I currently have a farm with about twenty equine residents. I raise a couple of foals each year and provide a retirement home for some old-timers. And my daughter Michelle is continuing the family legacy in her professional career as a trainer, rider, and coach of show jumpers.

That’s me in a photo taken many decades ago in Nogales, Arizona, riding my mom’s thoroughbred mare Wait For Me.

So when I attend the horse shows to watch Michelle ride and cheer on my young horses, I wear my other hat and am known around the barn as Photographer Mom. That moniker may have to expand, because my granddaughter is showing similar symptoms of a serious horse passion. Do I really want to be called Photographer Grandma?

All of which is a lengthy introduction to my first blog of 2020 – a collection of equine images created during the big Desert Circuit in Thermal, California. First of all, I am going to reveal a dark secret. I am not one of those photographers who ‘captures it in camera’. For me, my images are the RAW material (double entendre for any serious photogs reading this) from which I draw creative inspiration. I’ve decided to adopt the phrase Art From Photography as my mantra.

To illustrate, I’m going to share the transformation of an image as it progresses from 1: Straight out of camera 2: Quick crop and edit 3: More aggressive crop and edit, and finally 4: In-depth photo processing (yes, Photoshop) to create my own artistic interpretation of the scene. Here’s a photo that is an extreme example of that workflow.

Because I am shooting from outside the show arena, most of the jumps are pretty far away, especially in Thermal where the Grand Prix field is enormous. This calls for a powerful zoom lens but, even so, sometimes the distances are pretty extreme. This shot was taken as sort of a throwaway effort. I was set up to shoot some big oxers close by the rail, so that I could fill my camera frame. But as long as I was there, why not aim at a few of the more distant jumps just for the heck of it.

Here is the original photo, straight out of the camera. Taken from far away with a 100-400mm zoom lens (because I forgot to switch to the 200-600mm), underexposed, and crooked! I’m embarrassed to share it with you.

Here it is with a quick touch-up. Cropped, straightened, and some quick exposure adjustments. Often I do this on the showgrounds by exporting the image from my camera to my iPhone and tweaking it there to make it presentable for a quick share.

Here it is with more careful post-processing once I am home on my computer with my digital darkroom tools at hand.

And here’s the final creation, courtesy of Photoshop, art filters, and a heavy dose of artistic license.

I titled this image “XOXO”. I love the unique style of this horse, crossing his hind feet to stay clear of the jump. Even better, his crossed ankles are repeated in the criss-crossed jump standards in the background.

And this is a good time to give a shout-out to the professional horse show photographers who shoot every single horse that enters the ring, all day, every day. They run back and forth umpteen times from vantage point #1 to vantage point #2 for each and every round. They kneel, stand up and kneel again, over and over (my aging knees barely withstand even one crouch and recover). And there is no way they have the time to post-process the hundreds of photographs they take each and every day during a show. They really do have to get it right ‘straight out of the camera’, whereas I have the luxury of following around a handful of horse/rider combinations, taking multiple shots of each through the week, then culling out the bad and zeroing in on the good. Which is a labor of love because I truly enjoy the creative process involved.

And I enjoy sharing the results with you. Here are a few keepers from last week at the show. Not all resulted from such dramatically challenging origins, but now you know my deepest, darkest secret!

By the way, I hardly ever wear a hat!

 

 

 

‘Art From Photography’ 

Posted by Carol in California, USA
31
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

Posted by Carol in Africa, California
24
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.

Posted by Carol in Africa
10
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.
Posted by Carol in Africa
03
Dec
2019

Desert in Winter

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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.

Posted by Carol in Arizona, USA
25
Nov
2019

Pest Control

November 25, 2019 – Africa Blog #8

Adobe Photoshop has an arsenal of tools available for the digital artist. The gem of the collection, in my opinion, is the Spot Healing brush. Every image I take into post-processing gets a once-over with the Spot Heal tool, erasing gray smudges caused by dust on the camera sensor and removing ‘distractions’ in the image that detract from its overall artistic merit – things like stray hairs, a twig in the wrong place, a brown spot on a flower petal. However, the Spot Heal brush had to rise to new heights to deal with the collection of photos I brought home from Africa. The wildlife in Africa is plagued by insects. Flies by the hundreds cling tenaciously to the animals’ bodies. Ticks bite into their underbellies. Our powerful zoom lenses bring these aggravating bugs into sharp focus and no one wants to see a portrait of a lion marred by the congregation of insects clustered on his face. Photographs I captured of an impala at a dead run, fleeing for its life from an attacking cheetah, showed the flies along for the ride – not even dislodged by his high-speed stampede. I captured a lovely close-up head shot of a cheetah, but when I zoomed in to inspect, I found the ubiquitous freeloaders crawling through her fur. Ugh!Spot healing to the rescue – one by one those unsightly insects are zapped until only the fresh bug-free visage of the animal remains. It’s a tedious process, and maybe the resulting images are guilty of portraying wildlife through rose-colored glasses, but honestly – which would you prefer?

Before

After

Posted by Carol in Africa
18
Nov
2019

Cheetahs Don’t Like Water

November 18, 2019

Africa Blog #7Cheetahs, elegant and lithe, are to me the most beautiful of all the cats. We were privileged to witness a wide variety of cheetah behavior, from a mother with six cubs to the Band of Brothers, a ‘coalition’ of five male cheetahs that team up to hunt big game. 

Guides in the Mara have names for the more significant animals. They call this cheetah mother of six young cubs Kisaru. No litter this large has been born in the reserve since 2010. After our trip ended, a litter of seven was spotted! Young cubs sport a mohawk of fluffy hair, called a mantle, that helps to camouflage them in tall grass. Their chance of surviving to adulthood is only about 30% due to several factors including predation by larger cats, particularly lions.
 
Female cheetahs are solitary, and raise their cubs alone. It can be a serious challenge providing meals for so many mouths. They have to hunt in their weight class, targeting smaller game, predominately fleet antelopes like impalas and Thomson’s gazelles. When we first located Kisaru, she and her brood were sunning themselves in full view atop a termite mound. The cubs wrestled and played until eventually hunger kicked in. Kisaru stalked off in search of prey, chirping softly to tell her cubs to follow.
 
A large herd of impala spotted the cats and went into alert mode, ears swiveled forward, watching intently as she strolled casually through the bush. Bigger cats like the lions will give up the hunt if they know they have been spotted, but the cheetah relies on its amazing speed more than the surprise factor. Eventually, Kisaru zeroed in on her target and burst into chase mode. Photographing a cheetah chase is a real challenge when you don’t know how the action will explode – when, in which direction, and with speeds that can reach 70-75 mph!
 
This particular chase was a close call but the impala escaped unscathed and Kisaru returned to her brood empty-mouthed. Energy reserves depleted, she retired to the shade of a tree to recoup while the cubs resumed their antics.
 
In contrast to the solitary females, male cheetahs often form up into groups called coalitions. A particularly famous coalition in the Mara is The Five Brothers. The Masai believe that actually three of the cats are brothers from one litter and the other two from a different litter. But they live and hunt as a team which enables them to tackle larger game. More than once we saw this band of brothers effectively take down a wildebeest, strolling casually through a herd establishing their strategic positions, then attacking and mobbing the chosen victim while one cat reached underneath to clamp onto its throat and suffocate it – a technique that we saw used repeatedly, an effective way to shorten the struggle.
 
In one instance, hyenas had anticipated the hunt and lurked nearby until the kill took place. They immediately moved in and drove the cheetahs off. Hyenas have deadly strength in their jaws. Their bite power at 1000 psi is ranked #8 in the natural world (#1 is Megalodon, #3 is Tyrannosaurus Rex!). The cheetahs are no match for them and they know it. Having done all the work of hunting and killing the wildebeest, the cheetahs ate no more than a mouthful before submitting to the hyenas with only a snarl in protest.
 
The Five Brothers moved on from their stolen meal, traveling with purpose but taking several time outs along the way. They congregated near a lone tree and spent a lengthy period of time sniffing the trunk and marking it repeatedly with their multiple sprays. Eventually, they came across a lone female at a waterhole and surrounded her, clearly interested in mating. She would have none of it, making her displeasure clear, and ultimately they let her go. 
 
Continuing the trek, they reached a river that needed crossing. Cheetahs don’t particularly like water, and this obstacle in their path created some terrific photo ops! Perched on a promontory overlooking the river, one by one they leaped off the cliff down to the water’s edge. From there, they tiptoed across all available stepping stones and sand bars before committing to that final splash needed to ford the river.
Posted by Carol in Africa
13
Nov
2019

The Color of Blood

Alex posed for us after the Land Cruiser broke down and we were waiting to be rescued. We told him he couldn’t hold his cellphone in his hand while we photographed him!

November 14, 2019
Africa Blog #6

Simon, our Masai guide who served as the model for the Milky Way photo shoot that I wrote about last week, wrapped himself in the Masai culture’s traditional robe, the shuka. Throughout our weeklong trip, our driver/guides always wore traditional Masai clothing – a checkered cotton wrap ending just above the knee in a short skirt, and wrapped about the hips by a wide belt woven with colorful colorful beads and sparkly dangling disks. A sheathed bush knife hung from the belt.

The shuka is a light blanket that the Masai wrap around their bodies like a cloak. They come in many colors but red, representing blood, is favored – symbolizing Masai culture and believed to scare off lions even at a great distance. Historically made from animal skins, primarily cowhide, today they are woven of cotton in brightly colored checkered or striped patterns and are very lightweight and thin.

We teased one of our drivers, Ken, asking him what type of clothing he wore when he wasn’t escorting tourists. He balked at admitting it at first, but was finally goaded into saying “We wear what you wear, all right!”  And we had to make an adjustment to our guide Alex’s outfit. His belt was hand made by his mother, but the knife on his hip still had a price tag and barcode on it until we made him peel them off! 

The shukas were omnipresent. Our driver kept one tied in a loose knot around the headrest in the vehicle for quick access. We photographers used extras to toss over our gear to protect against the dust generated by our vehicles racing down dirt roads. When we stopped for bush lunch, a shuka served as the tablecloth for a picnic meal served on the hood of the Land Cruiser. A shuka would make a great ground cloth – except we avoided sitting on the ground because of the prevalence of ticks. Even though thin and lightweight, they are tightly woven and work great to block the wind and ward off the chill or a little rain. I grew quite fond of these shukas and brought some home with me. 

Posted by Carol in Africa
07
Nov
2019

Night Skies in Africa

 

November 8, 2019
Africa Blog #5

One of the to-do items on our photo safari checklist was a night outing to photograph the Milky Way. Night skies in the Mara are stunning. The stars shine in unadulterated brightness over a sweeping landscape far from city lights and pollution. And the stars of the southern hemisphere are more abundant and brighter than those in our northern hemisphere. Kenya, located right on the equator, is partly in both the northern and southern hemispheres.

However, two obstacles complicated our plan. First, the rains had set in. Mornings started out clear, but by afternoon the cumulus clouds were building up. This made for some beautiful sunset shots but blocked out the stars for nighttime shooting. I can’t say I was terribly disappointed by this turn of events. After slamming around in a Land Cruiser the entire day, from before dawn until after dark, then rushing to download the day’s images to the computer and prep for the next day’s expedition, followed by a quick bucket shower and a late dinner – the thought of heading out again for a few more hours of shooting seemed not quite as appealing as it did when planning the trip in advance! All I wanted to do was crawl into bed and snuggle up to the hot water bottle so thoughtfully provided by the camp’s housekeeping staff!

The second complication? Heading out into the game reserve at night is a really good way to get eaten! The predators are very close and very real. In our beds at night, we could hear them outside our tents – hyenas barking, lions chuffing, other strange noises in the dark very foreign to our urbanized ears. We were religious about zipping the tents tightly closed, and it wasn’t just for mosquito control. We never left the safety of our tents at night in the dark without first calling for a Masai escort.

But finally, late in the trip, the skies cleared and our opportunity presented itself. The safety protocol was to stay in a tight group delivered by Land Cruiser to the selected shoot site, an area of open grassland with a single tree, chosen not only for an unobstructed view of the sky but also because the wide-open expanse prevented stalking beasts from surprising us. Our Masai guides stood guard, store-bought bush knives on their hips, while we set up our cameras and composed our shots in the dark. 

The resulting image from our night photography outing is significant to me as a memory of an extraordinary experience. It shows our lead guide, Simon Kararei, cloaked in his red shuka, standing next to a silhouetted balanite tree and framed by the Milky Way glowing in a starlit sky, while lightning from a distant storm flickered on the horizon.

 
Posted by Carol in Africa
29
Oct
2019

The Migration That Wasn’t

October 29, 2019
Africa Blog #4

Our photo safari was timed to coincide with the annual Great Migration, now named one of the Seven Wonders of the New World. Wildebeest in the millions,  accompanied by hundreds of thousands of zebras and assorted gazelles, migrate in a circular rotation 500 miles south in the spring from the Serengeti in Tanzania to the Maasai Mara in Kenya, returning again in the October-November time frame, arriving in time for calving season early in the year. Wildebeest are strange-looking creatures. We saw them every day, grazing the grasslands by the thousands, putting us in mind of herds of bison in the bygone history of the American West, a similarity enhanced by their dark color, shaggy mane, and humped shoulders. But they have a lighter frame than the buffalo, and I was surprised to learn they are actually a variety of gazelle. 

The migration is driven by rainfall which causes new grass to sprout up seemingly overnight, forage these grazing animals need for their survival. The great predators follow on the heels of this migration, picking off the young, the old, the weak, the lame and sick that trail behind the mass herds. It is estimated some 250,000 wildebeest die each year on the migration from predation, as well as hunger, thirst, and exhaustion. The wildebeest have developed an interesting survival technique as a species – almost all the young are born within a short two to three-week span in the spring. In all, some 500,000 wildebeest calves are born each season. The short calving season creates an oversupply of vulnerable young calves on the predator menu. As a result, more calves will survive, due to sheer numbers, than if the calving season stretched out over a longer time span.

But despite our timing and the multitude of wildlife sightings we were privileged to see, the one thing we missed out on was the Migration. It’s a pretty dramatic event, as thousands and thousands of wildebeest start organizing into lines and head en masse towards the Mara River, which they must cross in order to head north into Tanzania. Even though the wildebeest are the main force of the migration, the zebras that migrate with them are braver and tend to be the first to test the waters, leading the way. Depending on how wet or dry the year is, the Mara River can be deep with swift currents, forcing the animals to plunge down the riverbanks and swim, or if shallow to splash their way across. Either way, huge Nile Crocodiles are lurking in the water, waiting for an opportunity to grab their prey. When the river is deep, the crocs will pull their victims under and drown them. In shallow water they grab hold and an epic (and gory) struggle ensues that can go on for an hour or more. Obviously, the photo opportunities can be dramatic. But for whatever reason, the wildebeest just weren’t ready to commit during our visit. We witnessed one minor crossing when a herd organized and headed, not to the Mara River, but to the benign Sand River where all they had to do was wade through gently flowing shallow water with nary a crocodile lying in wait. 

But we did see the crocodiles, and they are massive. Specimens have been recorded exceeding 20 feet in length and weighing up to 2400 pounds. They are aggressive and will eat any creature that gets within range using an ambush-style attack, and are responsible for hundreds of human deaths each year. We actually took a lunch break one afternoon on the banks of the Mara, where the crocs were stretched out on the sandy shore or swimming rapidly downstream, accelerating in the strong current. Needless to say, we kept a respectful distance from the river’s edge while we ate.

Posted by Carol in Africa