My featured gallery of Africa 2019 images is now live on my website. This collection of favorite captures from the photo safari will continue to grow in the weeks to come, but I invite you to take a look now.
One of the many highlights of the expedition was the great number of youngsters we were privileged to see. Three sightings were of newborns so fresh that the mothers still retained the afterbirth and the offspring were damp around the edges. Most notable was the baby giraffe, such a charmer with his earnest gaze and comical face! His mother was quite enamored of her new calf.
We also enjoyed time spent watching a just born topi (a variety of gazelle) as he practiced controlling his long legs and figuring out where the milk supply was located. And our guide’s sharp eyes spotted a tiny Thomson’s gazelle tucked safely away under an equally tiny shrub while the mother lay a short distance away licking herself clean.
One of the priorities on our checklist was to locate the cheetah mom with a litter of SIX cubs. There has not been a litter of six cheetah cubs in the Mara since 2010, so she is quite the celebrity. Our reliable guides took us to her on Day 2 and we spent several hours watching this contented mother lounging in the sunshine with her many children, until she shook herself awake and strolled off to hunt, babies scampering along behind mimicking her alert expression and searching gaze.The survival rate for cheetah cubs is only about 30%, but the 2010 mother managed to raise all six of her cubs to adulthood, so fingers crossed this prolific cat will also succeed in 2019.
Another item high on our list was the one-in-a-million zebra foal, born mid-September. This unique creature has a genetic mutation to his stripe pattern, exceedingly rare, thought by many experts to be a form of pseudomelanism. Regardless, this very beautiful and unusual baby zebra was an instant international star, hitting the big news services and going viral on Facebook at the same time. Although we knew he had been discovered in the Mara, the game reserve is nearly 600 square miles in size so we weren’t holding our breath that our group would be so lucky as to spot him.
We should have had more faith – our guides had this task handled as well, and took us straight to this unique zebra colt and his herd two days in succession. The light was poor on day 1 and not conducive to good photographs, but on the second day, the sun was shining and lit the grass and the foal’s chocolate brown baby fuzz with a warm glow. Only a few days later, the communal radio chatter among the brotherhood of safari guides indicated that the foal and his dam had joined the migration north into Tanzania, crossing the river and vanishing into the unmonitored wilderness. We can only hope he survives and thrives and will be seen again when he returns next spring on the annual migration back to the Mara!
Existence in the African bush is precarious for new lives. The guides give names to the more important cats. The leopard mother of the precocious single cub is called Lorian. The oldest male lion in the Mara is named Scarface. I can’t spell or pronounce some of the names our drivers rattled off to us. But the guides will not christen the young ones until they have survived their first year.
We saw baby lions, baby cheetahs, baby gazelles, baby hyenas, baby giraffes, baby gazelles, baby elephants, baby zebras, baby warthogs, even baby birds. The one species that did not have newborns at their sides were the wildebeest. More about that in next week’s post: “The Migration That Wasn’t!”
The extended cab Toyota Land Cruisers (safari edition) are superbly suited for their purpose. They need to be sturdily built to survive the rough treatment they endure on a daily basis traversing rugged African terrain. Large window openings feature a bar to support bean bags which in turn support our long telephoto lenses. Roof hatches open to the sky allowing us to stand and shoot from above. Metal grab bars welded the length of the roofline enable us to hang on for dear life as we race to the next sighting. Seat belts are hit and miss – either non-existent or the ones provided don’t hold tension.
Despite the photographer-friendly features, extensive contortions are still needed to maneuver humans and cameras into shooting position. The driver jockeys for a vantage point and then kills the engine – a signal for us to leap up, or crouch down, and start focusing. If we hear the key turn and the ignition fire up, we know it’s time to grab our cameras, sit down quickly, and hang on because we’re off again. This is a trip I should have taken ten, or maybe twenty, years ago!
Tough as they are, our own Land Cruiser still managed to break a spring and a shock in the middle of one morning’s expedition. We were off-loaded into the other two vehicles while our driver, Alex (nicknamed Mario Andretti by our group), stayed behind. Astonishingly, the next morning it was back in service. Imagine the logistics of a broken down vehicle in the midst of a vast expanse of wilderness – retrieved, towed, and repaired good as new in less than a day’s time!
One of the first things our workshop leaders told us was that rain would be in our favor. Keep in mind the gaping open windows and roof hatches of the Land Cruisers. The rains we saw in the Mara were much like our summer monsoon storms in Arizona. Dramatic cumulus clouds build up through the afternoon above mountains stretched along the horizon. Shafts of light angle down to the grasslands. Curtains of rain appear as gray swaths in the distance. Lightning flashes. Rainbows glint. The flatlands puddle with unabsorbed water and the rutted red dirt roads turn slimy.
And it pours down on us in our vehicles. We have raingear for both ourselves and our fragile electronics. The car seats are soaked. We cover everything with the universally useful Masai shuka blankets. Our driver zips closed the clear plastic window coverings on one side of the vehicle and battens down the roof hatches, but windows on the other side are left unprotected because we’re not quitting. The driver positions the Land Cruiser so that the open windows are downwind, down rain, and we continue to shoot.
The wildlife hunker down for the duration. The gazelle and zebra turn their butts to the driving rain, flatten their ears, and wait out the storm with resigned expressions. The lions seek shelter beneath a scrubby bush or tree and and look patiently miserable.
What comes after the rain is our reward. The landscape is rinsed clean of dust. The light is soft and free of glaring midday shadows. The animals are refreshed by the cooler temps.
In particular, the big cats come to life. The lion cubs start to play and the lionesses scan the grasslands for prey. The males shake out their waterlogged manes, creating a great photo op if your reflexes are quick enough. The cheetahs need to hunt. They have a high metabolic rate and the cold and rain burn through their resources. They need food to keep their energy levels up. We find and track a lone cheetah as he prowls through the weather in search of prey. The skies are grey and the light is fading as dusk approaches. We are hoping for a hunt, a chase, but also for ‘the shake’. Meanwhile, we dial down the shutter speeds and dial up the ISO levels, trying to counteract the loss of light.
The sweeping grasslands of the Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya are strewn with bleached bones that record the relentless circle of life playing out each and every day in this wild place. Watching a hunt as a big cat stalks a gazelle or a wildebeest or a zebra, the observer can hardly take sides in the drama playing out before him. If the prey escapes, the predators go hungry. If it dies, dozens eat and fend off starvation for another day. The cats and hyenas eat their fill, followed by the jackals, foxes and carrion birds. In short shrift, a once-living animal is reduced to bare bones added to the many scattered across the landscape.
This world is such a contrast to what we live every day. Our African photo safari adventure began with the modern miracle of a 747 jetliner lumbering through the skies and across oceans, delivering us in comfort with our meals served on plastic trays while we binged on movies playing on video screens. In Nairobi we were transported to our first night’s lodging in a car that sped us down busy city highways much like those in big cities anywhere. The following day we boarded a charter flight to the Mara, a mere 175 miles but another world away.
Our plane touched down on a dirt strip in a barren expanse of grassland. A single tree dotted the end of the runway, with a Masai guard on a motorcycle resting in its shade and a fleet of three Land Cruisers arriving in a swirl of dust to transport us to camp. Dangling from the branches of the tree were the remains of a leopard kill, reminding us in no uncertain terms that we were now in the realm of the predators.
Our three Masai guides are named Simon, Alex and Ken. Simon is a huge man who towers a good foot above the others. He has scars on his legs from a lion attack when he was a boy. Simon runs a successful guide operation with multiple Masai driver/guides and a fleet of Toyota Land Cruisers. He is considered to be king of the guides in the Mara. Not only does he rattle off the names of the myriad wildlife we encounter but he has a deep understanding of animal behavior and an uncanny ability to deliver us to the right place at the right time. And because he has worked for top photographers over the years he understands the principles of location and light that can lift photography beyond the mundane. When the action peaks, you can hear him shouting “Get the shot, get the shot!”
The Daily Routine:
The Masai camp crew walk by our tents at 5 am, softly calling us awake. Twenty minutes later they escort us safely through the dark to the dining tent for coffee or tea and a couple of biscuits. We’re on the hunt before dawn, with a quick stop to capture a silhouette image against a red African sunrise. I have silhouette shots of elephants, giraffes, impala, topi, ostriches and trees!
The day is spent four-wheeling in the Land Cruisers at high speed for literally 100s of miles on dirt tracks unworthy of the name ‘road’. Occasionally we are just cruising to scout out wildlife, but when the radio chatter intensifies we know some kind of action is imminent – perhaps a lion pride on the hunt or a band of cheetahs that has, in Simon’s words, ‘kidnapped a girl’. Then we’re off at breakneck speed, bouncing across the potholes, rocks, bushes and gullies of the African savannah. Late breakfast and lunch are served on the vehicle hood using a Masai shuka blanket as a tablecloth. Pit stops are behind bushes that hopefully aren’t camouflaging something with sharp teeth and claws.
At the end of the day I quickly download and back up the day’s images, take a brief ‘bucket’ shower, join the group for dinner and a rehash – and then I can’t stay awake long enough to work on any of the image files shot to date. Bruises proliferate, my bones ache and my legs are rubbery, but adrenalin and the magic of Africa override all.
Last August my husband Mike and I made a lengthy road trip (read about it here) from Arizona to Wyoming to view the total solar eclipse. On our way home we chose a route that took us through the spectacular red rock country of Utah and Northern Arizona. This is a vast and stunning region of arches, towering buttes, red rock canyons and forested plateaus. Glympses of thousands of years of history can still be appreciated in the remnants of cliff dwellings, historic hogans, and rock art. Petroglyphs dating as far back as 13,000 years actually depict images of mastodons.
As we approached Monument Valley in the vicinity of Mexican Hat, Utah, (that’s a town, as well as a rock formation) the scenery was so captivating that every 100 yards or so I was begging Mike (who was driving) to pull off the highway so I could photograph another beautiful vista. It was monsoon season and the skies were dramatic as well. Dust devils were spinning across the desert floor, while virga clouds adopted the colors of a sunset sky, creating pink rain.
Fast forward nine months to when the opportunity arose to join a night photography workshop in Valley of the Gods, another astoundingly scenic valley not far from Monument Valley, I signed up immediately and even talked Mike into joining me just for the opportunity to enjoy night skies free of light pollution.
We stayed in the tiny town of Bluff, Utah – population 258! But the town has turned into a destination for artists and has much to offer; a wonderful hotel, several excellent restaurants, trading posts and galleries featuring beautiful Navajo art. A historic fort is open to visitors for free, and tells the fascinating story of Bluff’s founding in the late 1800s by the determined Hole in the Rock Mormon pioneers who literally carved out a trail through impassable terrain to first settle the area.
Bluff is the perfect basecamp from which to launch explorations of the many unique destinations in the area. Float trips down the San Juan River start in nearby Sand Island Recreation Area. The 17-Mile dirt road that loops through Valley of the Gods is just minutes away, as is Goosenecks State Park where the meandering river has carved a winding double loop canyon 1,000 feet deep with steeply terraced walls that reveal 300 million years of geological history. Less than an hour’s drive south is the approach to Monument Valley. Moab and Natural Bridges Monument is nearby. And Bluff is the gateway to scenic and historic Bears Ears National Monument, culturally significant to multiple Native American tribes, and now sadly being decimated by the current administration in favor of mining and drilling.
Night photography is necessarily related to sleep deprivation. Each night we headed out around 10 or 11 pm depending on our destination, and we stumbled back to our hotel room beds somewhere around 4 a.m. But when actually out in the field under the vast starlit sky, coping with cameras and tripods in the dark on rough ground, the adrenalin kicked in and the hours passed in a blur. A few hours of sleep were refreshing enough to tackle the computer and the necessary post-processing to make the technically challenging images come to life.
And without further ado, I invite you to enjoy my gallery of Red Rock images. These will be uploaded to my online store in the future, but for now this gallery is for your viewing pleasure only.
Click HERE or on the photo to open Gallery Slideshow
Every winter, horse show participants make the trek with their four-legged partners to warm weather climes where huge hunter/jumper circuits run for months on end. Instead of suffering through record snowfall and freezing temps, they choose balmy sunshine in states like Florida, California, and Arizona. Literally tens of thousands of equestrians and support personnel make the journey each and every winter season.
My daughter Michelle is a professional rider and trainer based in California, so she participates in this mass migration, in her case to the Palm Springs area where the HITS Coachella Circuit starts in mid-January and continues into mid-March. HITS, not so coincidentally, is short for Horse Shows in The Sun!
I try to attend a week or two here or there, both to cheer on my daughter and also because some of the horses she rides belong to our jointly owned Cross Creek Farms! I breed and raise the babies here in Tucson, and when they are old enough they travel to California and learn their trade as hunters and jumpers.
It’s a great environment for an avid photographer, with all the color and action of showjumping. I’ve earned the nickname ‘Photographer Mom’ from my daughter, as I follow her and her students from ring to ring to record their rounds.
The photograph featured here is of a young Holsteiner stallion named Lutalo that Michelle bred and raised. It’s easy to take a beautiful image of a beautiful horse but the background of a horse show can be distracting. I put in quite a few hours today applying some digital magic to the original photo to create a fine art image that I’m pleased to add to my portfolio. There is a quality I look for in my photography, something I refer to as gesture, that expresses the essence of the subject matter. Here gesture is expressed in the direct eye contact, elegantly curved neck, perfect braids, and the warmth of color in the leather rein.
I am so pleased to announce that as of this past June I am now being represented by Artblend Gallery, a contemporary art gallery in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The gallery space is housed in a bright, airy and spacious building in the heart of Ft. Lauderdale. They introduce themselves on their website as follows:
“We are a 6,200 square-foot business located near luxury resorts, million-dollar homes and yachts. Our gallery exists to present quality art in a superior environment, and to nurture the credibility and value of each artist.”
Not only does Artblend hang my work on their walls full-time, they represent me at the biggest art fairs across the country. My gallery pieces arrived from the lab in Germany just in the nick of time to be included in the Market Art + Design Hamptons show in Bridgehampton, NY, in July. Last month a large acrylic version of my Fringing Reef #4 Wavelet sold at the Art San Diego show in Del Mar. The Spectrum Miami Art Show is scheduled for early December.
Artblend Gallery is preparing for their Fall 2017 Exhibition in house, with an Opening Reception scheduled for the evening of Saturday, November 18. If you’re in the vicinity, it’s open to the public. You can enjoy complimentary wine and hors d’oeuvres while appreciating beautiful art for a pleasurable Saturday evening out. With AVATAR scheduled to winter in nearby Riviera Beach, I foretell a trip to Florida in my near future!
On top of all that, the gallery just published the Winter 2017 edition of The Art Book – flip through this online edition and you can see me on pages 66-67! I have a stack of hard copies here in Tucson if anyone would enjoy one!
Of course the total solar eclipse in August was on our bucket list! I elected not to attempt to photograph the main event – that’s a technical challenge better left to more accomplished photographers than I. Considering this once-in-a-lifetime experience of 100% totality would only last 2 1/2 minutes max, I really wanted to absorb the experience without fiddling with camera settings.
But the eclipse was a good excuse to embark on an epic road trip through the Southwest, affording me an opportunity to record some spectacular scenery. From Tucson we drove through the Salt River Canyon up to the White Mountains, and from there traveled through the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert en route to Gallup, New Mexico. I was booking our lodging on the fly, utilizing TripAdvisor on my iPhone en route, and our first night out we stumbled across an unexpectedly wonderful historic hotel in Gallup, New Mexico, on the old Route 66 but just a stone’s throw from the Interstate. Back in the 30s and 40s all the movie stars (John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Ronald Reagan to name a few) stayed at El Rancho Hotel. Our room for the night was named after Lee Remick. The ambience and nostalgic memorabilia were a treat to experience.
From Gallup we headed to Santa Fe, detouring to explore the cliff dwellings and petroglyphs of El Morro and Bandolier National Monuments. Santa Fe is always fabulous and we spent an extra day there, visiting a friend and enjoying a superb dinner at one of the town’s finest restaurants. Then on to Taos, followed by a long stretch of highway to our final destination in North Platte, Nebraska, where we joined an international group of eclipse watchers for the big event. Except – having arrived, the weather turned sour, with cloud cover forecast over the entire state of Nebraska on the day of the eclipse. With looming grey skies as well as predictions of massive traffic jams, Mike and I did a quick regroup and abandoned our tour after one day and headed west towards clearer skies forecast for Wyoming.
We drove some 500 plus miles that day and of course there was not a prayer of booking a last minute hotel room within 100 miles of the path of totality! Instead we found a sod farm that was offering overnight parking on the perimeter of their beautiful green grass. The main selling point was the row of porta-potties installed for the convenience of their guests. So for $100 we parked our Jeep by the field, spent $20 more for hamburgers from the grill, and then we settled into the front seat with pillows and blankets picked up at a local Walmart, and spent the night in the car.
Next morning we headed off at dawn to Glendo State Park in Wyoming where we connected with a group from the University of Arizona’s Space Grant Program, associates of Mike’s from work. They were participating in a balloon based experiment and were set up in a prime campsite within the park. Our friends met us at the entrance of the by now crowded park and ferried us in – enabling us to enjoy a spectacular and unobstructed view of the eclipse in 100% totality. Exiting the park at the end of the day was another story – it took nearly 3 hours to drive 3 miles back to the entrance. From there the Interstate 25 was crawling with traffic back to Denver, but fortunately we were headed in the opposite direction. We overnighted in Casper, Wyoming, where a room at the Days Inn cost more $$$$ than a night at a luxury hotel in Santa Fe had cost us the week before!
Heading home from Wyoming we took our time through the spectacular red rock country on the border of Utah and Arizona. Looking at the amazing colors and layers of the landscape, it is easy to see how Native American designs in pottery and blankets were inspired by the geology of this part of the country. Poor Mike, who was driving, was constantly being ordered to pull over to the side of the road so I could photograph another epic scene.
We spent a couple of nights in Monument Valley, first at Gouldings, another historic hotel with ties to the movie industry, and then at a fabulous modern hotel named The View, operated by the Navajo Nation, with every room offering a balcony and unobstructed view of Monument Valley in all its vast glory. We hired a Navajo guide to take us out for both a sunrise photography tour as well as a starlight tour of the park. My night photography results weren’t as consistent as in Maine and I only got a couple of shots that satisfied me – it’s really hard to lock critical focus on a distant star in the dark with aging eyesight! But I love the one shot that I did manage to pull off – and, again, spending hours under the starlit skies with only nature for company was well worth the experience.
From there it was straight home, a surprisingly quick 6 hour drive. We immediately went on a spree of binge-watching a trilogy of old John Wayne movies filmed in the red rock country of Monument Valley. I’m already making plans to return in 2018.
I recently added a new collection of star-studded (literally) images to my portfolio, captured during a workshop in Maine’s Acadia National Park. The workshop focused on night photography, in particular the Milky Way. Did you know the Milky Way has a season? Here in the Northern Hemisphere its brilliant core, containing some 84 million stars, drops below the horizon in November and doesn’t appear again until next spring. Of course the workshop last June was orchestrated for peak viewing – and photographing – the glowing heart of our galaxy in all its splendor.
I’m not an especially accomplished night photographer but, with expert assistance from the group leaders, I came away with a collection of Milky Way images that I’m proud to add to my portfolio. The technique I was using to capture my shots required eleven minutes of in-camera processing per image – allowing me plenty of time to absorb the summer night air, the soothing rhythm of waves lapping the shore, and the sparkling infinity of stars overhead that we rarely see through the light pollution of civilization.
I added a new word to my vocabulary as well – airglow. Wikipedia defines airglow as “a faint emission of light by a planetary atmosphere.” Even in the dark of night, the sky may glow with softly luminous shades of green and magenta. With its sensitive electronics, combined with the long exposures needed for night photography, a camera is able to reveal more stars and more airglow than the naked human eye can see, making the results of night photography particularly satisfying. Those long exposures reveal the soft colors of airglow on the horizon and simultaneously transform the constant motion of the ocean and surf into an ethereal mist. The resulting images radiate with a magical light that shimmers between earth and sky.
I wanted to repost a story I wrote a couple of years ago as the cover feature for Berthon Lifestyle, a yachting lifestyle magazine published in the U.K. It was one of those times when the words came together extraordinarily well to help me express what photography means to me, how I approach it, and why I share my images.
I have to admit I’ve been mildly depressed these past months as we put AVATAR up for sale and our cruising days have come to an end. AVATAR was my main photo platform for many a year and it’s been hard to come to terms with the loss of a lifestyle. But summer sunshine always gives my spirits a lift, so with this blog post I’m renewing my commitment to share my photography with you.
I hope you will take the time to read and enjoy A Photographer’s’ Story. I’ll be back in a week or two with another story, this time from Hawaii. It’s time to dust off the keyboard and get back to my storytelling.
Equipment: Nikon D700, 1/45 sec at f/4.8, ISO 200, 14mm (14.0-24.0mm f2.8)
“A PHOTOGRAPHER’S STORY”
A dozen years ago, my husband and I surprised ourselves by making an impulsive, pre-retirement decision to purchase a bluewater sailboat located in New Zealand, ideally situated for exploring the prime cruising grounds of the South Pacific. My first (as it turned out, naive) impulse was to cultivate an artistic hobby to fill the leisure time generated by our idyllic new lifestyle. Many options – oil paints, watercolors, pastels – were discarded as too messy for a vessel’s tight quarters. Finally I settled on photography and embarked on not one, but two new adventures.The best camera, as they say, is the one you have with you. Photography on a boat can be pursued with a smartphone or a pro DSLR. It is neat and clean and portable, whether on deck or ashore or even underwater. Add a computer and appropriate software for organizing and editing the images, and the onboard studio is complete.
From the deck of a cruising yacht there is a wealth of inspiration and source material that ranges from scenic vistas to wildlife to foreign cultures. These days my photo platform is a rugged aluminum FPB64 motor yacht, supplemented by an aging much-loved inflatable kayak.
All it takes is one simple click to ‘take a picture’, a rectangle, destined to hang on the wall as a print or glow on a screen as a digital image or join a collection in a book. But as a photographer/artist I don’t want to just record a photograph. I want to create art, to meld technical material with creative insight, elevating that rectangle to a higher plane.
The equipment and software available today are sophisticated and powerful, but to transform photography into an art form requires more than just good tools. Is a great novel the product of a good typewriter? It takes more than a good camera to produce an artistic photograph.
My finished photo-based artwork results from multiple technical choices made prior to pressing the shutter button – lens selection, exposure, depth of field, shutter speed, ISO, white balance, dynamic range and more. On the creative side I incorporate composition, light, shadow, color, texture, gesture and motion, all to play their part in capturing the raw image, the first step.
Step two is the selection process that takes place in the digital darkroom (my computer) reviewing and culling to find those select images that resonate with my imagination. The third phase is post-processing, the judicious application of a variety of digital darkroom tools – software and filters, layered and retouched by hand to manipulate the image into its final form.
In the beginning I took a cyberclass that taught me how to get the most out of my Nikon’s buttons, dials and menus. Early on I learned the important camera techniques necessary to achieve the best results. But on a boat, many of those best practices are impractical. Focusing on a cavorting dolphin or a diving pelican while striving for balance on a boat navigating ocean swells is not an ideal scenario for keeping the camera steady. A shore expedition in the company of non-photographers is a source of irritation for those who don’t appreciate a 20 minute pause for setting up and composing the perfectly executed shot.
As a result I’ve learned compromises. On a moving deck I compensate by shooting at higher shutter speeds or raising the ISO setting. To keep my balance I bend my knees and widen my stance to absorb the shock. I jam my elbows into my ribs and mash the camera viewfinder into my eye socket for additional stability. Often I fire off a burst of photos knowing that one of the bunch will by sheer luck be more crisp and clear than the others. There will be a lot of throwaways, but a few will be keepers.
I do a lot of shooting from my kayak. It’s a soothing, soul-satisfying experience to rise just before dawn and glide silently in quest of a sunrise, or a seabird, or a village just starting the day. Again, the gently rocking boat and the low light of early morning limit my choices, demanding compromise.
A good image should relate a story to the viewer, not simply recreate a scene but instead share an insight into the very essence of what first captured the photographer’s imagination. It may be about how the interplay of light and shadow illuminates a seascape for a brief magical moment. It may be about reflections on glassy water, or how a bird’s feathers flare in flight. Perhaps it’s a story of village life, a new friend, a beautiful scene, or the devastation of a storm.
But there’s a second story that accompanies each image, and that is the story that belongs solely to the photographer. The travel, the gear, the camaraderie, the solitude, the discomforts, the challenges, the accomplishments – all are embedded into the making of that simple rectangle. Not just sight but also sound, touch, smell, even taste, are part of the experience. Whenever I review my work the memories come flooding back to let me relive the adventure once again.
To illustrate, this particular image tells the viewer the story of a mother whale helping her new calf breathe in clear blue tropical water. But for me it contains the hidden short story of how she first swam away from me, then changed her mind and returned to within touching distance of her own volition, lingering passively in the water next to me, eye to eye, observing me as I observed her, while her baby slept.
An even lengthier version of that narrative begins with a 6,000 mile journey to the tropical kingdom where the humpbacks congregate. It includes my history of previous whale-watching expeditions led by professionals, where I learned whale behavior and how to observe them in the water safely and respectfully. It is colored by a Sunday morning sail in search of a cooperative whale, and the frisson of excitement as I donned snorkel gear, grabbed the underwater camera, and slid into the water from off the stern of the boat.
Each photo, that deceptively simple click, is embedded with two stories, one for the viewing public and one for the photographer alone. To produce them with forethought, investing time and energy into making them the best they can be, is to embed that memory even more deeply into my being.
All photos are copyrighted and registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. Enjoy but please respect.
So many people have no clue about an amazing phenomenon that takes place every winter in Baja Mexico.
Gray whales migrate south every year in the fall, swimming some 12,500 miles down the Pacific Coast from their summer feeding grounds in the Arctic to their calving and breeding grounds in the warm protected waters of shallow lagoons in Mexico. Beginning in the 1970s or so, the whales of their own volition began to interact with humans.
Imagine the reaction of that first Mexican fisherman, Pachico Mayoral, who was fishing in his small open boat on the lagoon waters when he was approached by a huge gray whale that explored the small craft, going from side to side, until Mayoral was brave enough to reach down and touch it. And nothing happened. The whale stayed calm.
An entire ecotourism industry has sprung up devoted to introducing humans to whales – touching, petting, even kissing these wild whales! Let me know if you’d like an referral for the awesome tour group that hosted us in San Ignacio Lagoon. Peak season for whale watching is February and March. Our group camped in tents beside the lagoon, watched the whales cruise by our vantage point overlooking the water while the setting sun lit up the sky, voyaged out on the water in pangas (traditional Mexican small open fishing boats) to interact with the whales, and on the last day when a massive storm flooded the entire camp and washed out the local airport, we enjoyed a well-orchestrated impromptu adventure through remote Baja countryside in search of transportation home.
When we visited in February the juveniles were the ones that interacted most with the boats: five, six and seven year old young whales that delighted in gliding along the hull while excited whale watchers leaned over to touch them as they passed by. They opened their mouths, inviting us to touch their tongues. They rolled on their sides to peer up at us with a large intelligent eye. They would sink below the hull and pop up on the other side, teasing us. Then with the flick of a tail the young whales would race over to another nearby boat to flirt with those whale watchers in turn. Later in the season the protective mothers of the current crop of newborns would relax their guard and bring the babies to the boats, introducing their offspring to the interesting phenomenon of humans floating on top of the water in tiny floating shells.
What intrigues me the most is how their behavior has evolved through history. In the 19th century, the whaling industry discovered these nursery lagoons. The whalers cut off the entrances, trapping and slaughtering their quarry literally to the point of extinction. In self defense the whales became fiercely aggressive, earning the designation of ‘devil fish’ as they attacked their tormentors, smashing the boats with their tails or breaching out of the water on top of them. How, as the decades passed, did they revert from aggression to the charming playfulness they now display?
Since whaling days, gray whales have rebounded from the precarious edge of extinction. From a population decimated down to only 100 animals, in today’s world they number some 26,000.
One of the many highlights of the expedition was the great number of youngsters we were privileged to see. Three sightings were of newborns so fresh that the mothers still retained the afterbirth and the offspring were damp around the edges. Most notable was the baby giraffe, such a charmer with his earnest gaze and comical face! His mother was quite enamored of her new calf.
One of the priorities on our checklist was to locate the cheetah mom with a litter of SIX cubs. There has not been a litter of six cheetah cubs in the Mara since 2010, so she is quite the celebrity. Our reliable guides took us to her on Day 2 and we spent several hours watching this contented mother lounging in the sunshine with her many children, until she shook herself awake and strolled off to hunt, babies scampering along behind mimicking her alert expression and searching gaze.The survival rate for cheetah cubs is only about 30%, but the 2010 mother managed to raise all six of her cubs to adulthood, so fingers crossed this prolific cat will also succeed in 2019. 
We should have had more faith – our guides had this task handled as well, and took us straight to this unique zebra colt and his herd two days in succession. The light was poor on day 1 and not conducive to good photographs, but on the second day, the sun was shining and lit the grass and the foal’s chocolate brown baby fuzz with a warm glow. Only a few days later, the communal radio chatter among the brotherhood of safari guides indicated that the foal and his dam had joined the migration north into Tanzania, crossing the river and vanishing into the unmonitored wilderness. We can only hope he survives and thrives and will be seen again when he returns next spring on the annual migration back to the Mara!
Existence in the African bush is precarious for new lives. The guides give names to the more important cats. The leopard mother of the precocious single cub is called Lorian. The oldest male lion in the Mara is named Scarface. I can’t spell or pronounce some of the names our drivers rattled off to us. But the guides will not christen the young ones until they have survived their first year.
