Maasai Mara

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Oct

2019

Cradle of Life

October 23, 2019 Africa Blog #3

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!”

Africa 2019 Gallery

Oct

2019

When It Rains in Africa

September 2019

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.