Wildlife Photography

23
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

 

Posted by Carol in Africa
14
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.
 
 
Posted by Carol in Africa
08
Oct
2019

The Killing Fields of Africa


THE KILLING FIELD OF AFRICA

September 2019

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.
 
Too much to share in one blog! More to follow.
 
Cheers.
Carol
Posted by Carol in Africa