Tag: black and white nature photography
Flight – Five Images
Little Egret – Marievale. Marievale Bird Sanctuary, Gauteng. I left in the power lines and pylons deliberately, as well as traces of the reeds and the trees, as I wanted to give a sense of the complex environment – not stereotypical, picture-postcard countryside – in which these birds live. Nikon D500, 70-300mm. Processed in Lightroom and Silver Efex Pro.
Suckling warthog
As this is the only time, so far as I recall, that I’ve seen a mother warthog suckling her infants, I share this image – not as a great picture, but simply as a record. Nikon D500, 70-300mm. Processed in Lightroom and Silver Efex Pro.
Warthog Games
Two little warthog piglets were playing a robust game of catch and head-butting when we came across them at the edge of the camp in Marakele, on our first afternoon there, at the end of a game drive on which we had seen virtually nothing. Needless to say we sat for a while and watched – the mother contentedly snacking, siblings grazing, while these two little guys happily beat each other up. Made me think of my three grandsons, actually – they’re not there yet, but they will be. Taken with the Nikon D500 and 70-300mm. Processed in Lightroom and […]
Zebra to the rescue
To maintain my sanity, or at least the appearance thereof, from time to time I have to take a break from what another photo blogger calls the work that pays the bills, and process an image. Here, as a foretaste of an upcoming posting, is just one image, of a pair of zebra in the Marakele National Park, more for my own relief than anyone else’s. I hope you enjoy the image anyway. Nikon D500, Nikon 70-300mm zoom, processed in Lightroom and Silver Efex Pro.
Photographing rhino
Photographing rhino, in my amateur experience, can be a challenge. Mostly the problem is finding them in the first place, and when you do see them they tend to be just standing around, galumphing great hulks, or snoozing in the shade of a tree, where the light is awful. If you’re a pro, you wait for the right moment – and waiting can mean a long, long time, before something interesting happens. When you’re not a pro, just someone like me, you’re either driving, with limited time at your disposal, or you’re on a game drive, which means someone else […]
The crocs of St Lucia
As I have mentioned, there are crocs enough in the St Lucia Wetlands to form a walkway across the water, Crocodile Dundee-style, should anyone want to make so bold. Or be so foolish. But these images are not from the wild, they are from the Crocodile Centre located in the reserve, instead. We were lucky enough to come across one female, in a state of suspension, trance-like, humped over a shallow hole she had dredged in the sand, and watch as her body periodically arched, while she dropped into the hole one soft, glistening crocodile egg after another.
St Lucia ‘seconds’
One of the things about St Lucia that makes things a little tricky for the photographer is the vegetation – dense, lush, green, all too often in the way of a clear shot, especially for the traveling amateur or tourist who does not have the luxury of lying in wait, sometimes for days or weeks, to make that definitive image. These images are definitely ‘seconds’, not the first quality – but I share them because of the moments they capture: a giraffe, with an ox-pecker or tick bird over one eye, a clutch of zebra resting on one another’s rumps, […]
Kudu coquette
This young kudu bull, posing beside a tree in the St Lucia Marine Park, seemed almost coquettish as he looked at me looking at him through the lens of my camera. [In the original version of this post I made the embarrassing error of referring to the bull as female – I fear the coquettishness had me tied up in knots!]
Hippo, St Lucia
Without comment, here are six images, as promised, of the hippos of St Lucia.
