Photography and Writing
I like the harmony and balance, the silent concentration, in these photographs of pied avocets with their swooping bills wading in the waters at the Marievale Bird Sanctuary.
Time for a break, I thought, in the Spanish series…
We came upon this male lion and a female resting in the shade on one of our game drives in Madikwe…
Two more black and white images in the Madikwe lion series.
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.
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.
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 Silver Efex Pro.
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, 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 is driving, and there are a whole lot of others with you, who want to look, snap a picture, and get a move on.
So I was really glad to get these two, contrasting images, one somnolent, the other full of energy and movement, and work them up in black and white. They were taken during our visit to the St Lucia Wetlands, but across the road as it were, in the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Reserve, a mere 45 minutes from the town itself.
It’s worth a visit.
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.
