I took part in FriFotos on Twitter this week. They set a theme on Monday or Tuesday and on Friday people from all over the place post photos for the theme. This week’s theme was waterfalls so I posted a load of them.I also dug through my archives and found today’s photo of Ouzoud Falls in Morocco.
After drinking copious amounts of wine and petting cheetahs (preferably not in that order) this is your view as you leave Spier Winery. This is where we started our wine tour and from here we went for what may have been the best meal we had in South Africa. It’s called bobotie and it’s delicious. Our guide described it to us in much the way that I’m going to describe it to you and all we could think was that it sounded odd. We decided to go ahead with our guide’s recommendation just the same and were certainly please.
Bobotie is a minced beef dish. The beef is mixed up with raisins and spiced up. It has a bit of a curry flavour. It’s cooked in a small casserole and topped off with a really thin layer of egg. They served it with mango chutney and sliced banana. Like I said, this combination of ingredients sounds odd but it really is delicious.
My first night sleeping on the Zambezi I had the opportunity to take this photo. I was still pretty creeped out standing next to the water at this point. Images of a crocodile leaping from the dark waters kept running through my head. As a result, I kept a safe distance away. This was actually ridiculous, when you consider that I had no idea what a safe distance was.
I like today’s image because I feel like it portrays that feeling of not knowing what’s beneath the surface. the darkness of the water preventing you from knowing if anything is there. I also like the texture on the surface of the water created by the wind blowing across it.
You stand in Zambia, on the shore of the broad Zambezi, gazing towards Zimbabwe from Zambia. It’s surprising you can feel so energized after a night being woken by such noisy neighbors – elephants trumpeting on the salt lick behind camp and lions rumbling across the river. They’re far away but sound as if they’re knocking on your tent flap. As the flaming sun slowly emerges from below the horizon, lighting the smooth flowing waters in front of you, the peace is shattered by the grunting of a nearby hippo. Your canoes are ready to go, but they’ll have to wait a little longer as the smell of breakfast, bacon and scrambled eggs, wafts to your nostrils. After eating your fill the Zambezi will continue to provide surprise after surprise, bend after bend. It’s going to be a good day.
I’ve read a few articles on whether you should shoot in RAW or JPEG. Today’s photo is a good illustration of why you should shoot in RAW if your goal is HDR. I fired off three bracketed exposures, as I usually do when shooting handheld. However, the gorilla was moving to me so quickly that I could never combine these three exposures. RAW to the rescue. I was able to use the standard exposure to create the rest of my exposures. At the standard exposure the gorillas faces were far too dark. By expanding this image from -2 through to +2, I was able to recover this detail.
I’d like to be able to claim that I carefully set my camera to blur the gorillas left hand and show movement. The reality is, with a gorilla bearing down on me, playing with the camera was not the first thing on my mind. Getting a few shots and getting out of the way was priority. I wouldn’t say I was particularly scared of a gorilla attack. I was more worried about being the asshole that gets in their way and disrupts their day. Nobody wants to leave a bad first impression with a silverback. After firing off a few shots I stepped quickly out of the way and directly onto Chris’s foot. You can here his muffled scream 29 seconds into this video. In this case I’m glad I didn’t succeed in freezing the gorilla’s motion. It’s blurred left hand makes it clear that this silverback is coming straight at you.
On my gear page I mention that I’m not fully satisfied with my current tripod and mentioned one set of legs I’m considering. I’m going to be expanding this section soon because the more I look round the more options I find. I’ve got a good idea of what I want. The legs max height needs to be about 5’3″. At this height, the tripod head plus the height of my camera should get the viewfinder to eye level for me. It also needs to be able to set up with the legs spread out flat so I can shoot from ground level. With this in mind I don’t want a center column, as they reduce stability when extended and make getting the camera to ground level difficult. With setup in mind, one thing I like about my Benro Angel is the twist locks on the legs. So, that’s something I’ll definitely be looking for in my replacement. Additionally, I want to go as light as possible so will be looking at buying carbon fiber. These parameters are pretty easy to fulfill, but I also want it to fit in a carry on. This is where things get tricky. Hopefully, I’ll find something suitable soon as I want to bring it to Iceland with me in June.
After crawling out on a ledge for the photo posted here, I set up in a much safer position on the other side of the tree. I still can’t believe how unrestricted we were at the top of the falls. This day Shannon and I had gone back to the falls without a guide and just walked right along the edge in search of photos. We did have one scary moment though. On the way back to the parking lot, I’m pretty sure we encountered the biggest baboon in the world. It was terrifying and grunting. It definitely did not sound like it was in a good mood. We backed off and hid behind a bush as it crossed the path and disappeared.
I like this photo a lot. It’s not often I’ll open a post like that. The thing is, I’m not sure if it’s that this is that good a photo or if it’s more to do with the memory associated with it. We stopped here for our first lunch on the Lower Zambezi. This is actually on the Zimbabwe side of the river and is the first of two times I’ve set foot in the country (both within a day of each other). You can see where we actually set foot in Zimbabwe for the first time, down by where the canoes are beached. We’d spent about two hours paddling to reach this spot and it was pretty nerve-wracking. We weren’t used to the canoes and were still pretty paranoid about wild animals. It’s funny comparing those first couple hours with the next few days where we became perfectly comfortable floating down the river… for the most part.
When I took this, HDR was still quite new to me (I guess it still is) and I was fascinated with the textures I was able to portray. When I saw this tree I knew that I had to photograph it’s old wrinkled and cracked bark. I also liked the idea of capturing the canoes on the shoreline through the trees, which would be difficult with more traditional photography methods. After eating lunch everyone took a snooze. I thought this was interesting as we were completely exposed to any wild animals that should decide to stroll past. I became numb to this threat over the next five days, except for a couple of moments when I wasn’t in sight of the rest of the group (bathroom breaks mostly).
As the group snored around me, which I decided was a natural wildlife deterrent, I set about taking the following photo, which I must have tried to process twenty times before. I hope you like it.
First, a quick note on this. In case you’re wondering why I haven’t posted any photos from my successful sunrise at Horseshoe it’s because I wasn’t as successful as I’d thought. For some reason I had my ISO cranked right up. This has resulted in too much noise in the original images for me to merge them to HDR. Always keep your ISO as low as possible!
So, I’m starting again. Tomorrow I’ll be checking the weather reports and picking a few days I think will be good for the sunrise down there. Tonight though, I’ve used the Photographer’s Ephemeris to realise that it’s a good time to photograph the smallest drawbridge in the world. So, I’ll be heading up there in about an hour. Using this tool has also allowed me to spot a few other areas nearby that should be good at sunset.
A friend of mine mentioned that the moon is currently appearing larger than usual, so I’ve also identified a spot to capture the moonrise from, something I’ve never done before. I just hope the sky’s clear for long enough.
Rwanda’s landscape really is stunning. Every corner leads to breathtaking views. Here you can see the typical Rwandan terraced farming in front of one of the volcanoes that gives Volcanoes National Park its name. It’s also pretty clear here why Rwanda is known as the Land of a Thousand Hills.
Mike has commented on a few of my posts and mentioned on Tea Time that this intensive level of farming must result in massive pressure on local reserves/wildlife. One thing I found interesting, while driving through the hills, was just how defined the line between the farmland and the national park is. If you look at the volcano in this image, just below the cloud level, you can see this line.
That’s right, I’m posting yet another photo of the fishing canoes used on Lake Kivu, Rwanda. I love them. they remind of two days of absolute relaxation reflecting on the most amazing, tiring, action packed, three weeks getting a taste of three very different versions of Africa: Cape Town, Zambia, and Rwanda.
The boat here was left behind by the fleet, which can just be seen on the horizon. At night, you could look out to the horizon and all you would see were the lights of the fisherman’s lanterns against the dark sky. These guys go out rain or shine (100% rain while I was there). Although, I guess I’m assuming they go out rain or shine, as I did not see them fishing under any beautiful, starry night skies.
This photo is a combination of 7 exposures, ranging from -3 to +3. The boats actually moved around quite a lot so the ghosting tool in Photomatix was particularly useful.
My original plan to head down to Horseshoe Bay for a week didn’t really pan out due to a couple of alarm clock errors. I went down this morning and got exactly the conditions I was hoping for. I shot the photo I’d been picturing based on the Photographer’s Ephemeris and went about taking some more creative images. I now have so many shots from the 40 minutes I spent down at the beach that I don’t know where to start.
In the meantime I’ve decided to upload this cute cheetah today. I’ve been reluctant to upload it as I’m not sure how good a photo it is. The composition isn’t particularly interesting. It certainly doesn’t measure up to the other cheetah cub photo I uploaded here. But, in the end I decided that this cheetah is so cute and has such amazing eyes that I had to upload it. At this point in time one of the cheetahs’ handler was preparing a ball on a rope for the cheetahs to chase.
