Day 7: Okonjima Cheetahs

One of the best tips for snapping animals in this typical pose is to get down low, preferably lie on the ground which I did here. And promptly got told off. Lying flat on the ground, apparently, is tantamount to inviting the cheetah over for a look. We felt quite safe - after all there were eight of us and in general cheetah are not aggressive towards humans, unless their young are threatened.

Another great view of a male cheetah with a nice, shallow depth of field stretching off into the background. Pic by Natalie.

Located 160kms north of Windhoek , Namibia, the Africat Foundation at Okonjima is a 200 square kilometre reserve dedicated to the study, preservation and rehabilitation of all sorts of wild life, principally leopard and cheetah. You stay there much as if it were a regular game park – but you are literally surrounded with cheetahs and leopard in the reserve bounding the lodges.

Africat began as a refuge for leopard and cheetahs that were otherwise in danger of being killed by farmers -there's no fencing in Namibia so these predators can roam where they please. Over the years the foundation has gained a reputation for working with farmers - which is in part why the reserve has rehabilitated and released several hundred cheetahs over the years. Today you can go tracking - some of the leopard, cheetah and spotted hyena carry radio transmitters - in the massive reserve (an amalgamation of four farms bought over the last 20 or so years). Some track in vehicles while others walk you in once you are reasonably near to the animals. Leopard are definitely the hardest to find and photograph because they lie up in dense undergrowth - they are very shy animals. Cheetah seem to be a little easier - we found a female and two males after bush walking for 20 minutes. The animals moved onto one of the game tracks and flopped into the dust. We could get as close as three metres so got amazing shots.
 

This male is just having a scratch in the dirt which made for a good sequence of shots.
(Canon EF100-400mm, f5.6 at 1/1250s).
Pic by Natalie.

This male is just having a scratch in the dirt which made for a good sequence of shots.
(Canon EF100-400mm, f5.6 at 1/1250s).
Pic by Natalie.

A lucky shot - many of Africat's cheetah are collared. Purely by chance I managed to get one frame with the cheetah's tail obscuring its radio collar...

A female cleaning the male's face - for such big, powerful creatures, it was terrific to see them behaving just like a domestic tabby cat.
Pic by Natalie.

A typical cheetah pose, on the alert for danger or prey. Small wonder most of the shots we see of cheetah show them lying in roadways. In the bush they blend into the tall grasses and scrub almost instantly.

Delicious! Pic by Natalie.

Another classic cheetah pose, moving purposefully though tall grasses.
In this case to get away from eight keen photographers!

Poaching in Kruger

It's a sad fact but poaching appears to still be on the rise in South Africa (and elsewhere). Guides we spoke to estimated that up to 1000 rhino will be lost to poachers this year. 1000 rhinos. That's an unspeakable national disaster. I read one story where a well known naturalist and bushie from RSA was trying to educate the local resident villagers into the idea that poaching animals and of course, particularly rhino, was counter productive. Education in the villages has, it seems, had some impact but mostly because anti-poaching groups are increasingly active in these areas. They tend to shoot poachers dead on sight and leave them to the wild animals. If the poachers are shot and the incidents reported, it's the shooters that get jailed NOT the poachers, if any survive. The simple answer to this is that they shoot poachers on sight and don't tell anyone. It's the kids in the villages that get hit the hardest when their fathers never return from a "trip". Personally I think the shoot to kill policy is good simply because the official response is always too little, too late.

We were snapping a cute herd of waterbuck when the guide noticed something odd about one of them. Through his binoculars he saw a snare - the wire still attached round the waterbuck's neck. Not a pretty sight but it seemed at least that the snare hadn't cut into the neck area - no sign of blood - even so, it was a nasty reminder that even in the safari heaven that is Honeyguide and Manayleti, dark deeds continue.
The guide duly reported the incident and, hopefully, a vet was going to try to locate the animal, dart it and remove the wire snare.

I was reasonably happy with this quick pan shot of a male waterbuck trotting into cover.
(1/13s @ f36, ISO 125)

This is an old female waterbuck doing what they do best: hang out near water.
We drove past and took a few snaps and she was still there when we
returned 30 mins later, enjoying the water
or just so old she no longer cared if we were a threat!

Here's a classic exposure problem. Perfect silhouette but a dull result. The very bright sky and direction of light produced a dull, under-exposed result. Shoot with the camera set to Exposure Bracketing and you'll get a bright frame, normal frame and a dark frame. Choose the most appropriate, and delete the rest.

Alternatively if the shot is really dark use the most versatile exposure adjuster: the exposure compensation feature to add more light by setting it to + one or even two f-stops to brighten the resulting snap. This is far more efficient and produces radically better results than if you just brighten up a heavily underexposed image.

I think waterbuck are seriously cute but at the same time they really look out of place mingling with zebra and wildebeest. Here's a typical view - we got a few metres too close and they moved off, male up front in the lead. One female stops and turns side on to get a better view of the danger. They clearly display that typical toilet seat or target on their backsides. I think they look more like a cross between a red deer and a moose, especially with all that hair! Beautiful and quite graceful critters.

Day 5.5: A Dazzle of Zebra

Zebras are fun, zebras are cute, zebras are mad, vicious and completely untamable. Above all, zebras make great photographs. But, a really good zebra shot is a bit harder to get.  There are so many factors that can make or break a good zebra shot.  Like human portraiture, I think the background is as important as the zebra subject.  So a shallow depth of field and zooming close in on the animal usually works well.
We found this small harem around a small lake/waterhole in Manyaleti reserve.  Zebras typically live in herds (other collective nouns for a group include: a dazzle, or a cohort) of up to 30. Their eyesight is excellent, as is their night vision and hearing. They whinny or bark if danger approaches.
They are also notoriously cranky animals (one good reason why they have never been successfully domesticated) so you often see them scrapping with other zebra in the harem - and they are rough with each other.


A typical zebra behaviour we noticed was that they love resting their heads in the dip of their neighbour's back - so it looks as though they are snuggling but I suspect it's because doing it gives them a better visual advantage in case danger approaches.  The birds are oxpeckers which crawl over the animal and  remove ticks and other bugs from the hide. Zebras (and giraffe and elephant and lion) put up with this invasion of personal space for good reason. The oxpeckers serve a very healthy cleansing role in the animal kingdom.
(I needed an oxpecker the other night when we discovered a tick buried in my shoulder - a gentle tug with some tweezers did the job - but an oxpecker went hungry...).
 

Panning is a technique where you choose a slow shutter speed and move with the subject shooting as you go to get a sense of motion. It is a bit hit and miss because the optimum shutter speed is dictated by the subject speed. In this example I used 1/5s @ f45 to get the right amount of movement. Any slower and the picture looks a mess. Faster and it is too sharp and you get no sense of motion.

Almost perfect symmetry. Natalie's clean shot of two female zebras.
(Canon EF 70-200mm f2.8 + 2x Extender at 400mm.)

Another typically symmetrical shot

Wider shot of the dazzle showing typical stances resting heads on backs. It was almost as if they have been specifically posed for the shot.

I talk a lot about close-ups but even then, if the compositional elements do not come together the result might look a bit messy. One way to get a better shot is simply to keep shooting. Doesn't really matter if you end up with 200 shots is one of them is perfectly arranged. This shot is OK but not as tight nor as balanced an the others on this page...

Day Five: Stalking Elephants

Travelling in the Manyaleti private concession just outside of Kruger National park is a real eye-opener for both of us based purely on the myriad species of game we saw in our three days there. On the drive in from tiny Hoedspruit airstrip we saw elephant, zebra, impala, giraffe and even hippo. Day one revealed more than 20 different species which was great but it just got better and better, to the point where we were spotting critters that even the guides had rarely seen before, including a Marshall eagle and white breasted owl on a nest.

That said, one of my favourite is the elephant. Honeyguide Camp has its own water hole 50 metres from the observation deck – visitors to the pool are partially obscured by foliage so when I noticed four bull elephants moving into the area I got our guide, Anton, to take us closer. Luckily you have to cross a three metre deep ravine just in front of the pool, which afforded us both cover and a retreat if the bulls decided we were too close.

Shooting elephants is tough partly because they are dark, and partly because it is hard to get on the level or even higher than the animal. Dark subjects cause the camera to over-expose, thus blowing out all detail in the sky. Shooting from a low angle also includes too much sky. My answer to this is to get in as close as possible, physically and with a big lens so you can capture full-face shots. 

Bull elephant drinking at the water hole. (Canon EF 300mm f2.8 USM, 1/1250s @ f4 , ISO 800)

The three older bulls were very wary of us being 20 metres away but the small, younger male was decidedly twitchy, flapping his ears and stomping about.
One interesting fact I learned was that if the elephant pulls vegetation up but does not eat, it’s not a good sign for the onlooker. You are either too close or in the way if they want to exit, or both.

We got some great shots of the elephants drinking the dark green soup that passes for water in this pool before they turned around and sidled off back into the bush. A thrilling sight to get so close to these magnificent critters. 

We spotted this lone bull later in the day. He posed perfectly for us, while all the while swinging from one foot to the other deciding whether we were a threat or not. He stayed. (1/100s @ f7.1, ISO 800, Canon EF 300mm f2.8 + 2X Extender).

Africa Day Four: Stalking rhinos

We spotted a single rhino on day two but could not really get a good sighting on him. Having a massive telephoto lens is never the answer if the critter is more than 100 foot from you, or worse, obscured by grass and other vegetation. Thinking of buying a big telephoto lens for a safari? It’s a great idea but even if it has a massive 500mm+ zoom range, is relatively ineffective for animals that are more than 100 feet away. Any further and even an 800mm lens is a waste of time. Unless you like black pinpricks on the horizon…

Natalie looking slightly nervous being escorted by our
tracker, Brilliant in the direction of three two-ton rhinos

Day four and we swung round a bend in the track and spotted what I thought were three elephant on the road a kilometre in the distance.  Getting closer those three elephant morphed into three large rhino, a fantastic sight. By the time we crept up to their level 50 metres away they were well and truly nervous so sort of trotted into the bush.  We drove a couple of kilometres round the block, edging our way along a  track bordering Kruger from the Manyaleti concession and waited for them to come past for ten minutes. Nothing happened so we backtracked and stopped mid-way back from the direction we came.  Our guide and tracker disappeared into the scrub for ten minutes, then reappeared from the scrub and signalled us over.
We did so with some trepidation. After all, these were the largest rhinos we'd ever seen. Natalie and Brilliant, our tracker, hid behind a small cluster of trees and I went up ahead with Anton, our guide. We literally crept up on the three  nervous-looking rhinos using the lee of an old termite mound for cover (it was only four foot high and five foot wide, so I was unsure of how much 'protection' Anton thought it would afford in the event of a charge from a 2,800kg rhino).

Canon EF 100-400mm, 1/1000s @ f6.3

We got within 70 or 80 metres of the trio. They'd clearly scented us and were nervously looking in every direction, particularly ours, but, because rhinos have relatively poor eyesight, they hadn’t actually seen us. Anton called (a loud whisper) Nat and Brilliant over to us and we huddled behind this (tiny) mound for five minutes shooting pictures of these prehistoric looking animals. Even with a 400mm lens it was hard to get a decent angle, let alone fill the frame.  We couldn't move and they remained partially hidden among the trees. After a few minutes they moved nervously forward towards us. We managed around 10 shots of them emerging from cover but then they got even more nervous and started moving quickly towards us at an increasing speed. Anton clapped his hands rapidly while remaining hidden and this sudden unexpected noise sent them veering off into the bush at right angles to where we were crouched. They disappeared after a few seconds.
A nervous moment for all of us but a thrilling rhino encounter nevertheless...

Canon EF 100-400mm lens, 1/1250s @ f6.3, ISO 400

Africa Day Three: Photographing Cheetahs

This is one of the most coveted of all safari subjects. Cheetahs are exquisite, cute, and very, very photogenic. Once a cheetah or family of cheetahs are found, you’ll find other game drivers arriving from all directions. Word gets round fast.
Typically you’ll find most big cat carnivores at rest – lions are often hard to see because they tend to sit on long grass or in deep shade during the hottest parts of the day. Cheetah, at least from my experience, like to sit in a place with a bit of a view - on top of a small rise, an old flattened termite mound for instance – maybe to get a vantage or to catch the breeze. This makes it a lot easier for photographers to get great shots – providing the cheetahs are alert - otherwise, like the lion, they are very hard to spot.

One interesting cheetah fact I learned at Honeyguide was that mothers with several growing cubs are unusual - because they are rarely able to defend themselves from predators. A cheetah’s defence is, of course, speed, something that mum can pile on in an emergency but cubs can’t.  In the presence of marauding hyena or maybe lion, the cubs can easily be killed.
What’s apparent in the wild is that life is in fact harder for predators at the top of the food pyramid that you'd imagine. Herbivores on the other hand, have a relatively easy life. Providing they don't get eaten by a cheetah...
(Canon EF300mm f2.8 and EF 100-400mm lenses from approx 20metres)

Africa Day Two: Mongoose

South Africa is home to many species of mongoose, a small rodent famous for its tenacity in hunting prey far larger (and more dangerous) than itself.
Day two of our Africa trip saw us up at 6am at Honeyguide camp (just outside of Kruger National Park) for our first morning game drive. The first creature we spotted was a cute slender mongoose sitting in the sun in the middle of the dirt road. It was quite distinguishable with its lightish red-brown fur and black tipped tail (that was Anton, the guide's description, not mine...)..

Common dwarf mongoose out in the open, Honeyguide bush camp, RSA.

Dwarf mongeese like to live in small groups and are not as timid as the slender mongoose.

Rare sighting of the timid slender mongoose (yawning).

A brief glimpse of the slender mongoose in early morning light, Honeyguide bush camp

Now, most mongeese you encounter will vanish into the undergrowth in a flash - unless you are literally pointing your lens in the right direction when you first spot a mongoose, you won't get the shot. This one, on the other hand, sat for in full view 10 or 15 minutes sunning itself, occasionally shifting position in the road and verges, seemingly unperturbed by our presence.

Finally, after several minutes posing for our cameras this slender mongoose moved off into the undergrowth

Africa Day One: Soweto Township

Somewhat confronting a few hours after stepping off an international flight from Sydney, Soweto remains something of an epic location for any visitor to Southern Africa. Having said that though, it's certainly not a place for the faint-hearted. Many of the Africans living in the informal camps have nothing other than a piece of rusty tin over their heads. No fresh water in the huts, no electricity, no sanitation, no roads and little prospect of finding jobs.
 

An 'informal' township inside Soweto - several hundred illegal migrants live here, with no running water and only these few chemical toilets serving the community...

One of the locally born residents of the same camp. He has learned enough English to show those tourists that are interested enough, how things work in this place...

Here's a shot of a young kid that just came up to us and asked to have his photo taken.
Nothing more.

Local sorghum beer isn't that strong - although if you drink enough of it, clearly accidents can still happen.

Tangerine, a young Sowetan woman who sold us a coffee at one of the cafes that cater for the occasional Western visitor.

Although this encampment was exceedingly rough, many of the 'better' suburbs inside Soweto showed some prosperity and had significantly better facilities.