Wildlife Photography - Photo Workshop

The workshop started off with the safe arrival of participants at Galago Camp in the northern Sabi Sands Game Reserve.   After settling in and a light lunch, we started off with a run-down on how the workshop would work followed by a discussion on the cameras and the various settings required to get the best wildlife photographs.

 With that sorted out we set off on our first game drive hoping to get some interesting subjects and little did we know how interesting it would become!

We hadn’t even left the area of the camp when I heard the single alarm bark of a baboon above the noise of the engine and immediately switched off to listen.  We heard the alarm bark again, but in the background we could hear very loud and urgent alarm snorts of a large herd of impala!  We raced across an open clearing and got to the impala herd which was staring fixedly in the direction of the woodland on the edge of the clearing.  We drove along the edge of the clearing expecting to see the leopard walking away from the impala through the woodland but saw nothing.  The impala kept staring into the same place and we repeatedly searched the area only to realise after the third try that the impala were actually looking into the long grass in the open no more than 10 metres from them.  We drove carefully in that direction and discovered an adult female leopard with a freshly-killed impala ram well-hidden in the grass.

We got ourselves into position to get as clear a view as possible and began to take photographs.  Five minutes later a single spotted hyaena came zig-zagging across the clearing and on picking up the smell of the kill, without any hesitation, simply ran in and grabbed the impala as the leopard scampered away.

We then spent the rest of the afternoon observing and photographing as the hyaena consumed the kill and the leopard lay patiently watching and waiting to pick up any scraps left behind has the hyaena dragged the kill away. 

Eventually, with its stomach bulging, the hyaena decided to stash the kill under a bush and wondered off and this gave the leopard a chance to get it back!  Surprisingly, she didn’t make any attempt to hoist the remains of the kill into a tree and simply settled down to eat.  A few minutes later the hyaena returned, chased the leopard up into a tree and ate some more.

We spent the rest of the evening watching as more and more hyaena arrived and the leopard rested in the tree watching her hard-earned meal disappear very quickly.

What an amazing start to the workshop with a lot of action which provided the photographers with great challenges.

That first afternoon set the tone for the rest of the weekend with sightings of another 5 different leopards, including a female leopard with her cub on another impala kill.  One evening was spent getting great flash photographs of the cub resting in a large monkey thorn tree as we learnt how to get correct exposures with flash and to use flash off-camera to cut down on red-eye.

Other highlights of the workshop included a great morning spent with 10 hyaenas in beautiful early morning light as they interacted with one another, early morning coffee next to a small group of hippos where we had the opportunity to get down on the ground and lie on our stomachs next to the water to get dramatic eye-level shots, a group of 5 white rhino who ended up walking so close to our vehicle that we were able to focus on close-up shots of their eyes, ears, horns and oxpeckers on their backs and a group of dwarf mongoose sitting on their termite mound basking in the early morning sun.

The early morning and afternoon activities were interspersed with lectures on various aspects of wildlife photography followed by the downloading of photographs from the previous activities for critique.

Hopefully the photographers left the workshop having learnt a few new things and inspired to go on to even better photography.  One thing’s for sure, we all came home with some magnificent photographs.

LEX HES - April 2012 EcoTraining Photography

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ECOTRAINING PHOTO WORKSHOP

ECOTRAINING PHOTO WORKSHOP

JAYDEES CAMP (18- 22 NOVEMBER 2011)

By Lex Hes

Temperature on arrival at the camp in the depths of the Timbavati was 38 degrees Celcius with high humidity, but this didn’t dampen the spirits of the 6 participants on this year’s photo workshop.

After settling in we served some tea and got straight down to business finding out more about each other’s photographic interests and discussing things such as white balance settings, ISO settings, image quality, over and under-exposure and the various other buttons and dials on the amazing technological wonder that is a digital camera.

With that completed we loaded up the game drive vehicle, two people for each row of seats and lots of camera gear.  As we set off, a message came over the radio that a young male leopard had been seen in the Shlaralumi River a few kilometers away.  We drove slowly in that direction, stopping regularly for photographic opportunities and when we got there found the young leopard resting on a dam wall.  We waited and after a while he got up and slowly began to move through the bush, providing us with wonderful sightings.  In particular, at one point, we were able to position the vehicle in such a way that the photographers were all close to eye-level with the leopard, which resulted in some great shots which showed the huge impact that is created by getting to eye-level with an animal.

Dinner around the camp-fire that night was extremely hot and humid and during the night a little bit of rain fell which cooled things down a bit.  Next morning, under an overcast sky, we left camp at 5-15 and a few minutes later Cecile spotted a large male African wild cat crouched in the grass.  He slunk off to a nearby bush and settled down in front of the bush in clear view and proceeded to groom himself. 

What followed was about 30 minutes of the best viewing that I have ever had of an African wild cat as he groomed himself, sat and looked around, stalked something and groomed himself again.  He eventually casually moved off towards the south.  The overcast conditions provided us with beautiful soft lighting and we all got great shots.

The soft lighting also helped with some good viewing of a group of spotted hyaena at their den.

Later that morning we saw an adult female leopard hunting through the woodland.  We were lucky enough to spend more than an hour with her as she tried to hunt impala until, as it got hot; she decided to rest in the branches of a tree.

After brunch we had an informal discussion about exposure followed by a rest period and time to download the results of the morning’s photography.  During afternoon tea we had a look at the results and discussed ways to improve our photos.

The afternoon game drive yielded a very relaxed breeding herd of elephants in the very late afternoon after the sun had gone down.  The low light was challenging for us all, but gave us the opportunity to experiment with high ISO settings and also with slow shutter speeds to create blurring effects.

On the morning of the 20^th of November we got some good viewing of a pair of white rhinos which we followed for a while as they grazed peacefully.  At one point both rhinos stopped to defaecate and within minutes dung beetles began to arrive.  We waited for the rhinos to move away and then spent the next one-and-a-half hours with our lenses sticking into the dung heap trying to get photographs of the dung beetles doing their thing!  We watched them fly in, dig, create their balls, roll them away and then bury them.  This kind of photography is a completely different challenge and the results illustrated the importance of good depth-of-field in close-up photography.

In the afternoon we had some sightings of buffalo and also spent a successful late afternoon with the hyaenas at the den. 

The last full day of the workshop yielded an excellent sighting of a leopard resting in classical pose on the branch of an apple-leaf tree giving the photographers an opportunity to try many different angles and interpretations of the same subject as well as a great evening with a group of hyaenas at a waterhole, drinking, resting and hiding the leg of a buffalo in the water.  Before going back to camp we followed up on a pride of lions hunting through the woodland in the dark.

During the night the rain began to fall and continued to fall through the night and into the following morning.  We still went out and tried to get some shots of the rhinos in the rain, but the cold wet weather eventually sent us back to camp for a warm breakfast and departure.

For more information on the photography courses contact enquiries@ecotraining.co.za or visit our website at www.ecotraining.co.za

Horton Plains slender loris

This is the first time the Horton Plains slender loris has ever been photographed! The Telegraph.co.uk reports that one of the world’s rarest primates, driven to the brink of extinction by Britain’s taste for tea, has been photographed for the first time. The Horton Plains slender loris has been so elusive for more than 60 years scientists believed the wide-eyed mammal had become extinct. It had only been seen four times since 1937 but was fleetingly spotted in 2002 by researchers who identified it by the reflection of a light shone in its eyes. Experts believe the prime reason for its rarity was due to the loss of its natural forest habitat largely destroyed by the drive to create tea plantations.
http://bit.ly/azhgzo - EcoTraining wants to congratulate the photographer whom will hopefully keep the location a secret!