DPS 4-1: African Photo Safari, Southern Style


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DigitalPro Shooter Volume 4, Issue 1, December 18, 2005

Sunrise over the Namib Desert
Nikon D2X, 24-120VR

Southern Africa Photo Safari:

Lots of Everything except crowds

I’ve just returned from several weeks in Botswana,
Namibia and South Africa leading a photo safari & also doing some shooting
afterwards with some of the participants. It was truly an inspiring event.
We had day after day of exciting shooting opportunities, unique looks at the
natural world and its animals and chances to learn plenty of photography from each
other. Our enthusiastic participants ranged from seasoned digital photographers to those
just picking up their first D-SLR. But the small group size (9 participants
with 2 photo instructors, in addition to a tour leader and 3 local guides) ensured that everyone got plenty of individual
attention.

Getting There


Leopard stalking its prey
 There are two ways to think about the long flight from
the US to southern Africa. Either as a long and tedious ordeal or as the
necessary distancing of oneself from everyday life before plunging headlong
into the bush. Either way it takes awhile and you’re very ready to to
believe that you are at the end of the earth by the time you arrive at your
first bush camp.

In my case I was excited to finally be on a trip we had
been planning for months. Along with Steve Rimer, an enterprising
developer of custom trips and Mike Myers, a seasoned bush pilot, specialist
guide, photographer and manager
for Wilderness Safaris I was co-leading Wilderness’s first ever digital
photo safari. We’d be visiting some of the world’s most exotic locales
including the Skeleton Coast and Namib Desert in Namibia and the Okavango
Delta and Linyanti region in Botswana. We’d see a nearly countless variety of wildlife and some
once in a lifetime scenes. Steve and Wilderness had done a great job
picking out some of their best camps—the tents were almost like mini open
air hotel rooms—and we were in for quite a treat.

Why a Digital Photo Safari?


Dunes on Namibia's Skeleton Coast
Nikon D2H, 24-120VR
 First and foremost, having a safari where everyone is
thinking about photography is a real treat. Each day's activities are planned
with photo opportunities and educational possibilities in mind. Participants
have plenty of time to interact with instructors and the “instant review”
capability of digital allows progress in leaps and bounds. But there are
many other less obvious but quite important reasons to participate in a dedicated
digital photo safari, beginning with logistics:

One of the standard problems when traveling to Africa
intending to photograph is luggage. Most tours don’t really allow you to
bring enough gear to do a proper job of photographing wildlife or
scenery. Even a tripod is usually out of the question when your luggage is
limited to the standard 26 or 44 pounds when traveling on small planes in
the area. We’d made special arrangement for a larger plane so we could take our photo equipment along
with us, a necessity for any serious photography.

Another obvious problem with doing photography on a
standard safari is “photo etiquette.” People moving around in trucks can
ruin the best of shots. When a group is all photographers it is standard
practice for everyone to stay still while shooting—knowing that we’d find a
way for each participant to get some great shots before leaving a prime photo opportunity.

A related problem is attention span. Many tourists are
happy to see as many animals as possible, racing off to the next after a
brief “Wow!” Photographers, of course, can stay and work on photographing a
gorgeous creature like a leopard for hours. By having a specialized tour we
were able to spend as much time as we needed getting the very best shots for
our participants.

And finally there is what to do with the photos. All
safaris feature a few hours of “downtime” most days when the blazing sun is
too bright and the temperature too hot for people and most animals. However,
in this case we’d brought along laptops and a digital projector so we could
teach sessions on wildlife photography, digital workflow and photo editing
in between game drives. Best yet we could work on participants’ images that
they had shot that day, providing real time feedback and learning while we
were still in the field. To accommodate this we’d also needed to make
special arrangements to have enough electrical power at the camp. For participants un-interested in the
photo talks the game guides, often natives of the area, spoke about the
local wildlife and ecosystem.

We did all this with a small group—just 9 participants
in this case, with a maximum of 10—so that we could fit comfortably in the
smallest and most spectacular camps and also to ensure that everyone had
lots of time for personalized instruction and we had plenty of room to work
our subjects without overwhelming or stressing them.

Having been to Africa before on trips which were
exciting but didn’t have all these special touches the participants and I
really appreciated these extras which helped make the safari both a
“trip of a lifetime” and a true photographic success.

Africa—The Southern Way


Lion cub enjoying 
a mid-day play break
 Everyone is familiar with the spectacular wildlife
viewing opportunities available in Africa, but not everyone understands how
Southern Africa (especially Botswana and Namibia) differ in from Eastern
Africa (typically Kenya and Tanzania). Botswana and Namibia have implemented
a private concession system. This provides limited and exclusive access to
entire areas of the country to those staying within them. The result is a
true safari experience. Many days we saw no one else but our group when out
on safari. This contributes to a unique sense of the vastness of the African
landscape and to the special feeling when coming across a sighting. By
contrast the most famous areas of Eastern Africa are public parks densely
traveled by safari vehicles. A kill or other sighting is often followed by
the arrival of many other trucks and kill sites often look like parking
lots. In my case I’m addicted to the Southern African experience.

Safari—The Game Drive


Male Waterbuck
 Each day we started before dawn, to capture the sunrise and make
sure we were in the field for the early morning light. Never did a
mile go by without some type of photographic opportunity for
antelope or a colorful bird. In Botswana in particular the variety
of wildlife was breathtaking. In our 12 days in the bush we
photographed well over 130 species, including 38 species of mammals
and 70 species of birds. While we were busy photographing the
animals we saw, our guides were looking for tracks or sounds of the
more elusive predators including Leopard, Lion and Cheetah or
some of the large herbivores including Black Rhino, Hippo,
Elephants and Giraffe. If we
found tracks it was off across the bush for some “off-roading” as we
tracked the animals. Another advantage of the private concessions we
used was that we were normally able to go off-road to track
interesting animals because the very low density of vehicles limits
the damage to the environment to that which can be ‘repaired’
quickly by nature.

limits the number of vehicles near sensitive animals to a maximum
of 3—usually with only 3 or 4 shooters each—so there is never a “human zoo”
crowded around a kill or other sighting. Since we normally had reserved the
entire camp for our group of 9 participants and 3 leaders our 3 trucks were
often the only ones we’d see for most of the day.

Our guides were excellent trackers, and we were able to
see leopards, lions and cheetahs on many occasions, and follow them as they
hunted. We saw several kills and near misses, and were also able to watch a
pride of lions lead their cubs to a hidden killed Warthog for feeding and a
Wildebeest escape from two cheetahs when a Hyena attempted to get involved
and ‘poach’ the wildebeest from the cheetahs.

Sundowners


Leopard getting ready to start the evening hunt
 Stopping for a drink at sundown is a safari tradition.
For photographers the event is particularly special since there is often a
colorful sunset to capture. We had several very memorable evenings,
including one where we had the sunset in one direction while in the other
hippos ambled slowly up the bank and out of the water to begin their evening
feeding on the grass in the bush.

The Photography

Of course on a photo safari the big question is always
“how was the photography?” Awesome! I've listed just a few of the many
highlights below. And of course all the photos in this newsletter and in my

 were taken during the two weeks of the trip--and represent
just a tiny fraction of the nearly 8000 images I captured while I was there. We'll be assembling
a participants gallery as well, as Mike, Steve and I were all blown away by
how much the participants improved while they were there and by some of
their great images.


Lioness and cub go hunting

Wildlife Highlights

  • 2 Cheetahs taking down a Wildebeest calf, then
    having it stolen by a Hyena prematurely, allowing the calf to get up and
    run off.

  • Watching a leopard stalk and kill a squirrel, then
    move off to hunt Impala

  • Watching a pride of lions feed their young from a
    stashed kill, as well as move off to hunt at sunset

  • Watching Bullfrogs mate, including lots of “aerial”
    combat as males lunged headlong into other males attempting to keep them
    from mating

  • Red Lechwe antelope highlighted by the sunrise
    against the mist

  • Watching Hippo come out of the water to feed

  • Watching Waterbuck huddle together for
    protection during a rainstorm

 

Dune shapes provided 
loads of fun!

Scenic Highlights

  • Capturing the lightning bolts from across the
    Linyanti using a lightning trigger while the sun set

  • Experience Highlights

  • Making the dunes on the Skeleton Coast “roar” as we
    slid down them (note that in Namibia many dunes are only sand so that
    human and vehicle tracks are gone in minutes—we didn’t climb or disturb
    the dunes which have vegetation, as those are fragile)

 

Namibia


Himba villagers live the way they
have for hundreds of years
 Unlike the relatively verdant and game rich areas of
Botswana, Namibia is largely desert and semi-desert. The resulting harsh
environment of rocky plains, huge sand dunes and brittle crust create a sur-real
environment unique on the planet. While the animal photography opportunities
are more limited than Botswana, the scenics can be breathtaking and the
animal sightings take on a special significance as the creatures we see
there are the less common desert-adapted versions of their savannah-bound
cousins.

Our group loved Namibia and many of us can’t wait to go
back. But the desert isn’t for everyone, as it is harsh on people and
equipment and requires some extra travel, so we’ll be offering one trip next
year which includes both Botswana and Namibia (in May) and another which stays in
Botswana and focuses on the wildlife photography opportunities there (in
November).

Classroom in the Bush


Unlike other cats, Cheetah 
often hunt during the day
 Thanks to some great logistics support from Wilderness
we were not only able to make sure that everyone could recharge their
cameras and laptops at each camp, but we had a digital projector and screen
so we could review the days shooting and teach for an hour or two each day.
We covered topics ranging from wildlife photography techniques to using
Photoshop to enhance the images we captured. The small group size (trips are
limited to 10 photographers) allowed us to provide plenty of personalized
instruction.

We also choose small camps so we were normally able to
ensure that we were the only group in camp. That made it easy to spread out
around the common area and work without worrying about our gear or about
interfering with other guests.

Eat, Drink and be Merry


Desert Black Rhino are skittish & require
careful tracking for safe photography
Nikon D2X, 200-400VR, hand-held
 Wilderness pampered us, starting with a breakfast
buffet each morning before we went out and continuing with excellent food
for either brunch or lunch each day as well as at tea time before we went
out on our evening game drive and then awesome dinners when we returned. The
only drawback is I’m pretty sure none of us lost any weight. None of the 12
of us ever got the slightest bit sick from anything there, which is quite a
tribute to the high standards of hygiene in the camps. Each camp also has a
fully stocked bar, and plenty of bottled water, so we were always provided
for.

All of the camps had flush toilets in the “tents”
(these tents were really more like small bungalows featuring showers, sinks,
and toilets) and most featured raised boardwalks from the common areas out
to the privately situated tents—allowing the animals to wander freely around
camp. The staff is there to escort guests to their rooms after dark.

2006 Trips


These Burchell Zebra are as curious 
about us as we are about them.

I’ll be doing two trips in 2006 (in partnership with
, Steve Rimer, and James Weis's
), each
with a different flavor. In May I’m the photo lead on another trip to
Namibia and Botswana, which will provide a great mix of adventure, scenic
photography and wildlife. In November we’ll be doing a trip much more
focused on wildlife photography. We’ll spend the entire 12 days in the
wildlife rich areas of Botswana, allowing 4 days for each camp, which lets
us to spend more time perfecting our mammal and bird photography both in the
field and in the classroom.

For more information on the trips, visit my safari
page:
.

 
Trip news:

Grizzly bear trip, Last Chance:

We've also still got one slot for each of our
Grizzly Bear & Puffin weeks in July 2006, so
.

Africa 2006:

.

--David Cardinal, Editor, DigitalPro Shooter

New Products

Epson Print Academy expanded to 2 days, one for D-SLR enthusiasts and one for
Pros: Read the details on our homepage:

Nikon is now shipping the Nikon D200 D-SLR (10.2MP, 5fps, D2-like
controls & feature sub-set). I played with one a little and was quite impressed
by how similar the controls are to the D2X and D2H. I think it would be an
excellent backup camera for a pro with a D2X and is certainly a good "step-up"
camera for someone looking to move up from the D50 or D70. In my case I don't
see how to justify the expense since I already have a D2X and a D2H (which I
like for the clean 8fps and convenient file size), but I like the D200 enough
(the same way I enjoyed having an F100) that I'll continue to try to think of a
reason to get one!

Magix has introduced PhotoStory on CD & DVD 4. For users
looking for a more powerful but inexpensive alternative to Microsoft's free
PhotoStory for Windows, Magix has a very competent product offering. I've been
experimenting with it and like the fairly simple user interface which is still
powerful enough to allow you to create flexible timelines and audio tracks.
Magix PhotoStory can produce movies or CD or DVD slideshows. I'll be doing a
more complete review of it and ProShow Producer (a much more expensive product)
in a future DPS. Magix PhotoStory retails for $39.99.

DigitalPro Tip

DigitalPro 4 for Windows image browsing & cataloging software has just been released. It is faster than ever, with literally
dozens of user-requested new features & user-interface enhancements. You can
learn more or download it
.

--David Cardinal, Editor, DigitalPro Shooter

 

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--David Cardinal, editor DigitalPro Shooter

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