Christmas in the Mountains

Good morning friends!

I just wanted to write a short post wishing you all a blessed Christmas time, wherever you find yourself in this festive season. May God abundantly bless you and bring you safely to your loved ones so you can spend valuable time together.

My family and I will be camping in the Maluti mountains (Golden Gate Highlands National Park) this weekend with my extended family, so I am looking forward to some downtime and family fun. I might just get round to capturing some landscape images like the one below which was taken at this exact location back in 2011...

See you all on the flipside - take care!

Morkel Erasmus

The Best Camera in the World...

...is the one you have with you...

I've just come back from a lovely week's vacation with my family in the iconic Drakensberg mountains of South Africa.

I wanted to share this photo with you guys.

Nice scene, isn't it?

Would you like to guess which camera was used to make this photograph?

My Apple iPhone 5.

You can close your mouth now.

Yes, I did take my Nikon D800 and some lenses along.

Yes, I used them for some shooting.

But as I was spending time with my family most of the time, I found it convenient to grab the iPhone and snap away when something caught my eye.

Be prepared to capture photos with any camera at your disposal!
It's not the tools that maketh the photographer...

Until next time...

Morkel Erasmus

PhotoShare: Cape Mountain Zebra

It seems like July will slip by without another decent blog post, but here is a quick PhotoShare for you guys.

I captured this image before sunrise in April 2011 in the quaint little Mountain Zebra National Park in the Karoo desert, South Africa. I will do a proper blog post sometime soon about this great underappreciated National Park.

f4.0  |  1/100 SS  |  ISO-1000  |  420mm focal length

Hope you enjoy this one. Cheers!

Morkel Erasmus

An Article About Addo

And so enters the month of September 2010...is it just me or has this year just gone faster than the previous one? Things are really steamrolling along this year. The much anticipated Soccer World Cup 2010 has come and gone, and I think our country has done itself proud. Unfortunately there are now a few things in the aftermath that could unsettle all the momentum our wonderful nation has built up.

But enough of that before I change this blog into a socio-political one..

We have just returned from an amazing (albeit short) road trip which took us to areas we had not visited in quite a while. As a big fan of South Africa's National Parks and a big fan of the self-drive safari (maybe it's because of budgetary constraints as well hehe, but I DO so love finding my own sightings and making the most of them photographically), I was happy to make my first real trip to the Addo Elephant National Park in the Eastern Cape province. I had only been there once in the past for a quick drive-through en route to elsewhere, and this time we managed to book a 2-night stay in one of the safari tents of the Main Rest Camp.

f8.0  //  1/640 SS  //  ISO-800

The narrow escape with the Lionscape...

So, I am back from a very exciting and fulfilling trip to Dullstroom and the Madikwe Game Reserve. Not only were there loads of mind-blowing photographic opportunities, but I got to spend some quality time with my wife, a few good friends and like-minded photographers like Gerry van der Walt and Kerry de Bruyn.

I thought you might get a good chuckle out of the story I want to share, as well as have even more appreciation for the image it produced upon reading it.

We set out on Tuesday morning at 5AM to drive to a section of the Madikwe Game Reserve called the Madikwe Plains...a vast open stretch of African savannah that is reminiscent of the Serengeti in many ways. We got there well before the sun peeked over the horizon, and there were some wildebeest and springbok visible on the plains, with nice mountain ridges and some clouds that were adopting glorious colour tones from the rising sun.

In a great mood to make the most of this landscape, Gerry and I hopped off the Land Rover with our cameras and tripods and started setting up in front of the Landy in the dirt road, looking to the West to capture the colours of the sunrise on the plains. All of a sudden my darling wife asked: "What's that in the road?"

When I turned my head, a cold shudder ran down my spine and tingled in the tips of my toes...even though the sun hadn't completely risen, the shape that was lying about 20 meters up ahead in the road was unmistakeably that of a full-grown male lion...and he was looking straight at us. We could certainly have broken some kind of record for high-jumping with our attempts to scramble back into the vehicle! All the while the lion was just lying there, minding its own business. It's kind of funny when you look back at it now...

Here is a shot I snapped very quickly after we'd hopped back into the relative safety of the game viewer...

As we drove closer, it turned out to be one of a coalition of 2 brothers who were dominant on these plains, but this one seemed to have bit on the short end of the stick in a scuff with his brother recently. The next moment he broke out roaring right next to us! 

A few moments later his brother answered from across the plains.


It was quite a surreal experience...they kept roaring at each other periodically, and we kept trying different photographic compositions. In the end, one of my favourites from the trip is this last one. I held my camera way down the side of the Land Rover, went ultra-wide with my wide-angle lens, and snapped 3 exposures, of which I used 2 to blend this final image together. One exposure was used for the sky and mountains (underexposed) and one for the lion and plains (zero exposure).


Here is my lion in high dynamic range...(remember to click on the images for higher res viewing)

 I would love to hear what you think about my "experience" and the resulting shots! :)


Thanks for keeping a watchful eye on my meager blog...


I will be changing the overall content of this blog to cover more of my photography than just "HDR" or "blending" since I am in the process of constructing an official homepage and will link this as the official blog to my page.


Keep shooting!!


Morkel Erasmus