Photographic Safaris with Wild Eye

Those of you who follow me on social media would have seen that I am now a Wild Eye Ambassador. What does that mean?

First - you need to check out what Wild Eye is about. Browse around on the homepage:

www.wild-eye.co.za

So what does it mean? Effectively, it means you now have the opportunity to join me on various photographic safaris throughout the year. During these trips we will focus on maximising building your photographic portfolio, learning from each other and above all, having fun (because wildlife photography is supposed to be fun, right?).

You can see my profile, as well as those of the other ambassadors (all good friends of mine and excellent photographers) HERE.

The preliminary dates for my trips with Wild Eye for 2013 are as follows:

1 - 5 May 2013 

Samara Game Reserve in the Karoo desert, South Africa

The focus of this one will be the wildlife and landscapes of this uniquely South African biome. I will release more information once this goes live on the website.

17 - 21 July 2013

Mana Pools National Park, Zimbabwe

You've probably seen some of my photos from this magical place. Marlon du Toit and I will be leading a camping safari for max 10 people into this pristine wilderness, staying on the banks of the mighty Zambezi and exploring the floodplains, forests and riverbed. More details HERE.

22 - 28 September 2013

Masai Mara Migration, Kenya

The Great Migration is the greatest wildlife spectacle on earth, and once again Marlon and I will be there to help you capture this phenomenon on your camera - frame by frame. We will operate from the Wild Eye tented camp, a mobile tented camp on the banks of the Mara river. More details HERE.

If you've ever wanted to spend time in the field with like-minded people, having fun doing what you love to do, then these trips are just for you. There are many departures throughout the year, not all led by me, but led by amazing people who will help you grow your portfolio and have fun with the same passion and vigour as I will.

I hope to see some of you on safari next year!

Keep well,

Morkel Erasmus

Kgalagadi: September 2009 (Part 1)

As I stated in my previous post, I will start updating my blog with some trip reports, back-dating to about middle 2009 to try and give you a better sense of my travels and the development of my photography over the years. As these trip reports become current, I will try and also keep up to date after recent ones. This will also force me to process the masses of images still lying on my hard drives.

Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park - September 2009
More info: http://www.sanparks.org/parks/kgalagadi/

We had planned a week-long trip (8 nights) to this iconic park as a way to get re-acquainted with the place. I had last been here in 1995 as a lad in 7th Grade (with my folks). Back then we had promised as a family to return every year...but we never did. This time, with me having my own family I decided to honour that tradition. I can also duly say that after this initial comeback trip, have stuck to the tradition of returning at least once per annum, as this amazing place surely warrants it.

I won't go into too much detail, but will try to give you some idea of the better sightings we had, as well as some impressions of the Park and its facilities. Where I may have encountered a challenging photographic situation, I will share some of my thoughts behind the choices I made and settings I used. Kapeesh? Also take note that many of these images were edited/processed way before I knew anything about proper image preparation - and to be quite frank I don't have the time to re-process everything...

First off, this trip was a planning and packing nightmare. We were 2 couples, had to bring all our food and also all our camping equipment as a good part of the trip would be spent camping. This is how we had to pack my Nissan X-trail that I was driving at the time. Any other packing configuration, with one item not in its place, resulted in something left on the ground with no space to put it!

Twee Rivieren Rest Camp

We started off our Kalahari trip like most visitors here do, by staying over in the main entrance camp, called Twee Rivieren. Here we had to set up camp, which luckily went quickly with everybody pitching in.

Our first afternoon's drive didn't deliver anything exciting, but I found this Whistling Rat quite cute.

Sunset was a blinder this evening!

The next morning, we made sure were out of the gates at first light. The dawn awaited us...with some springbok gazelle grazing on the ridges of the dunes.

We hadn't gone 1km from the camp, when we spotted movement next to the road. Cheetah!!
Over the next couple of years I would develop a very special relationship with the Cheetahs of this semi-desert. Amazing sightings are still to come in this report and those reports I still need to do! Watch this space...

It was a lone male, walking purposefully, no doubt in search of an early morning meal.

He crossed the road and smelled the nearest tree trunk where another Cheetah had probably left a scent-marking the previous day. The sun wasn't even up yet, and the Kalahari had delivered!

Twee Rivieren is directly translated as "Two Rivers", with good reason. Most of the driving roads in the Kgalagadi are set within the arid riverbeds of the Auob and Nossob rivers. Shortly after leaving Twee Rivieren you are faced with a decision - either go north towards Mata-Mata and the Namibian border in the Auob river, or go Northeast towards the Botswanan side in the Nossob river. On this morning we were forced to take the Auob as a large section of the road between Twee Rivieren and Nossob was under re-construction. We soon came upon a large herd of Springbok gazelle going about their business. This business included males play-fighting and the young fawns running up-and-down the riverbed. It was great fun to watch.

I also ticked off my first sighting of Pygmy Falcon here. This is Africa's smallest raptor.

Blue Wildebeest are very common in this part of the world. This herd was coming down from the dunes into the Auob riverbed to slake their thirst.

The old name for this Park (for the South African section) was the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park. Gemsbok is a southern African term for our local genus of Oryx. Needless to say there are quite a few of them in the Park. Gemsbok/Oryx actually don't need standing water to survive here. They get enough of their moisture from the dew in the mornings and they also have an internal cooling system whereby they can regulate their body temperatures by altering their breathing.

These 2 were having a tiff. With their rapier-shaped horns, it's no wonder that they can provide a deadly blow to predators who threaten them.

...to be continued...

Morkel Erasmus

Coming Soon: TRIP REPORTS

I've decided to pull my finger out of my ear and start using this blog for a good use - longer posts. I share many images on Facebook, Google+ and various nature photography forums every week, and everyone has a fair bit of text accompanying it, mostly about the story behind the shot and the technical settings I used, etc.

I have been writing trip reports for most of my visits to South African National Parks for a while (over on the SANParks forum - www.sanparks.org), but don't really do trip reports for my other safaris.

So here's the idea. I will start catching up on the trips I've been on since I picked up a DSLR camera for the first time in 2009. It might take a while, but some of them will be easy to catch up on since I already processed the images and have some text in the waiting from my Sanparks trip reports.

I will start off with our first trip to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park back in September 2009...so watch this space!

Morkel Erasmus

Featured on Google+

Well, I jumped onto Google+ quite early, but it took me a while to really get the hang of it and start sharing content in a meaningful way.

I was honoured to be notified today that I am now a "verified" user and that Google South Africa has placed me on the "Featured User List" (or "Suggested User List") for South Africa.


You can check out my profile HERE.
You can also check out the featured "circle" HERE


If you are not yet part of Google+ and would like to check it out, drop me a message and I'll send you an invite! It's quite an interesting social network and very much geared towards us photographers.


Until later!


Morkel Erasmus

My initial impressions of 500px

So the buzz on the photographic-web is the photo-sharing site 500px. I had seen the tweets flying about for a while but was honestly too busy to really check it out. When I eventually headed over there I was pleasantly surprised...


At first glance it looked a bit like a merge between the better functions of Flickr and the aesthetic appeal (image-wise and layout-wise) of 1X. An interesting rating system keeps the best images of the pack at the front of the display and also keeps them rotating so that older pics eventually fall back in ratings, making way for fresh work to be displayed upfront. 

I share some concerns listed by my friend David Lloyd on the "weight" of the "dislike" button (you can either 'like' or 'dislike' a photo). One "like" seems to increase the rating of a particular photo by very little, while one "dislike" greatly reduces the rating so that it takes quite a few more "likes" for the photo to get where it was initially. The obvious effect of this is that people can sort of "manipulate" the system when their photo is just not at the front of the display...they can simply click on a few images which are ahead of theirs and "dislike" them...mmmhmmm...


Anyhow - I have created a profile and uploaded some initial photos. I already linked up with many of my photographic acquaintances worldwide, and it seems like it's a vibrant community with some of the cream of the photographic crop posting there. I am still deciding whether to dive in full-on and upgrade to an "awesome" account (their lingo for a fully privileged user account). They also allow you to build a portfolio site where others can go to your individual portfolio "outside" of the normal 500px system. This can be linked from your own homepage and customised considerably once you go "awesome".


One thing though - don't expect another "photographic critique community". There are many good ones out there (I am a participant in a few and a moderator on Birdphotographers.net) where you can get insightful, invaluable and sometimes harsh critique on your images. Not on 500px...and quite frankly I don't think this was its design function. 500px is all about "eye candy", getting a "visual fix" so to speak. The website design is smooth and aesthetically pleasing (I am no expert on effective and efficient web design so take it where it comes from), activity levels are high and climbing, and the images in general are of a high quality. I can definitely see 500px being a part of my online photographic "presence" in the future.


Why don't you head on over there and see for yourself???
My profile within the site is located at:
www.500px.com/morkelerasmus
My portfolio created by 500px for outside viewers is located at:
www.morkelerasmus.500px.com

Until next time...

Morkel Erasmus