Gonubie Rocks

Hey everyone! I just returned from a family holiday to the Wild Coast region of South Africa. We visited family in the quaint seaside town of Gonubie, a few kilometers outside East London in the Eastern Cape province. Due to the focus on family time and some ghastly weather for a couple of days I was only able to get round to shooting some seascapes on our last afternoon. 

Light was promising initially, but fizzled out just as it was about to peak with clouds moving over the horizon in the West. This was taken into the East over the Indian Ocean. It's comprised of a blend of 2 exposures using the grad tool in Adobe Photoshop CC (plus some further tweaks with Nik Color Efex 4).

I went for a composition where the sky and land sort-of mirror each other, and I also got the last of the promising light on the yonder cumulus clouds.

Techs:
Nikon D800
Nikkor 14-24mm f2.8 @ 14mm
f16  |  ISO-50

click on the photo to view at proper sharpness and resolution

I hope you enjoy this one. Have a lovely day, and thanks as always for stopping by!

Morkel Erasmus

Travel Companions

I thought I'd give you a break from Chobe imagery for a short while...

This photo was taken at the Gemsbokvlakte waterhole in the Etosha National Park in Namibia this past November. We had waited for a long time for this male lion to get up and when he did, he proceeded straight to the waterhole. A lone giraffe was also in the area, and also thirsty. In this frame it looks like they are heading in the same direction (and the title implies thus), but the giraffe was actually mostly keeping a close eye on the lion. 

And no - this is not from the sighting where I witnessed a pride of lions taking down a giraffe on the same trip...more about that later!

In hindsight, I wish I'd shot this with my 70-200mm lens. I really thought I would fit them in better with the 500mm and wanted that telephoto compression effect for this (obviously the giraffe was not directly behind the lion). In the end, this is the best I got with both in the frame, and the horizon isn't perfectly level either...

Just goes to show, there's always an opportunity to learn from your mistakes in the field, and you're never too old to make mistakes and realise them way too late, haha!

Techs:
Nikon D3s
Nikkor 500mm f4 VR-II
f5.6  |  1/800 SS  |  ISO-500

I hope you have a wonderful week ahead of you! Thanks for looking, as always...

Morkel Erasmus

View of a Leopard

I've minced no bones about leopards being a nemesis species for me. They are elusive to begin with, but it does seem that when I am in the area, they get a special memo to avoid being seen. This was one such an occasion - I was visiting my friend +Marlon du Toit when he was still working at Singita Sabi Sands in the hope of building up my leopard portfolio (seeing that the Sabi Sands is infamous for its leopard sighting and density).

What do you think happened? The first afternoon, upon my arrival - it started bucketing with rain. Rain which didn't stop for about 3 days, intermittently. And we saw no leopards! We had a couple of amazing sightings otherwise...but on my last afternoon as I was bound to leave and rejoin my family that night, we got word of a sighting of the Keshane Male, a magnificent and powerful male leopard that roams in the area. We had to fall into the queue of the paying guests, though, but eventually it was our turn. The entire sighting was spent watching his bum as he moved up the roadways in the bush, marking his territory. Eventually he settled in the grass, and for a fleeting moment (it was literally 10-15 seconds) I could snap some portraits. After this he got up and moved off into a drainage line and we had to leave so I could drive home.

Anyway - this is one of the better photos I took in that brief spurt of eye contact. He has amazing eyes, but the shots where he's looking my way were all marred by blades of grass obscuring one of his eyes. This one has the eye clear, still with some pesky grass in the way. My personal processing ethic is geared more towards natural-looking photos and zero cloning out of parts of the image. One way I do deal with the grass, is through monochrome conversions - converting in such a way as to negate the effect of the grass by way of filtering out some colours.

Here are 2 versions of this photo. Colour, and monochrome. Which do you prefer? And why?
Drop me a comment and let me know!

Techs:
Nikon D3s
Nikkor 500mm f4 VR-II
f4.0  |  1/200 SS  |  ISO-2200
Shot handheld from a game viewer

click on the photo to display at proper resolution and sharpness

click on the photo to display at proper resolution and sharpness

Have a great day!

Morkel Erasmus

CheetahScape

I've often recommended to wildlife photographers (on safaris I guide or online) that they should shoot wider to include more of the scenery, rather than merely trying to get as close as possible for as much detail as possible. One of the reasons I say this is that a very tight headshot could actually be taken anywhere (like in a zoo). Framing wider tells your audience a bit about WHERE the animal or bird found itself and WHAT it was doing. This does not always mean you should whip out a shorter/wider lens...sometimes it just means using your telephoto lens and not driving right up to your subject. 

I'm a big fan of using the compression factor that comes with the super telephoto lenses to tell stories and enhance the overall composition by seeming to bring the compositional elements closer together than they really are. The photo below shows such an example. This male cheetah was photographed in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park (Kalahari desert), and was scanning the Nossob riverbed for a potential breakfast target. The sun was just coming up and the light was sublime. I particularly liked how it was lighting up the shrubs and grasses around him, and a the camelthorn acacias in the distance. I chose to frame vertically (portrait orientation) to include the tree.

Techs:
Nikon D3s
Nikkor 500mm f4 VR-II
1.4x teleconverter
f5.6  |  1/640 SS  |  ISO-1600
Exposure Bias: -0.7 

I hope you found this useful, and of course I hope you like the photo. Either way, drop me a comment and let me know what you think...

Cheers!

Morkel Erasmus

PhotoShare: Kruger Kuduscape

Things are buzzing by my head now at a pace so frantic it's hard to keep up. I am heading off to Mana Pools in Zimbabwe next week, a dream destination for me. Afterwards I shall have plenty of time to wind down and catch up on things like regular blogging, etc.


In the meantime - here is an image to make you think. How often do you just wish for a longer lens? We always tend to want to get the tightest, most detailed shots of our subjects...and we forget to think about shooting "wider", and placing the animal in the context of its environment.


This was an occasion where I didn't have "enough glass", but it didn't bother me. I have many close-up portraits of the graceful Kudu antelope. In this instance I had parked in the middle of a road going through a dry river in the Kruger National Park. It was quiet, and I was taking in the morning sounds and smells with my window open. All of a sudden, a herd of Kudu came out of the dense riverine foliage and into the wide open riverbed. Kudus have a knack of surprising you, being able to stay perfectly still and hidden. Hunters have long been calling them the "African Grey Ghost".


This cow paused and noticed me. I snapped a picture. This picture tells the story much better than a closer photo would have. Don't you agree??

(Nikon D3s, Nikkor 500mm f4 VR-II)  f5.6  |  1/1000 SS  |  ISO-640

Morkel Erasmus

Seeing the BIGGER picture...

When I first made the switch from "point-and-shoot" snapper to a bona fide DSLR photographer, I couldn't wait to get my first close-up shots of my favourite animals. But alas, it didn't take me very long to get bored with getting standard close-up shots. Why? Mainly because everyone with a half-decent lens has them. You see, for me it was never going to be about just "getting" the photo. It was always going to be about creating art. Now don't get me wrong, for many people getting the photo is enough and it's the only reason they lug around a camera and some lenses on their safaris...and each to his own indeed. I've just always been artistically wired and on top of that I always throw myself 200% at something I'm passionate about (something which can be frustrating for people around me!).


So it didn't take very long for me to start becoming very aware of the myriad of possibilities that exist with every photographic opportunity that I encounter. Not that I recognise ALL the possible compositions and variations - oh no! Often I have come home and looked at the photos I created, only to realise then that I could have done something differently and it would have made all the difference in the world! In those moments, I try and file the mistake as a lesson learnt to tap from when faced with a similar opportunity.