Sleepy Eyes

I just love discovering a gem in my archives. Unlike what many people may think, I am not on safari for the better part of the year - I actually have 3-5 opportunities to go to the bush for periods of between 3 and 8 days every year, depending on leave roster at work, my Wild Eye schedule etc. So the majority of photos I put out on my blog and social media channels may actually have been taken some time ago. I'm actually just lazy in deleting excess images, so I have to inevitably go back into my archives to clean up some space. In doing so, I actually come across photos I'd forgotten I'd taken. They may not have grabbed enough of my attention in my initial processing binge after returning from that particular trip, but for whatever reason I didn't delete them initially as there was some sort of moment caught there.

Case in point, this image...


Techs:
Nikon D3s
Nikkor 500mm f4 VR-II
f4.0  |  1/500 SS  |  ISO-200

click on the photo to display at best resolution and sharpness

We came across this Verraux's Eagle Owl asleep in a mopani tree along the Mphongolo loop north of Shingwedzi camp in the Kruger National Park. The scene was cluttered and the bird was asleep, but something about the moment spoke to me, and I snapped it.

Fast forward to last week, when I was looking for a "fresh" photo to process for the popular "black and white challenge" that is viral among photographers on Facebook. I scrolled over this one again, and immediately saw the moment that spoke to me initially when tripping the shutter, and knew that it was a good candidate for monochrome...

After some tweaking in Photoshop and Nik Silver Efex I was happy.
The result??

click on the photo to display at best resolution and sharpness

Quite a different feel, mood and effect, right?
It's actually about more than the owl - and that's what I like.
It's not about what it evidently is - it's also about what else it is...
Photography should evoke more than it describes, if it's to be seen as an art-form...
I hope these statements above resonate with you?

Now, go dig up those gems in your own archive!
Until I write again...

Morkel Erasmus

A tree on a hill

I posted a pretty grim update on a poached rhino last night on my social media outlets, so I thought I'd just post a simplistic and serene landscape photo this morning to make up for it. I haven't been out photographing landscapes properly in a long time - I blame the wildlife haha.

This is from my archives - a trip in November 2011 to be exact. What was supposed to be a relaxing fly-fishing retreat with good friends inevitably turned into a photographic mission for me as I woke up one morning to what looked like a promising sunrise. I trudged up the hill behind our little cottage, and looked for a composition before the light peaked. I found my composition, but the light didn't really "show up" as well as I anticipated. It's still a decent image and I've kept it. What do you think?

Techs:
Nikon D3s
Nikkor 14-24mm f2.8 @ 14mm
f16  |  ISO-200  |  Blend of 3 exposures using manual luminosity masks in Photoshop

click on the image to display at proper resolution and sharpness

Thanks for your time, my friends!

Morkel Erasmus

Scenes from the Mara

A little while ago, I wrote a post on the Wild Eye blog about how difficult I found it to photograph the vastness and multitudes of the Great Migration in a way that would communicate it properly to people who would only have the chance to view my photographs and not experience the phenomenon for themselves.

This is another photo I captured during an amazing afternoon of driving through hundreds of thousands of White-bearded Gnu (with some Plains Zebra thrown in) over the rolling hills of the Mara Triangle in Kenya. With so many animals succumbing to the waters of the Mara river, the stampede of their herd-members or the plethora of predators prowling the plains, the vultures of that ecosystem just sit around and bide their time while the next meal is being dished up. I tried to capture a tree that had quite a few of them roosting in it, combined with the trekking herds over the hills. This is the result - well, one of them.

This one needs to be viewed larger - so I am posting an image larger than what I normally post. This one is 1400 pixels wide so do click on it to view properly.

What do you think of it? Does it give you a sense of being there?

Techs:
Nikon D800
Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8 VR-II @ 190mm
f9.0  |  1/200 SS  |  ISO-640

click on the photo to display at a better viewing resolution for great detail

Thanks for viewing! Have a great day!

Morkel Erasmus

Playing with Food

By now you should realise that I am crazy about a little stretch of Africa known as Mana Pools. Not only is it a place of immense beauty and a real sense of wilderness, but the fact that you are allowed to traverse the floodplains on foot at will (and at own risk, I might add) brings a whole new dimension to your safari experience as well as the kinds of photos you can capture.

We spent some time with a trio of elephant bulls one afternoon, during which the oldest one would regularly get up on his hind legs to break off a branch from the highest albida trees around (see more of that behaviour here). The other two would then come closer and feast with him. This photo shows one of the guys snapping the branch after they'd stripped the leaves from it. On the high resolution photo you can see the bark splintering as well. Shooting with a 500mm lens meant that I had to keep enough distance between myself and the big boys to be able to compose the frames properly.

Techs:

Nikon D3s

Nikkor 500mm f4 VR-II

f5.6  |  1/800 SS  |  ISO-2800

Exposure Bias +0.3

CLICK ON THE PHOTO TO DISPLAY AT OPTIMUM RESOLUTION AND SHARPNESS

If you enjoy my posts, feel free to subscribe to the blog, and do leave a comment here...

Morkel Erasmus

OVERWHELMING: The power of panoramic presentation

Hey everyone...

I did a rework this week of an old photo...you know how that goes, right? You progress in your photography and your post-processing skills, and you think: "hey, remember that photo I captured at ______ last ______? (fill in the blanks) Let's see what it looks like now."

In this case it wasn't so much a new processing skill I learned, but that I realised after browsing through the particular shoot's thumbnails that I realised I had taken alternative compositions of this scene. With the advent of digital imaging we tend to sometimes just click the shutter as many times as we can at as many perspectives possible to make sure we make the most of the scene...the problem is we end up forgetting exactly what we shot and why we did so.

The original is of a lonely tree (cliche, right?) overwhelmed by some building cumulus clouds over the South African Highveld. I titled the photo - you guessed it - OVERWHELMING. The original perspective was shot using the Canon 100-400mm zoom lens, at a focal length of 105mm (thus nearly as wide as I could go with this lens).

100mm focal length  |  single image  |  slight crop from the top

Just for overall perspective, here is the same scene (albeit with a cooler white balance setting) shot at 22mm. This is close to how the human eye perceives the scene (at 35mm focal length equivalent). 

22mm focal length  |  single image  |  no crop

Now, going back to the folder I remembered that I had also used the 105mm focal length setting in the first post on this scene and shot a few consecutive frames with the view of stitching them together as a panorama one day. That day came last week. I opened up the 3 consecutive shots in Photoshop in order to stitch them together using the "Photomerge" command. Now it goes without mention that the final stitched image not only provides a "grander sweep" of the scene, but also has a much higher resolution than I could have achieved with a single image...this makes it easy to print it BIG. 

I also went for a darker, moodier feel...converting to black and white with a red filter to bring the most out of the blue sky (that tip is for free!). The only crop I applied was to remove the "white edges"...after compiling a panorama the image is usually left with some white edges where the image had to be straightened to fit the next image perfectly.

105mm focal length  |  3 images stitched together  |  crop to remove white edges

This kind of image unfortunately doesn't display well on a blog format where the maximum image width is constrained. You can view a larger version on my 500px profile here

I don't have a larger version than the 500px version online yet...so watch this space.


I would love your feedback. Which one works better for you, and why???


Cheers, till next time...


Morkel Erasmus

PhotoShare: Kalahari Tree

Seeing as I'm off to the Kalahari again for the next 8-9 days, I thought I would share an image I captured during our previous trip in June 2010...

This is a typical Kalahari scene...camelthorn acacia, red dunes, vast expanse and (if you are lucky) a stunning sky.

f16  //  1/80 SS  //  ISO-200

Enjoy the week ahead everyone - I will see you on the flip-side! If you want to you can do me a favour and refer your buddies to my website and blog, hehe...


Morkel Erasmus

An ancient tree...

Once again I have to apologise for a very short blog post. I merely wanted to share this photo I took this morning. It was a very emotionally loaded day for me and my wife and this tree just made me think of the cycle of life and death... 


How many summers and winters has it seen? How many storms has it weathered? How many pests has it had to endure, and was it ever threatened with being cut down?


So I share with you this tree - bearing scars that have healed well and others which are still visible.


May you stand strong and grow where you are planted despite the storms, the hardships and the turmoil. May you soak up every ounce of sunshine and rain as if it were your last. And may I do so as well...

Morkel Erasmus

Silky Slick Silhouettes

Hellooooooo and welcome back to SAFFAscapes...

For today's post I decided to do something different - something which is not exactly what you would call HDR. But, after all, I am a photographer and I don't only do HDR, it's just one of the fun techniques I play around with.

I am posting a few very different silhouette photos today. Silhouettes can either rock the house or they bomb out and fizzle into nothing - depending on what you choose to portray and how that image leans itself to lines, texture and simplicity.

The first shot is one that was taken late one afternoon on a dune in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. A herd of oryx was grazing peacefully, minding their own business, as the sun was setting behind them in the little piece of blissful serenity which is called the Kalahari desert.

 

(click on the photo for a larger view)

 The second shot was taken in the town where I live at a local duck pond. The smog from the factories drifts past the sun on many evenings, creating a hazy, smoky scene which makes normal photography very challenging when you're waiting for that sweet golden light of sunset as the sun is hidden behind the smog. This time it didn't make a difference...I was ready. I had spotted a section of the willow tree on the island in the middle of the pond where I could capture a bird roosting on a perch with the sun directly behind it. Many afternoons I had hoped for the perfect bird to sit on the perfect perch with the perfect combination of smog and clouds. And on that day - it was there! I do wish that I'd had my longer lens at the time as this is quite a crop to get the other birds and branches out of the frame...

 

(click on the photo for a larger view)

I personally love these 2 photos. Finding the right scene for your silhouette is half the battle. Composing in camera is another 30%. Processing right afterwards makes up the rest.

Sticking with birds...I also want to show you a silhouette I captured sometime last year of a black-headed heron flying in to roost for the night at the same local duck pond.

(click on the photo for a larger view)

I like how the dramatic clouds and sunset colours add poignancy to the bird's pose.


The fourth photo I want to share was taken early one morning at the entrance gate to the rest camp in the Augrabies Falls National Park. The falls are currently flooding after some intense rains and I wish I could be there now! The quiver tree is quite a landmark in the Northern Cape and Namibia. Rugged. Hardy. Lonely. These words all describe this beautiful tree, yet none of them really describes it to one who has never seen them. 

This is the silhouetted quiver tree shot as I have adjusted it from the camera - in other words - as shot with a bit of natural tweaking:

 

(click on the photo for a larger view)

Notice how the texture and shape of the quiver trees make for a lot of eye-candy.
 

Now - let's see where creativity can take us...

Getting a bit more creative, I also used a little Photoshop magic on the photo posted above - I copied the silhouette of the flying heron into the quiver tree photo and created a piece of 'visual art'. I don't mind when people play around creatively with their photos in Photoshop - one should just always make mention of the fact that the photo has been 'shopped' (that is to say - one has gone beyond the boundaries of enhancing what is already naturally in the photo by adding elements and transforming the photo into something else). I also boosted the colours of the quiver tree shot a lot to add to the visual impact of the silhouettes.

Here is my final result. I call it "Quivering Landing". I would REALLY like to know what you think of this one, whether you enjoyed it or whether you think I've "crossed the line too far". :)

 

(click on the photo for a larger view)

There you have it! Hopefully I've inspired you to go and look out for some stunning silhouettes in your area, or on your next holiday.

Until next time...keep capturing those moments in time...

Morkel Erasmus