Those popular dead trees

If you've been following trends in landscape photography, then you would know what "Dead Vlei" means. If you're unfamiliar with the place, it's basically a very photogenic dried up lake near Sossusvlei in the Namib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia. In the midst of this dried up lake stand a bunch of dead camelthorn trees.

Despite having been to Sossusvlei in 1995, we didn't actually knew about Dead Vlei back then. So, upon our recent road-trip through Namibia, we just had to make a plan to visit this iconic spot.

The problem with visiting a place of which you can see legions of photos over the course of a year is that it has the risk of not feeling new when you step into it for the first time. That's what happened to me. The place is haunting and special, make no mistake. I just think I'd seen so many photos of it that it didn't take my breath away in real life. I guess that is one of the problems of the modern photographic explosion.

I also found it ironic that you need to travel around 300km of gravel road from any direction to get to the entrance gate, but then you have a lovely 57km stretch of asphalt to take you to within 5km of Dead Vlei and Sossusvlei...the impact of modern tourism demands I guess.

Be that as it may - the other challenge is that it's pretty hard to capture unique and "fresh" photos of this place by now. But then again, I think often us photographers get so caught up in wanting to capture a location in our own unique way that just being in the moment and enjoying the privilege of being in a splendid spot of nature can pass us by.

So here are a couple of photos I was able to grab on the one morning we spent there.
I hope you enjoy them...

Nikon D800  |  Nikkor 14-24mm f2.8 @ 14mm  |  f16  |  1/25 SS  |  ISO-200

Nikon D3s  |  Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8 VR-II @ 145mm  |  f11  |  1/400 SS  |  ISO-200

Nikon D800  |  Nikkor 14-24mm f2.8 @ 14mm  |  f16   |  ISO-200

Let me know what you think of these in the comments below.

Keep clicking!

Morkel Erasmus

Drive-by Kalahari Scenes

By now you should know that I love the Kalahari desert.
It's a place that soothes the soul.
It's a place of silence, solitude, serenity and splendour.

Most of my visits to this region have been to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, a National Park straddling South Africa and Botswana. Due to the nature of this place you are confined to exploring its landscapes photographically in two ways...within the confines of the rest camps and campsites, or from your vehicle as you drive around looking for wildlife (among which the magnificent black-maned lions of the Kalahari).

Over the years, I've managed to collect quite a few nice "drive-by" landscape photos in my pursuit to capture the arid beauty of the Kalahari effectively. It takes a different approach to traditional tripod-stomping, as you are really limited in how you can compose your photos. The following collection of images show some of the "drive-by" shots that I am most happy with to date. Most of these were taken handheld or resting on a beanbag on the vehicle door.

As always - the photos are best enjoyed by clicking on them...


1. "Kalahari Ghost Rain"
It gets very hot in the Kalahari - this image depicts "Ghost Rain", rain that evaporates even before hitting the earth. It's that hot! And this was taken right at sunrise!! Location - the dune fields between the Auob and Nossob riverbeds.

Nikon D800  |  31mm  |  f7.1  |  1/60 SS  |  ISO-640

2. "Southern Nossob"
A typical scene in the lower Nossob riverbed. Red sand dunes, camelthorn acacias, and big skies. This "river" runs only once every 100 years or so.

Nikon D800  |  24mm  |  Polariser  |  f8.0  |  1/320 SS  |  ISO-500

3. "Red and Blue"
A typical late morning scene in the northern stretch of the Auob riverbed. Another fossil river, this one experiences a flash flood a bit more regularly than the Nossob, perhaps every 20 years or so!

Nikon D7000  |  92mm  |  f8.0  |  1/200 SS  |  ISO-100

4. "Heart-shaped Cloud"
The space and the skies in the Kalahari are immense...and when the conditions are right you can capture something of that vastness on camera.

Canon 1000D  |  16mm  | Polariser  |  f11  |  1/80 SS  |  ISO-200

5. "Rain of Fire"
Although veld fires are common in the summer months, this was merely a spectacular sunset storm to the west, as seen from the lower Auob riverbed during a rare lush green season.

Nikon 1 V1  |  27mm  |  f3.5  |  1/200 SS  |  ISO-400

6. "Ominous Overheads"
The storms in this part of the world can get quite rough. We were parked at a waterhole on this particular afternoon when a ripper came through - dust, rain, wind and lightning...

Canon 1000D  |  16mm  |  f8.0  |  1/80 SS  |  ISO-400

7. "Road to the Kalahari"
Just a grab shot of the road in the northern Auob riverbed. Doesn't this just make you want to get in your SUV and drive to the Kalahari??

Canon 1000D  |  28mm  |  f18  |  1/160 SS  |  ISO-200

Did you enjoy these? I hope it inspires you to not neglect your landscape photography even when you are not allowed to leave the safety of your vehicle...

Let me know what you think - which is your favourite? I intend on building this collection with every return visit!


Morkel Erasmus

Floodplains of Fantasy

You've heard me rant and rave about Mana Pools a couple of times. Words fail to describe the wonder and ethereal beauty of the place...but somehow so do the majority of photos taken there. Why is that?

Is it because photos are 2D, and the Mana Pools experience is immersive, holistic and overpowers all the dimensions you perceive and the senses you use to perceive them??

Is it because you feel so insignificant in this wilderness, that you actually feel that God made it too beautiful to capture perfectly on camera, so that you feel you have to return regularly to drink the beauty and the wilderness in??

I believe that these statements above are true...

On my previous visits, I refrained from trying my hand at wide-angle landscapes, mostly because I felt part of the beauty and allure lies in the trees, and to get a real sense of the forests on the Zambezi floodplains you typically need a longer focal length to add compression to the scene. Something like this...

Nikon Df  |  Nikkor 80-400mm VR-II @ 175mm  |  f11  |  1/500 SS  |  ISO-1100

The other problem is that I actually visit this place for the wonderful wildlife encounters you can have here, as well as the total disconnect from modern life and the rat race. The best time to do this is the dry season - meaning (like in most of Southern Africa) that the skies will be cloudless most of the time. This year, I hosted a Wild Eye photo safari to Mana Pools in early September, a little later than my previous visits...for one thing there was a LOT of haze during the first 2 days due to incessant fires on both the Zimbabwean and Zambian side of the Zambezi river. Luckily, a constant wind on our 3rd day blew all the haze to someplace far away, and we had 2 more days of nice clear skies. Our final afternoon, though, was a real treat for the landscape photographer that's hidden beneath all this wildlife bravado...high clouds.

Those of you who photograph sunrises and sunsets regularly know that high clouds are often an indicator of a wonderful sunset. The problem in Mana is that the sun sets behind the mountains on the Zambian escarpment, so you have no idea whether there are clouds on the distant horizon that will block those last magical rays of red sunlight that inflame high clouds like a rampant viral outbreak.

During our last drinks stop, some of my guests wanted to photograph the lovely trees on a certain stretch of the river close to the Trichilia campsite with wide angle lenses, and I was only too happy to join them. Like it so often does, the light on the high clouds looked to pop, then fizzled...and just as I was beginning to pack up the tripod - the sunset exploded!

Now, like I said earlier, I'd never really been able to get a composition that did the trees and all the elements of the landscape justice. For me, a landscape photo taken in Mana Pools needs to convey a real sense of the place...the massive trees (and I do mean massive), the barren earth with its termite mounds sparsely spread between those trees, an elephant (okay for a wide angle landscape shot this would be a long shot), the sparkle of the broad waters of the Zambezi river, and the rising escarpment in Zambia...the ideal Mana Pools landscape photo needs to take you there, especially people who have been there. It doesn't matter if you went once as a child 80 years ago or if you fervently make a near-religious pilgrimage to Mana, once you've been there, an ideal Mana Pools photo should transport you there in an instant.

During this particular sunset, I found a couple of compositions that I feel does this. This photo is the result of manually blending 3 different exposures to get the look and feel that I was after. I wanted it to convey the detail my eye saw in the tree trunks and the distant landscape, while still capturing that magical sunset colour and light. By using the main tree as a frame for the image, I think I have conveyed something of the size of these trees: like Ents of Middle-Earth the rise up and watch over the floodplains. These trees are called Faidherbia Albida, or Winterthorn, or Ana trees...and the pods that lie on the ground are a staple food in the dry months for all the herbivores that roam these floodplains.

Here are the settings, and please do yourself a favour and CLICK on the photo so you can view it against a DARK background (this way it really comes to life), and also so you can view it at a slightly higher resolution. It's worth it...

Techs:
Nikon D800
Nikkor 14-24mm f2.8 @ 14mm
f8.0  |  ISO-200

What do you think? This spot is incidentally close to where I photographed THIS elephant 2 days prior...

I think I will probably have to return and get a better one...well, I am using that as an excuse as I really will return. Every year, I will return, as long as I am able to do so...and I will try and share the wonder of this place with as many people as I can, as long as I am able to do so.

Thank you for reading my ramblings. Have a blessed day, friends!

Morkel Erasmus

A sense of Mana

I have just returned from hosting a Wild Eye photographic safari to a place that is cemented more and more firmly as my favourite piece of African wilderness after every visit. I thought of calling this photo "a sense of place", but it could actually only be one place, and that's Mana Pools...hence "a sense of Mana" felt more apt. 

I don't often get to use my wide-angle lenses in a wildlife context. You have to get really close to the animals, and you have to be able to shift your perspective and composition almost without barriers...and photographing from a vehicle just restricts you in those terms. Being on foot with the wildlife of Mana Pools is a totally different story, though. Many of the elephants are very relaxed around humans if you behave in the appropriate way and approach them in the right way (a qualified guide is recommended).

On this afternoon as the sun set in a hazy sky over the Zambezi river, our group was able to get close to a young male as he fed from the pods that are falling from the albida trees at this time of year. I let the landscape photographer in me dictate what I was doing here - working with the starburst of the sun peeping around the edge of the closest tree, and framing wide to provide a sense of context and place. For me, these images speak louder than full-frame portraits of your subject. I like the idea of reducing the animal from the main subject to just one of the elements in a scene that is all about the essence of the place you are visiting...where the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

This image is a single exposure, captured while crouching to obtain a lower perspective relative to the earth and the trees, without losing the sense of the Zambezi river in the background. The elephant was quite close, but the focal length belies that in the distortion/perspective.  What do you think?

Techs:
Nikon D800
Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 
f22 | 1/160 SS | ISO-4000

click on the image to view at optimal resolution and sharpness

I cannot more highly recommend this destination for the serious African wilderness aficionado and wildlife photographer. No other place feels quite the same after a visit to Mana! I absolutely loved seeing my guests on this past safari being infused with this same awe and love for this piece of unique wilderness.Our 2015 safaris to Mana Pools have now been extended to 5 nights, and return charter flights between Harare and Mana Pools are also included, as getting there by road from Harare just takes too much time that could rather be spent in the field (it's an all day affair if you have to be driven to Mana). Check out all the dates and details HERE...

Thanks for reading! Have a pleasant day, friends.

Morkel Erasmus

Forest Zebras

We usually associate Zebra (specifically, the species Plains/Burchell's Zebra) with the rolling plains of the savanna, and not with forests. However, there is one place where you can see them in a forest...and that's in Mana Pools National Park in Zimbabwe.

There are many things which could have been better in this photo. That darn middle zebra with its head down is my main bugbear, and the elements of the scene could have been better arranged. What I do love, is how this transports me to being out on the Mana floodplains at first light...and there's few things that beat that!! Can you spot the hippo in the background??

I captured this photo on foot. It was also my first time using the new and improved Nikkor 80-400mm VR-II lens (and I was duly impressed).

Techs:
Nikon D3s
Nikkor 80-400mm VR-II
f5.6  |  1/200 SS  |  ISO-900

click on the photo to display at proper resolution and sharpness

I will be heading to the Chobe river on Wednesday, leading my first Wild Eye photographic safari of the year. See you on the other side!

Stumped by the Kalahari

This photo is one of the older landscapes in my archives. I took this one back in September 2009 while visiting the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park for the first time in years. It was captured behind our tent in the Kalahari Tented Camp (where lions often roam through since there are no fences).

It was taken with my first entry-level DSLR and a kit lens, but you know what? I still like it. This photo was also processed by blending together 3 exposures of the same scene manually. I used an aperture of f22 to create the sunburst. My new Nikkor lenses great much more pleasing sunbursts, and that's one advantage of a high-end wide angle lens for sure.

What do you think? Are there some "old" shots in your portfolio that you still cling to and enjoy viewing? This one takes me back to a lovely morning in one of my favourite parts of Southern Africa...smelling the smells and hearing the birds and feeling the glow of the sun on my face, with a lion roaring somewhere in the distance.

Techs:

Canon 1000D

Canon 18-55mm IS @ 18mm

f22  |  ISO-100

Have a lovely day, my friends!

Morkel Erasmus

Drakensberg Serenity

It's been a while since I posted a landscape photo, so I might as well do it today. I enjoy landscape photography a lot...it's just that those darn animals take up so much of my photographic attention, okay?

This was taken earlier this year during a lovely family breakaway to the southern Drakensberg region - more precisely to the Castleburn resort close to Underberg. It's a beautiful area and I will definitely be back there someday to explore some more. This photo shows the Castleburn lake (which is a good spot for some fly fishing) after a thunderstorm had passed through one afternoon. I love the dynamic range of my Nikon D800! This photo is a SINGLE exposure, where I was able to bring up shadow detail by more than a whole stop without introducing a real semblance of noise. Normally I would have had to blend two exposures to get this kind of detail in the entire range of tones.

Techs:
Nikon D800
Nikkor 14-24mm f2.8 @ 14mm
f5.6  |  1/200 SS  |  ISO-64
Shot handheld

click on the photo to display properly

Let me know what you think of this one...

Morkel Erasmus