PhotoShare: Regally Poised

Hi everyone. Here's another addition to my new African Visions series of wildlife in monochrome and duotone. 


A beautiful young leopard pauses and sits poised like only this graceful cat can. I think I have one of the poorest (read: least amount of photos) leopard portfolios of all the wildlife photographers I know. I just have bad luck with them! Aside from that one epic sighting in Kruger last year of the leopard scaling the tree, my other leopard sightings leave much to be desired. They avoid me in the Kalahari. They avoided me shockingly in Savute last year. And they even avoided me in the Sabi Sands earlier this year. This was taken in 2010 when leopards still liked me, LOL.

Monochrome conversions are very personal and subjective. Contrary to popular belief, merely converting to black-and-white won't "save" a photo. I often shoot with monochrome in mind - trying to look for contrasts and textures to use. Getting a monochrome conversion just right often takes me longer than processing a normal "colour" photo.

Have a great weekend, folks! I hope to meet some of you over the weekend at the Photo & Film Expo in Johannesburg, South Africa. Come and check out the Wild Eye stall (#339).

Techs:
Nikon D3s
Nikkor 200-400mm f4
f4.0 | 1/160 SS | ISO-500

www.morkelerasmus.com

This photo is Copyrighted © Morkel Erasmus Photography.

You may share this image as presented here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 licence (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

More info:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

PhotoShare: Curious Cub

Here's another addition to my new African Visions mono-and-duotone series of wildlife. This lion cub was photographed in Savute, Botswana.

f4.0  |  1/400 SS  |  ISO-800

Have a great week, folks!

Morkel Erasmus

Guest Blog on SouthAfrica.Net

I was recently asked to do a guest blog post on some of our National Parks and Game Reserves for the official South African Tourism Blog (located at www.southafrica.net).

You can read the short essay (with images) 

HERE

Cheers,

Morkel Erasmus

Published in the Daily Mail Online (UK)

I was pleased yesterday to see a story being run in the Daily Mail Online (UK Newspaper) about a morning I spent (along with Marlon du Toit of course) photographing the iconic elephants of Mana Pools.

I was particularly pleased that they included a bit about the current threat of mining exploration to the area, even if it's just a mention of it. I specifically requested this be included because I would hate for these images to get exposure just for my own personal gain - this area is so special to me I want to be able to use my images to raise awareness of its fragility and the threats it faces.

You can read the article and view the accompanying images

HERE

To learn more about the issues concerning Mana Pools, a UNESCO World Heritage site, link up with the Save Mana Pools Facebook Page (www.facebook.com/SaveMana).

Thanks for reading this blog!! I appreciate every view, click and comment.

Cheers!

Morkel Erasmus