Creative blogspot: November 2009

Monday, November 30, 2009

Babaji's Inspirational Wisdom Quotes

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Saturday, November 28, 2009

Mosaics Collage Art

Light - That Extra Fizz

According to various definitions photography is a term which comes from the Greek words "photos" (light) and "graphos" (drawing). Drawing with light. A photograph is made with a camera by exposing film to light in order to create a negative. The negative is then used in the darkroom to print a photograph (positive) onto light-sensitive paper.

Notice how many times the word 'light' comes up in that description?

Light is probably one of the most important factors when shooting nature and wildlife. I would rather shoot an abstract of an old tree in the beautiful golden light of early morning than a lion at midday. Does not sound as exciting but when you go and look at your images and you are very honest with yourself you will be able to see and acknowledge the difference.

Many people who go on safari for the first time get so excited about seeing a lion or elephant for the first time that they fill up a 4GB flash disk in a matter of minutes. This is important to get it out of your system but once that initial shooting frenzy is over, take your time to look at the light and how best to use it.

As I was working through my images form the last few months I came upon these two that shows how light can give an ordinary scene that little extra fizz! Kind of like drinking a Coke with no bubbles. That 'fizz' gives it that little extra!

This image of a Gemsbok was captured in the Namib Rand Nature Reserve. It was around 8:30 in the morning and the sun was almost getting too harsh to keep on photographing wildlife. As we got to camp this beauty presented itself and everything just looked right. By this time we must have seen and photographed at least 50 of these majestic animals but this time it was right. The way that the light bounces of the dark body and horns, the shine of it's coat and the way in which the morning light was playing in the grass made for a great combination of small things that added up to a great wildlife image. The animal itself was not necessarily doing anything mind blowing, but when shooting wildlife you have to look deeper than that. What is the light doing and even more importantly, what is the light going to do?

This is another pretty standard wildlife image. The late afternoon light makes it just that touch better. You can see how the warm light gives a little bit of life to the grass and highlights the mane of this young lion. In the perfect world he would have been looking the other way but nothing you can do about that! Normal picture with just a touch of golden light.

Next time you go on safari make sure to check the light. What time does the sun come up? Where? Are there clouds? Can I use them?

Lots of questions but this makes the entire photographic journey so much more interesting and the results will show in your images.

On a different note I was at Universal Image in Cresta Centre this morning. This is where I do all of my printing (thanks Elliot!!) and get all my photographic equipment from While I was there this morning they were busy putting the final touches on the one of the first Nikon Pro Centres in Gauteng. Very exciting and I will definitely be back there as soon as I get back from Madikwe in early January. Some very impressive equipment, lenses and technical support so if you are in Johannesburg and you have a moment stop in and check out the awesome range!

Before I go. I have been using Adobe Bridge CS4 for the last few days and have been really impressed. The interface is easy and it's quick. Compared to all the previous versions this is definitely a step in the right direction. For the last few months I have been using FastStone Image Viewer to navigate and look through images as it is quick and very simple to use. I reckon that once you have setup you user interface in Bridge CS4 it will beat FastStone for speed and features any day of the week. I was a bit skeptical before but am very glad I made the change as it feels like my whole work flow has been streamlined! If you have used CS4 I would love to hear your thoughts.

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Images from Tuningi Guests

As I receive them, I will be uploading and showing a few of the images that some our guests at Tuningi took during their stay in Madikwe. It is great to look back at these images and remember the sightings and all the discussions about photography, what to look for in wildlife images and how the pictures were taken. Remember that none of these images were taken by a 'professional' but by people with a keen interest in photography during their stay in Africa.

Zebra in Madikwe

Elephant playing in Mud

Leopard - Awesome image and sighting!

Giraffe Necks

Following lions in the vehicle.

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Weekly High Five

So much has happened in what feels like a very short time. Adele and I have had a helluva ride this year and I reckon that adventure is not over just yet. There is always more!

As soon as I have finished this High Five we will be heading back to Madikwe to start the 'silly season'. This will be the sixth year running that we will be working over Christmas and New Year. It has been a while since we got to spend the festive season with family but at least we have each other, good friends and a very busy time ahead so I suppose it is not all bad.

On a certain level I am looking forward to getting away from the city and all the drama that sometimes go along with it. It feel that the slightly heightened emotions and more time on people's hands during this time of year only leads to confusion, overly dramatic statements and things then get said that, if everybody just slowed down and thought about it for a second, could have been avoided. We all have our own experiences, opinions and ideas on life and the beautiful balance of family and friendship come from accepting people for who they are, learning from each other and embracing the differences.

Photography has for a long time now been an outlet for me and by capturing images and going through the entire process of editing and scrutinizing my own work I have not only learnt a lot about my own photographic progress but also found the head space to work through other people's issues. Anyway... moving swiftly along!

Image 1 - Proud Male Lion

This image was taken on a slightly overcast day but this diffused light does not really detract from the proud attitude the lion is showing. The road he is laying on creates a nice pathway for your gaze to enter the image from the top. I also noticed how the little purple flowers just right of his face catches your eye and this then leads you to the nasty injury on his cheek. How did it happen? What is he looking at? Any image that can make you ask questions works.

* * *

Image 2 - Springbok in Grass

Background, background, background. Yes, this is an image that is suppose to highlight and show the Springbok but the background of grass makes it work. The natural canvas that gets created by the streaky wisps of grass give the image texture and places the animal in it's natural environment. Very simple composition that works purely because of the background.

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Image 3 - Digital Art: Elephant Eye

As a large, stretched canvas print this would be absolutely stunning. Based on this image, the original was perfect in capturing the elephant's eye. Crisp and perfectly placed within the frame. The circles that is created by the elephant's skin feels like it draws your view in towards ultimately making eye contact. I would love to see the original, unedited image but absolutely love this digitally edited version. Awesome capture and great edit.

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Image 4 - Cactus Landscape

This Namibian landscape is another very simple composition that uses basic guidelines to highlight the cactus in the front of the scene. The rule of thirds comes into play twice. The first is the placement of the cactus on the bottom right power point and in the second instance the diagonal line at the top is almost a third down from the top. This kind of image, with diagonal lines, feels like you should look at it from left to right which also leads your gaze naturally to the focal point in the front. The late afternoon light on the cactus, combined with a shallow DOF makes the cactus stand out by making it 'pop' out of the images. Beautiful image of an unbelievable landscape.

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Image 5 - Sleeping Lioness in Black & White

In my opinion a black & white image is always hit or miss. There is very seldomly an in between. In too many instances people shoot away with reckless abandon and when they check their images afterwards they convert the so-so images to black and white to hide exposure flaws and give it more punch. It is a skill to create striking black & white images. Understanding the Zone System does help and when you are able to combine this with strong composition you have all the tools to create a beautiful work of art. The above image shows great contrast without taking the focus away from the lion's paw which is the focal point. The zones, which ranges form pure white to pure black, are almost all included yet it does not feel like they are competing with each other.

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Madikwe - One of Africa's Jewels

The last few weeks the sightings in Madikwe were incredible. All my guests have at least seen 4 out of the the big 5 during there stay. The last 2 groups I had were particularly very lucky. Every day lions were in abundance. The great thing about Madikwe is that we can go off road after these cats, and you can get really close to these magnificent apex predators.

The one animal that we do not see every day is the wild dogs, there are now 21 of them 15 adults and 6 youngsters. This specific morning they were found on one of the main roads, so every safari vehicle was responding , luckily we have radio contact with every body. We control the sightings to only 3 vehicles in a sighting and 3 on standby. But let me tell you vehicle wise it was a nightmare , but at the end it was worth putting on my boxing gloves to get a spot. We sat with them for a while when out of the blue a dazzle of zebra appeared and chased the pups, we all thought yeah who is chasing who now ?

Two of my guests Mitch and Michell missed the evening drive and that morning I thought we are not going to get any lions. But like life throws a curve ball at you there she was all by herself the mica female on a wildebeest kill. Just as new life can be given it can be taken away in a flash, as we saw with this unborn wildebeest. She removed it from his mother and almost as if her mother instincts kicked in she took the calf to a shadier spot, but did not eat the calf. Very strange behaviour.

One morning after our drive I took my guests after breakfast to go and see a pride of 8 lions with 4 cubs. They were laying up at Vlei pan.

When we got there they just killed a wildebeest. Was great to see them eating in the open like that. Was very surprised that they left the carcass out in the open like that. Normally they get the carcass in to cover quite quickly. I suppose it is because the 2 pride males were there that they didn't felt threatened. Every single one ate together even with the two pride males. At one stage one of the cubs were under the belly of the big male. The mother of the cubs is the Mica female. She is also the mother of the Serety males, they are also featuring in previous blogs.

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Photo-Africa Photographer: Grant Marcus

Since I was a youngster I was intrigued by nature. Straight after school I started guiding on a reserve adjacent to Kruger National Park. I also did my diploma in Nature conservation and worked in conservation for a few years and realy saw one does this job for the love of it......I realy enjoy it. I did black rhino monitoring for a few years. I was the area manager on a big reserve called Zingela, and was envolved with all aspects of conservation, game capture, chemical capture, monitoring, culling, paper work and much more. I then decided to try the tourism industry again where I am currently at a lodge in Madikwe game reserve. My love for photography flamed up here. The reason I enjoy it so much is as I always tell my guests " always expect the unexpected in the African bush". Grant Marcus

- When did you start taking photos?

About 2 years ago when a guest gave me his digital camera I took wild life photography up as a hobby and it is still growing in me every day. It is one of my greatest passions in life....... except my wife of course.

- Film or Digital?

I still have my Minolta slr 404si film camera but I prefer digital, the opportunities with digital are endless.

- What equipment are you currently using?

My equipment are the folowing - Canon 400d body, Canon 18-55mm lens, Canon 28-200mm lens, Sigma 50-500mm lens, Manfrotto monopod, Storm hardcase.

- Thoughts on Photoshop and post processing of images?

Photoshop and post processing are essential in some circumstances I believe. For wild life photography I use my canon raw processing plug in with cs2. I also use Adobe Lightroom. It is amazing what you can do to bump your image the way you want it. Especially when you want to create something different in black and white and sepia. The plug-ins for CS2 works very well.

- Favourite subject to photograph?

My favourite subject to photograph is wild life especially lions when they are active. The atmosphere you can capture is amazing. I think the intimidation factor is what gets me going especially when there is eye contact and you can capture that contact through you lens.

- Place in the world you still want to photograph?

One of the subjects I want to capture is Kilimanjaro in the back ground and a big tusker on the foreground on a clear sky day.

To view more of Grant's images on the Photo-Africa Stock Library,

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A Few Old Bird Images

I was in the process of doing some long overdue backups when I found some of my very first attempts at capturing bird images. These were all taken at least five years ago with a Nikon D70 and a old manual focus 300mm lens.

It's always interesting to look back at what caught your eye way back then, how you approached the composition of your images and how you and your work has progressed. Still proud of my first efforts though!

This close up of an Egyptian Goose was taken in the Kruger National Park. Little fuzzy but the look in her eye makes it work quite nicely. Some soft emotion in there.

These two Yellow Billed Hornbills were displaying around their nest site in the Kruger National Park. Got a few nice images of them against the blue sky.

Have not had too many chances since this image to photography Green backed Herons. We found this guy in a little pond in the Pilansberg Game Reserve as he was busy hunting.

I had an absolute blast photographing Seagulls in Cape Town with a D50 quite a few years ago. This image was shot early morning from the window of an apartment we were staying at. I tried to do a few motion blurs and was very happy with this specific one.

The Fish Eagle is still my favorite bird. This juvenile was hunting around a dam in the Pilansberg Game Reserve while we sat watching. I still have to get the 'money shot' of a Fish Eagle making contact with it's prey but was quite chuffed with this image as well. Clicked the shutter right as he took off.

It is most definitely true that the more you practise the better you get. Both from an artistic and technical point of view you understand the basic photography principles better.

You 'see' scenes differently. You get the confidence to start experimenting. You know that a shot will work rather then firing blindly at everything that moves and hoping for the best. You don't just know which settings to use for a given scene but you also know why!

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Identifying Leopards

The Leopard is without a doubt one of the most beautiful cats in the world.

The only thing that equals this beauty is their elusive nature and the fact that they are pretty hard to find. Females are generally a great deal smaller than males which makes at least that aspect easy to differentiate but how do you tell different animals of the same sex apart?

The easiest way in which to do this is to look at the spots on the cat's face. These are, like a human fingerprint, unique to each individual and gives us the ability to identify individual animals.

Here is a quick example. Have a look at the two images of these female leopards we see on a regular basis.

At first glance not a huge amount of difference. If we now go and look at the dots in between the eyes you can start seeing the differences.

Even though this female has the same two brackets just above the eyes, the 'W' shapes in between the eyes are pretty skew and off centre. The warped spot just above her right eye is also diagnostic.

The young female in the bottom images has a much more clearly defined 'W' in between her eyes whith the two brackets on the sides of it. The two lines of spots that run up the forehead is also diagnostic.

There is always great excitement when we get the chance to photograph these beautiful cats at close range as this gives us the chance to identify the various individuals.

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Images from a Quiet Drive

When you go on safari you can never be assured that you will get marvelous sightings. A leopard up a tree with perfect golden light is definitely more the exception than the rule.

During some of those times when nature does not want to play along and produce the Big 5 and other visually exciting moments a lot of people start putting their cameras away. Why take another image of an impala? Why waste valuable memory card space by taking images of a Scrub Hare?

As a photographer you create impressions of what you see and the image you are trying to convey to your viewer. Play around with your settings. Pan along with a running animal. Zoom out as you take a long exposure image. There are many ways in which you can get creative while out in nature.

This morning it was very quiet out there so we spent a bit of time watching a herd of impalas. They were pretty skittish as there were quite a few youngsters running and jumping around so we decided to try and capture some motion blurred images.

This can be great fun even though you might end up with quite a few worthless images. At the very least you will learn more about your camera! To do this drop your shutter speed as far as you can while still considering the light you are working with. If you need to, adjust your aperture to allow for the slower shutter speed. (I was at f/29 for the above image). The idea is to follow the animal while you click the shutter. Ideally you would keep the animals head, neck and body in focus while the legs and background get blurred which will then convey that feeling of movement.

The above image, of a young impala jumping, is by no means a masterpiece. The head is still out of focus and the background is too cluttered which take away from the focal point but I suppose you get the idea. Gonna keep playing with this. Nice fun and potentially amazing images!

This image of a Scrub Hare was also taken during a pretty quiet stretch yesterday evening. The little guys was sitting perfectly still which gave us the opportunity to play around with some lens techniques to create interesting images. By again dropping your shutter speed and then zooming out / in as you take the image you can create zoom effects like this.

The Scrub Hare might not be the most sought after photographic subject in Africa, but I believe you can make an image out of anything.

I find that by playing around witht things like this you automatically think more about your settings. I reckon that shutterspeed is crucial when you are trying to freeze the action or blur movement but for wildlife photography aperture and the corresponding depth of field is probably the most important factor to creating sharp, srtriking images.

I will probbaly write more on this soon but by playing around with your equipment, even if it is to create strange artistic like these you think about your photography more. And that can only be a good thing!

While playing around like this I have found that somewhere in my head I 'see' a certain style of images I want to try and create. Black & white images. Composition. Contrasts. Difficult to explain but it is all those little things that work in an image combined. Hmmm...

Not exactly sure of how, but it is out there somewhere. I guess the journey is just as important as the destination so here we go.

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