March 20, 2015
Caracal and Woodland Kingfisher in Kruger National Park, South Africa

I've completed my first three nights in Kruger National Park, South Africa. Shooting has been pretty slow so far, but it started off with a bang — my first subject was a caracal (Caracal caracal). I hadn't seen one of these rare cats yet on this trip, which is typical, so I was thrilled when I saw this one on the road. By the time I got close enough to photograph it, it had moved just off the road and into the bush. I was able to find an angle where I could photograph it giving me the evil eye while waiting for me to leave (above). When I moved to see if I could get a better look, it took the opportunity to move further into the bush and eventually disappeared. Yesterday afternoon on my way back to camp, I wasn't planning to shoot anything because it was late and the cloud layer was rather thick making for low light levels. However, when I spotted this woodland kingfisher (Halcyon senegalensis) on a nice perch close to the road, I couldn't resist. I started to fire off a burst and was startled when the first exposure took so long. After making a series of five images that took forever, I looked at the shutter speed in the viewfinder and saw that it was 1/20 of a second. The kingfisher also turned its head at that point like it was saying, "Are you seriously going to photograph me at 1/20 of a second with a 1200mm lens? OK, I'll hold really still for you." The bird remained motionless and the perch was motionless, so after focusing on its eye and reframing, I fired off another series of five or so images. Then I refocused, reframed, and fired off another five images. I was surprised that none of the images were as blurry as I had expected, and this image was sharp enough to keep and feature on the blog.