March 23, 2013
Tree, Crocodile, Wild Dog, Leopard, and Pied Kingfisher in Kruger National Park, South Africa

On my way from three nights at the Lower Sabie rest camp in Kruger National Park to two nights at the Pretoriuskop rest camp, I drove through a patch of light fog. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to make some landscape images as the early morning light filtered through the fog and created a wonderful glow for backlit subjects.

Later that morning, I stopped at the Biyamiti Dam. A Nile Crocodile was floating just upstream, and I was able to get right in front of it near the minimum-focus distance of the Canon 500 f4. This is a sight you don't want to see without the safety of being in your car! At least I kept telling myself I was safe in the car because of the 5-ft (1.5m) space between the dam and the window, plus the croc would probably just get a mouthful of camera gear — I hoped.

The full day between my two nights at Pretoriuskop was slow, but the next day, on my way to Berg-En-Dal rest camp for two nights, I had one of my best days ever in Kruger. First, I spent a wonderful two hours in the middle of the morning with a group of seven African Wild Dog. They were mostly resting and occasionally playing right on the road. I couldn't believe how laid back they were as all the cars pulled up, stopped for varying lengths of time, and then drove off. In this image, one of the younger ones is showing off the stick it had found to play with. The solid overcast created wonderful even light for photography.

Less than fifteen minutes after leaving the African Wild Dogs, I reached a traffic jam. I couldn't believe everyone was looking at the male Impala that I could see as I approached. Then I saw that the Impala was looking at something too, so I pulled over to the right side of the road to see if I could see something, and there was a Leopard walking up the right easement towards me. Fortunately no cars had arrived behind me, and the cars from the traffic jam were happy to stay even with the leopard, so I had plenty of room to maneuver out in front of the Leopard as he kept heading towards me and stopping occasionally to mark his territory. Once again, the overcast was perfect for photography. The great photo ops ended when he decided to walk along the road, but it was still lots of fun to watch him out in the open. Then he crossed the road and headed away into the thick brush. It was an exhilarating 20 minutes or so with him.

Then in the afternoon, I photographed two different groups of White Rhinoceros and got some of my best ever images of that species.

On my full day at the Berg-En-Dal rest camp, I returned to the Biyamiti Dam. The Pied Kingfishers were busy fishing, and I concentrated on photographing them with their prey.