JHP Newsletter - 2013, No. 2, 9 April
Greetings from near Franktown, Colorado.
My six-week visit to South Africa was very productive and also good for my soul.
Travel: South Africa
I started in the middle of February with nine nights in Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park which encompasses the former Kalahari Gemsbok National Park. It's one of my favorite places in the world because of the wide-open spaces and few visitors. It was drier there than I've ever seen it which was great for wildlife viewing and photography because there wasn't much grass to block the view. The park is usually great for cats and this time was no exception. I saw at least four different African wild cat, a caracal, 11 different cheetah, a leopard with a cub, and nine different lion including a pair mating.
One of the most exciting encounters I had with lions was when a group of six, including a big male, came to drink at a waterhole early one morning. They all lined up nicely side-by-side on the far side, but it was too early for good photography because the waterhole was in the shade and the background was in full sun. Fortunately, after the sun had risen more, some of the lions came back to drink in full sun which is when I made this image of an older cub, about nine months old, drinking (below left).
On my last morning in the park, I had fun watching and photographing another group of lions: an adult female and two approximately 1.5 year-old cubs. The male cub (below center) found a stick and proudly carried it to where his sister and mother were resting in the shade.
1/1500 sec, f5.6, ISO 200
1/2000 sec, f5.6, ISO 200
1/1500 sec, f5.6, ISO 400
Black-backed jackals were very common, and I photographed this one (above right) drinking at a water hole one morning.
I had several great opportunities to photograph cheetah. My favorite image is of two youngsters waiting and looking for breakfast one morning (below left). African wild cat (Felis silvestris lybica) is the same species as the domestic cat (Felis silvestris catus) but a different subspecies. Kgalagadi is one of the best places to see and photograph them, and I had two cooperative subjects. This one (below right) posed just long enough for me to get this image before dashing off into thick brush.
1/1500 sec, f6.7, ISO 400
1/125 sec, f5.6, ISO 400
Gemsbok, or South African oryx, have fantastic markings and are the namesake of the former Kalahari Gemsbok National Park which is now encompassed by Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. These two males fought hard for almost two minutes and it seemed like an eternity as I was photographing it. What a thrill!
1/2000 sec, f5.6, ISO 200
1/125 sec, f5.6, ISO 800
Another thrill was watching a leopard with a cub for two days. They were on the far side of the dry Auob River just within shooting distance — with a camera of course. They spent most of their time in and around a camel thorn acacia tree. On my last evening in the park, the mother was resting out in the open in full view. I spotted a brown hyena, normally a nocturnal animal, just down the road and went to photograph it because I had only ever seen them before at lit waterholes during the night. I got some nice images of the hyena as it kept coming closer to where the leopard was resting. I rushed back to the leopard just in time to see the leopard mother tangle with the brown hyena as the leopard cub ran up the tree and then the mother ran up the tree too. It was incredible to watch! When I came back first thing the next morning, a brown hyena was exploring the area around the leopard's favorite tree, and that's when I was able to make the image above right.
After Kgalagadi, I headed southeast to the south-central part of the country and spent three nights at Mountain Zebra National Park at the beginning of March. The park is named after the mountain zebra, a rare species of zebra that is only found in small pockets of South Africa and Namibia. While mountain zebra are plentiful in the park, I didn't get any exciting images of them this time.
Young blesbok were plentiful, and I photographed them several times (below left). Their facial markings are almost the inverse of an adults.
The park is one of the best places to photograph the black wildebeest, or white-tailed gnu, and this time I had an extremely cooperative subject. This male was quite tolerant and I spent as much time as I wanted with him two different times. He's calling or barking in the image below right.
1/750 sec, f5.6, ISO 500
1/1500 sec, f5.6, ISO 400
Then I spent three nights at Addo Elephant National Park. It's perfectly located so that one can photograph in Mountain Zebra National Park in the morning and Addo Elephant National Park in the afternoon. The park has always been good to me for unexpected subjects and behaviors, and this time I was able to photograph a black-backed jackal eating a small leopard tortoise. Jackals are opportunists, but I had never seen one eat a tortoise before.
1/350 sec, f5.6, ISO 800
1/250 sec, f5.6, ISO 400
The biggest unexpected subject was a fairly cooperative caracal! Caracal are rare cats, and it's even rarer to have one that's a cooperative subject. I saw this one by the road as I came around the corner and it ducked behind some brush by the road. Fortunately it was still there by the time I was able to get into position to photograph it (above right). It didn't stick around long though and disappeared into the thick brush. I drove up and down the road hoping to spot it again in one of the clearings, but after a while decided to go look for another subject. As I rounded a curve, it was out in the middle of the road again! I quickly approached it and got some shots of it walking away from the road down an open path while pausing now and then to look back over its shoulder. What a cool set of encounters!
As one would expect, Addo Elephant National Park is a great place to photograph Elephants. This female (below left) is taking a mud bath and I like the way the mud was captured in mid air as she was spraying herself. Right after she was done with that spray, she did the elephant equivalent to a human in the shower saying, "Dang, I got soap in my eye" (below right).
1/1000 sec, f5.6, ISO 400
1/1000 sec, f5.6, ISO 400
After two nights of travel, I spent three nights in the middle of March in Imfolozi Game Reserve and two nights in the adjacent Hluhluwe Game Reserve. (Hluhluwe is pronounced like "Shlu-shlu-we.") Hluhluwe/Imfolozi is operated by KZN Wildlife, and is roughly like a state park of KwaZulu Natal Province which is on the east coast of South Africa. My stay wasn't very productive because it was very wet so the grass was high (seed heads up to 4 ft or 1.2m tall) and the vegetation was thick which made photography difficult. Also, it was mostly cloudy, with dark clouds and not much light, for three of the six days.
One of my favorite images happens to be one of the first I made on that visit to Imfolozi. This red-billed oxpecker (below left) wasn't actively oxpecking, or in this case zebrapecking, but rather just going along for the ride. Hluhluwe/Imfolozi is one of the best places to see the rare Nyala. This image (below right) is of a young Nyala and they look similar to the adult female. The adult male is a dark brown, has horns, a mane, and a beard — a case of extreme sexual dimorphism.
1/750 sec, f5.6, ISO 800
1/350 sec, f5.6, ISO 400
I ended my visit to South Africa with 15 nights in Kruger National Park during the second half of March. I stayed at six different rest camps to provide easy access to locations in the southern and central parts of the park. Kruger has slowly become one of my favorite parks, and it was extremely productive this time.
My stay in Kruger started off with a bang! I entered the park through the Crocodile Bridge Gate in the southeastern corner of the park to quickly get to the Lower Sabie camp where I spent my first three nights. Within a mile (or kilometer) down the road, I spotted a cheetah! While Kruger is one of the better parks in South Africa for cats, it's still unusual to see a cheetah there. It was on the shoulder in the middle of a cheetah-jam, and after it moved away from the road and started paralleling the road, I was able to get ahead of it and make some nice images as it searched for prey (below left). Then within a mile (or kilometer) after leaving the cheetah, I came upon a photographable black rhino. White rhino are fairly common in the park, but it's uncommon to see a black rhino, especially one that's photographable. It was so nice to have good subjects to photograph right off the bat after Hluhluwe/Imfolozi had been so slow.
1/1500 sec, f5.6, ISO 250
1/250 sec, f5.6, ISO 800
70-200 2.8 IS II & 1.4x III (at 98mm),
1/750 sec, f8, ISO 200
I thoroughly enjoy watching and photographing infant primates, and I spent some time with a troupe of chacma baboon one afternoon that had two infants. I had lots of opportunities to photograph them riding on their mother's backs as they generally made their way down the side of the road. At one point, most of the troupe went up on a rise by the road, and that's when I made this image (above center) of an infant. It's always nice to be at your subject's eye level, and I love the eye contact he gave me.
One morning, I drove through a patch of light fog and couldn't resist making some landscape images as the early morning light filtered through the fog and created a wonderful glow for backlit subjects. I particularly liked the shape of this solitary tree (above right).
When I was moving from the Pretoriuskop Rest Camp to the Berg-En-Dal Rest Camp, 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 (below left), 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.
1/250 sec, f5.6, ISO 640
1/1000 sec, f5.6, ISO 500
Less than fifteen minutes after leaving the African wild dogs, I reached a traffic jam and 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 stopped 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.
The Biyamiti Dam is one of my favorite locations for photography in the park because the dam is low and there's a causeway immediately downstream so that the water level above the dam is less than a foot below a car's windowsill. The park experienced flooding in January, and the area upstream of the dam was the most open that I've ever seen it. Usually there's lots of grass on the sandy shore and sandbars, but this time there was hardly any grass along the shore and no sandbars — great for photography. On one of my visits there, 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.
1/1000 sec, f5.6, ISO 320
1/1000 sec, f8, ISO 400
On another visit, the Pied kingfishers were busy fishing, and I concentrated on photographing them with their prey (above right). On yet another visit, this three-banded plover came nice and close. It's great to be able to get eye-level images like this from the comfort of the front seat of your car — much more civilized than crawling into position on your belly through the sand!
1/1500 sec, f5.6, ISO 400
1/250 sec, f5.6, ISO 400
I only had one good opportunity to photograph lion, but what an opportunity it was! First thing in the morning near the Oliphants Rest Camp, I came upon three big males and a female. Shortly after I arrived, one of the males mated with the female, but they were turned away from me. The next time they mated, they very kindly walked towards me and stayed facing me, and that's when I made this image (above right). Shortly after I made this image, first one then a second vehicle arrived, and I think the three onlookers were too much for the lions and they moved off into the thick brush and out of sight.
Late one morning I stopped to photograph some teenage African elephant males playing at a waterhole. The male on the left was the instigator, and went around to each of the males when they arrived and tussled with them for a while (below left).
1/1000 sec, f5.6, ISO 500
1/750 sec, f5.6, ISO 320
Leopard tortoises are frequently seen on and next to the roads, and the best way to photograph them is from near their eye level which means your camera has to be just above the road which means you have to be next to your camera, out of the car, on the road. That makes photographing them quite exciting when you know there could be a large, and dangerous animal, hidden in the brush not too far away. :)
Probably the most interesting image, for me, that I made during my stay in Kruger is of this adult male chacma baboon eating a water lily tuber (below left) — I just love the guy's wet hair.
1/250 sec, f5.6, ISO 800
1/90 sec, f4, ISO 800
Even though I've only been back for a week, I'm already looking forward to returning.
Take care and happy shooting.
— James
James Hager Photography :: www.jameshagerphoto.com
