Samburu National Reserve, Kenya, Africa
On Safari

Out in the rolling hills of Samburu the hum of crickets fill the air like a morning chorus punctuated by a sharp snapping sound. Scanning the scene before me some flits of bright green and blue make their way to a tree near me. No time to register what I’m shooting the bee eater stops and poses on the tree, looks in the perfect direction to allow a spark of sunlight to bring life to it’s eye then flits off to another tree. “Bee eater!” my local guide says “And do you hear that snapping sound? It’s the bee eaters knocking the stingers off the insects until all the venom is released”

A pretty remarkable experience to not only see these birds snatch bees right out of the air, but also hear them preparing their breakfast.

Photographic details: I had not choice but to just fire at the thing that was moving in front of me, no time for a change of settings, I just had to hope what I was using to photograph the Guineafowl previously was good enough to shoot the bee eater. The time it took to realize the birds were there, aim my camera and squeeze out a shot must have been 1 second, my next shot was a blur of yellow and green, I’ll upload that for a laugh, it goes to show how quickly an opportunity can turn into an empty branch.

1/400s f/7.1 ISO320 400mm

The flurry of feathers just 1 second later:

P.S. Bonus points if you can tell me exactly which Bee-eater this is!

Family of Elephants
Serengeti, Tanzania, Africa

As this family of elephants walked past us we were ever aware of the impending sunset. I took many photos of the elephants but what stood out were the ones with the leading elephant giving himself a dust bath as the sunset backlit the puff of serengeti ash. It’s these moments that I get very excited, the low golden light is paramount in photographing anything from wildlife and landscapes to portraits. This is where I knew I could get a stunning environmental portrait of this family, scenery and a sunset scene all in one. The major technical problem is the wide tonal range I was trying to capture: the bright highlights of the sun, clouds and landscape to the dark shadows of the elephants and foreground. This would be too much for my camera to take in all at once. I turned on the auto bracketing and multi burst shooting mode on my camera, holding down my shutter I rapidly fired off three exposures, one over exposed by two stops, one with normal exposure and he last under exposed. The three images combined provided me with an extra wide tonal range that captured everything I was looking at, this is what’s known as HDR, or High Dynamic Range. After firing off a few shots I thought, “I just +Trey Ratcliff ed it”.

Manual HDR version, click to enlarge:

Even before this I have already accepted HDR images as a legitimate photographic technique. A lot of people currently consider it “cheating” or “fake” the irony is that the images come out with a tonal range that more accurately reflects what a person would see in real life.
To me, the fact that I use this technique is personal validation that HDR is here to stay and that this technique is just as good as any other a photographer keeps in their arsenal. This scene begged to be captured in a full range and this was the only way to do it with the available light. My first impression of HDR years ago appalled me, but no more than bad photography might appall me. These days there are plenty of great examples of masterfully processed HDR photos, and these photographers and the community in general is getting better every day. People tend to dislike images that are highly processed on a computer but then don’t complain about techniques that can be employed in camera. New cameras coming out will focus more on performance and image quality including doing HDR in camera, some with specialized sensors do it all the time. What will HDR dissenters think about that? When it becomes more about how the photo is taken it becomes a game, for me photography is about capturing truth and beauty, truly expressing the emotional power of being there, I couldn’t care less if the photography did headstands while doing it, it’s the photo that matters.

HDR Technique: I initially processed this in Photomatix, the de facto HDR processing software as far as I can tell. I like what it does but I don’t love the way it treats all the textures, coming out with too much contrast in unusual places, the software not being aware of the elephants natural smoothness it treats their skin like a texture that needs to be brought out, and it was too much. Other unusual artifacts produced by photomatix cause flaring on highlight edges and the images come out a little softer than I like, losing a bit of resolution.
For this reason my final image was an HDR photo that I manually combined in photoshop. I layered each exposure on top of each other and kept each portion that was properly exposed for the final result. It ended up looking just the way I saw it without unusual artifacts and a more subdued contrast change. It will be interesting to see which image appeals most to people, so comment and let me know.

Photomatix HDR version:

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Moru Kopjes, Tanzania, Africa

The word “safari” literally means “long journey” in swahili and “to travel” in arabic. I could spend forever trying to describe the day to you with all sorts of other colourful words but I don’t think I could find anything as poignant as that.

After being out all day seeing many thousands of wildebeest, buffalo and zebra, obsessing over lions lounging on kopjes (unique granite outcroppings shown in the photo) we finally got to a point where we could slow down. The previous hours we were desperately trying to absorb and photograph every new little thing we saw, exclaiming “wildebeest! Oooh no baby wildebeest! ooh no baby wildebeest with an egret standing on it!… No I have a better one with egrets AND oxpeckers on it and it’s in better light!”. We were so tuned into looking for wildlife that every rock and stump in the distance had to be an elephant, rhino, or a baboon standing on a hyena on an elephant. Somehow the shame of the misidentification didn’t stop us from pointing these imaginary animals out.

The golden grass of the Serengeti rolled in the breeze personifying our collective deep breath of relaxation as this sight rolled into view. We took a photograph, then dropped our cameras in awe as we simply watched, taking it in without pointing out every little thing we saw and just being present.

Photographic Details: This was a very cut and dry easy decision to make for me. I don’t like having horizons in the middle unless I’m somehow forced to by my subject or some other circumstance. Instead I like to choose an emphasis and ask myself what’s more important or more beautiful, the sky or the foreground? Here the dramatic clouds above had so much texture with a touch of blue sky, but below the wildebeest there was nothing but bare grass. With this in mind I let the Serengeti foreground anchor the photo on the bottom third, and the sky above take up the two thirds, following the aesthetic rule of thirds and making it easier for the viewer to understand what they should be looking at. The rocky outcroppings of the Moru Kopjes were then kept on the left so the eye could follow the formations into the image. All of this is designed to keep the viewers eyes inside the photo, so they don’t stray off and lose interest.

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