We’ve got a photography and photographic workshop happen in May at a spectacular destination – Bonamanzi.
Located in the heart of Zululand is Bonamanzi, a privately owned, 4000ha game reserve. Bordered by a World Heritage site, the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, in the east and with Hluhluwe Game Reserve a short drive to the west, it’s easy to see why we’ve selected Bonamanzi for our Zululand Photographic Safaris. It also happens to be widely recognised as one of the best birding destinations in Southern Africa.
Accommodation is in delightful air-conditioned thatched chalets, all with en suite bathrooms, set in stunning gardens that warthogs, nyala, impala and other animals consider their home. Image evaluations and Photoshop work are done in their fully equipped conference facility adjacent to a large open air dining area. Dinners are both splendid and varied – inside during inclement weather or el fresco otherwise, sometimes in the bush sometimes in camp.
These 3-day workshops take place over a weekend, with registration and an introductory talk (including a slide show) on the Thursday evening and then a full day on Friday and Saturday and a half-day on Sunday.
Have a look here for more information or e-mail us for details: http://www.oldcanvasexpeditions.com/bonamanzi.htm
We’ve spent the better part of this past week away with friends and business partners, Gerald and Andre Davie, looking at some locations for holding our Art, Photography, Birding and Geology workshops. On Tuesday we drove up to Bonamanzi near Hluhluwe in Zululand. What a stunning place! It’s ideal for our workshops and we are intending to run parallel art and photographic workshops where Andre will do the art and Pat and I the photography. The idea is to have the photographers learn a little art and the artists a little photography – not too much though – the workshops will be run separately with perhaps one or two sessions integrated.
We has scheduled the trip at full moon and after our meetings with Bonamanzi and ThompsonsIndaba (who will be handling the land arrangements for the safaris and workshops) we headed out to False Bay Park, part of the iSimangaliso Wetland Park World Heritage site. What a spectacular spot! We arrived just before sunset and very quickly attacked the beverages and snack that Bonamanzi had thoughtfully provided while we waited for the moon.
I was once again using My D3x but this time with the 70 – 200mm f2.8 VR lens attached. It is a really useful combination that, with the help of a bean bag on the bonnet of the car, easily produced some rather delightful images of the moon rise. I had the ISO cranked up to 800 and the low noise capabilities of these cameras once again became very clear. It was just a few years ago when i very rarely used anything but 50 or at the most 100 ISO film. And now we glibly talk about 800 as if it were nothing spectacular at all!
We left for Clarens in the Free State early the next morning. We had timed the trip perfectly. The cosmos flowers were out on their millions and we had great fun shooting them. Here Nikon’s 14 – 24 mm f2.8 came into it’s own and enabled one to get right in amongst the flowers.
Gerald was in his element and stumbled around muttering things like cross bedding, (cross bedding? Come on the workshop to find out) intrusions, dykes, sills and many other very odd sounding things. In reality though, Clarens is simply the perfect spot for a workshop on earth science or geology.
One of the highlights was a look at a dinosaur fossil that had been exposed by recent heavy rains. What a privilege and how humbling. It had been buried for millions and millions of years and we were able to see it. Make one think doesn’t it…?
Keep an eye on the blog and also on www.oldcanvasecpeditions.com for details about the workshops – there’ll be some very exciting things available.
Aerial Photography can be quite tricky and this was brought home to me quite clearly again on Friday when I joined author and friend Sue Derwent (Sue, Pat and I have done many books and magazine stories together) on a helicopter trip down the KwaZulu Natal South Coast. We couldn’t have wished for a better day – bright and Sunny with a few fluffy clouds in the distance to give some interest to the sky and no wind to speak of. Due to the nature of the flight we were not able to slow down and get into position nice views, the whole thing had to happen “on the fly” if you’ll excuse the pun. So, we were doing about 120 knotts (about 200 kmh) at an altitude of about 500 feet so everything is whizzing by and to make matters worse the 2 blades of the Jet Ranger’s rotor give rise to a rhythmic “bumping” as you go along. This creates huge problems with trying to keep images sharp and in the old film days it was a nightmare!
My Nikon D3x with Nikon’s new 14 – 24 mm zoom was wonderful. It’s very low noise levels allowed me to crank up the ISO to 800 and shooting at f4 I was getting shutter speeds of around 1/2000 of a second. Sharp images all the way through. And on the computer screen at 100% they are STUNNING! I will post a selection of images soon but in the mean time have a look at the album Sue has put op on her Face Book site.
The next morning was very overcast and a fine rain was falling which made photography a little tricky and I ended up with a very wet lens. I did, though manage to shoot a little video and you can see this here:
By the way, We’ve got some very exciting Safaris happening in the near future so keep an eye on our blog as well as www.oldcanvasexpeditions.com.
