I think it’s the most beautiful of the lot! The Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban, South Africa dominates the city skyline making almost ever photograph shot before its completion last year, obsolete. The graceful steel centre arch, based on the South African flag, is 106m high and a cable car designed to take visitors up to the highest point where they can take in wonderful views of the city operates daily. The arch is 350m long and weighs 2600 tons. During the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ it will seat 70 000 people reverting to 54 000 thereafter.
We stayed at a very convenient B&B in Durban North called Annies Place (http://www.anniesplace.co.za/) just a few kilometres from the stadium. We did quite a few panoramic shots of the Durban Country Club with the stadium in the background and stitched these together in Photoshop CS4 after doing the necessary tweaks in Lightroom. What an amazing combination. In many instances these days I don’t even worry about using a panoramic head. I simply lock the focus, exposure and white balance and go click, click, click, allowing about 25% overlap and voila. Have a look at some of the images we did over the few days we were in Durban before the cloudy weather moved in again.
While we are chatting things photography, we’ve a few more spots available on our Photographic Safari to Madikwe Game Reserve in May 2010. Have a look here for more details. These are amazing fun! http://www.africaimagery.com/workshops_madikwe.php
Wow! What a Photo Graphic Safari that was! We had 5 people join us at Jaci’s Camp in Madikwe Game Reserve in South Africa’s North West Province – Lousie Donald (Publisher of Pix Magazine), Tim and Yvonne Driman, Hilary Baak and Mike Rickard out from the UK. The idea was to try to photograph the African Wild Dogs that Madikwe Game Reserve is so well known for but, as so often happens with wildlife photography, the dogs were not quite as cooperative as they could have been. We did see them a couple of times though and we did get some pix. Everything else seemed to be doing their best to be photographed – we had great times with elephants (and had a couple of charges to keep out attention going), lions and
Lilac Breasted Roller at Madikwe Game Reserve
general game and also managed to play with some scenic after sunset.
We followed the usual format of early morning and late afternoon shoots with image analysis and other photographic discussions in betewwn and the VERY attantative and helpful staff at the lodge forced deliscous food and drink down our throuts a regular intervals. While the standard of photography at the start of the workshop was pretty good, I must say that after 4 days of intensive work on images, techniques and Photoshop, some very fine images we starting to appear. Have a look at some of the images we shot here:
This workshop was so successful we’ve scheduled some more with 2 people having already booked onto the March one. Book you place now. Have a look here for more details. Louise Donald of Pix Magazine very kindly put this video together.
Wow! What a couple of days we’ve had and only now got back to an Internet connection so that we can upload this.
On Saturday the 5th of April some 16 dogs were released from the boma at Mary Hill near Pont Drift in Botswana. They’d spent the past few months in the bomas getting used to their surroundings and (hopefully) would identify the Northern Tuli Game Reserve as their new home. A few hundred metres away was the Limopopo river and the border with South Africa and everyone was hoping that the dogs would not simply hightail it back to SA and their original home.
The Northern Tuli Game Reserve Researcher, Craig Jackson, has spent the past few months laying out a bio fence that would hopefully keep the dogs within the partially fenced game reserve. A bio fence? Well what this entails is collecting a whole pile of doggie doo from other wild dog packs in other game reserves around the country and placing this around the area in which you want to keep the dogs, the theory being that as the dogs approach this “fence” they recognise another pack’s territory and keep away. Does it work? It seems it might. Watch this space…
Shortly after their release a few male dogs split off from the main pack (this dispersal behaviour is normal) and headed west towards the “fence” and we last seen heading north along it – not crossing it. Hold thumbs that it works.
For the most part the other dogs are hanging around the boma site, no doubt hoping that someone would pitch up with an impala in the back of a pick-up for them to feed on. No such luck though! We have seen them making a few attempts at impala herds and they did manage to get a young warthog piglet as the family clippety clopped right into the middle of the dog pack as they were resting under a tree. We got some amazing pix of this but alas, you’ll have to wait for the book to see them! Sorry about that but we like to keep the best for last!
It was our first actual Wild Dog “kill” and what a learning curve. Picture the scene: The 16 wild dogs are lying, fast asleep under a tree when in come 6 warthogs (2 adults and 4 piglets) and we’re watching this, camera at the ready and fully prepared. At some point one of the dogs spots the warthogs and in an instant you’ve got complete pandemonium! There are now 22 animals screaming around in an area about the size of a tennis court. The warthogs are squealing, the dogs twittering away in that strange way of theirs and there are dogs and dust everywhere. What to photograph? There is soooo much happening that it is very difficult to zone in on where the action is and which dog was going to grab which animal. And quick! Looking at the EXIF information afterwards we see that the action was over in just under 20 seconds.
I was using Canon’s 100 to 400mm zoom on my 1Ds MkIII and I must say that it was superb. It’s extremely easy and quick to use and it shows in the results. I cannot think of any other lens I’d rather use in this situation.
