Photo Tips: Wildlife Photography

I'm not an expert photographer but I've had a bit of experience with wildlife photography in Australia, North America, Southern Africa and Europe now so I thought I'd go through my equipment for this trip, how I shoot & process and add as many tips along the way as I can.  While I'll try and keep it fairly general I'll probably be focusing on our African Safaris.

Okavango Delta and Morami, Botswana

The Okavango Delta is somewhere Jackie and I had been looking forward to for a long time and was actually the primary goal of time in Africa. However things didn't quite turn out the way we had planned...

Our African safaris were one of the first parts of this trip that we found and booked in so that we could time our flights properly, which was great, till our Botswana safari fell through.  This resulting in much scrambling and searching while we were away in North America till we found another group safari on dates that fitted with our flights and was within our budget (which was, admittedly, not very high).  As it turned out, we were the only ones on the trip which was a little weird but also had some perks.

Chobe National Park, Botswana

Chobe is a national park in North East Botswana (and the name of a river on its border) that is world famous for amazing wildlife.  We stayed a couple of nights in Kasane and were lucky enough to have three trips into Chobe, two as game drives and one as a boat trip.  We saw heaps of amazing wildlife but here are a few highlights.

Bomani Tented Camp, Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe

Bomani Tented Camp is in the south of Hwange National Park, and it is remote. To get there, we had to take a their tram, which they run on the colonial-era rail tracks built by some bloke with a great vision of trains running from South Africa to Egypt but who didn't count on the post-colonial administration taking the particular turn that it has done so the tracks are not in great shape now. Useful for us though!

More early mornings, more safari drives, more lists with lots of commas or again I could just tell a couple of stories.

The Hide, Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe

Elephant: "Hello!"

Okay, so this is where the blog posts have the potential to get really boring. You see, I could tell you about how we got up really early and went for a drive, had a siesta, then went for another drive. I could write a really long list with lots and lots of commas (and I do like commas) with all the animals that we saw. But really, you just want to scroll down and see the photos (in fact you might already have done that).

Before you do though, let me tell you just a couple of stories from our stay at The Hide in Hwange National Park.

Chundu Island, Zimbabwe

Chundu Island is a little (very little) island in the Zambezi River between Zambia and Zimbabwe. They run on solar power and tank water. They have no internet. There is apparently one spot where you can sometimes get phone reception if you hold your phone up in the air. And somehow, from this island, a lovely couple, one Zimbabwean, one originally British, run a lovely safari camp.

Photo Tips: Yosemite National Park

I'm by no means an expert on Yosemite, we spent a grand total of two days in Yosemite Valley but here are a few tips I can offer you.  If you want to read about what we actually did when we were there you can check out the blog here with lots more photos.

Early mornings and late evenings

Plan to get there (your photo location) at least 30 min before sunrise and to leave at least 30 min after as the light begins long before sunrise and finishes long after sunset.  It is also the time when the contrast between the sky and the land is lower so it fits within the cameras dynamic range better and when you get the best light on the clouds.  It is also worth noting that the gate western entrance gate is a long way from the Yosemite Valley and the road is quite slow and windy which adds to your drive time (probably in the dark).

El Capitan and Half Dome from Tunnel View Lookout well after the sun had set

Big Sur

A real live otter in the wild!

Like 99.95% of the world's population, I think otters are awesome (the other 0.05% have problems bigger than I can help them with). So one of my big aims when we drove the Big Sur was to see real, live, wild otters.

In service of this aim, we started our Big Sur trip with a drive to a small marine reserve called Point Lobos. It, like the rest of the Big Sur, is gorgeous. Dramatic cliffs and rocks rising out of an azure sea and all that. You will be able to see that in the photos. What you can't see in the photos is that Point Lobos smelled freaking amazing. I have no idea what it was. I tried to make my fervent sniffing as subtle as possible. A lovely place to linger. There were lots of sea birds including some truly ugly brown pelicans (Will objects to my calling them ugly. They look much prettier in his photos) and egrets that stood on the top of the kelp out at sea, so they looked like they were walking on water. As we were watching the sky turn all sorts of spectacular colours, we saw an otter! He was just chilling in the ocean, fluffing his fur, twisting and turning in the ocean, generally looking like he was having a good time.

Yosemite National Park

View of El Capitan as you enter the Yosemite Valley

I think when we were planning this trip, I had Yosemite and Yellowstone kind of confused in my head (they both start with Y, okay?) so I didn't really know what to expect from them. Turns out they're different places!

We were rather hoping for snow, since seeing the national parks in winter was kind of the point, but California was having a warm spell, so no snow for us. There was a plus side to this, since there were extremely confusing and ambiguous online rules about having snow chains on your tyres to enter the park - and you can't put snow chains on a hire car. On the down side however, given we were there on a weekend, that everyone in San Fransisco had decamped for Yosemite. We saw some interesting tourist behaviour, like a guy who, having had a friend take about 300 photos of him in front of the same bit of rock, took his shirt off to get a further 300 photos in front of the same rock, only this time with no shirt on, and a mother who pushed her perhaps 8-year-old daughter ever closer to a clearly nervous fully grown male deer, stacked to the rafters with antlers, so she could get a good photo. Hmmm. It's moments like that you really wish you weren't a 'tourist' because it's a word that puts you into a group with some serious idiots.

Photo Tips: Roadside Photography - North America + Photos

Western Scrub Jay

We've found road tripping are a great way to see the world but if you are anything like me (and Jackie), every time you see something interesting you want a photo of it!  While it might sound surprising roadside photography can be a great way to get amazing photos so I thought I might fill you in on my experiences in North America.

In the US and to a slightly lesser extent in Canada people always give stopped cars a wide berth and will usually change lanes if there is a car stopped beside the road, even if you are well clear of the road.  While it's not a big issue it kinda makes you feel bad about pulling over for photos, particularly if the roads is busy.  

Wake Up to Wildlife and Other Close Encounters of the Animal Kind

Quick shot through the windscreen but sets the scene well.

Before embarking on this trip, Will and I agreed that what we wanted to see in Yellowstone was wolves. I mean, who wouldn't? Wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone twenty years ago so they must be everywhere by now right? Wrong. On our first afternoon, driving ourselves around, we saw a whole slew of people sitting by the road with their spotter scopes out (wildlife watching tip #1 - if you see a bunch of people stopped by the side of the road, stop and see what they're looking at, it's probably worth it). We got out, sidled up and nonchalantly started a conversation and were offered a look through the spotting scope. They were really excited. It was a wolf. It was lying down in the snow. It was 5 miles (8 kilometres) away. Even through the spotting scope I could have been looking at a rock or a log in the snow, I really wasn't sure I was even looking at the right grey splot. And there were about 15 people who had been sitting for a good forty five minutes, in the snow, watching this wolf through their scopes.

Snowmobiling in Yellowstone

Old Faithful

Now I don't know about anybody else, but I pretty much have a constant soundtrack-to-life playing in my head. Sometimes, it makes sense - like driving around California singing Joni Mitchell's California in my head (or okay, sometimes out loud). Sometimes it's a little more obscure - like seeing the eucalyptus trees in California and getting Give Me a Home Among the Gum Trees stuck in my head (Will did not help with this - as we drove around he would point to a stand of trees and say 'What kind of trees are those again?' so he deserved every ear-splitting rendition he got). Sometimes, my internal soundtrack is flat out bizarre. So, when you imagine me snowmobiling through the wintery wilderness of Yellowstone, it needs to be accompanied by a rousing chorus of the title song from Oklahoma -

 O-----klahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plain
And the waving wheat, it sure smells sweet,
When the wind comes straight behind the rain...

and so forth. It was pretty funny. My face was freezing off and I'm singing about waving wheat, which I'm pretty sure is a summer phenomenon.

Just so you can fully appreciate the full experience, auditory and otherwise.

Packing - For Photography

Hi, my name is Will and I'm a cameraholic.  But more seriously, I love photography and taking photos however packing (and carrying) camera gear can be a real pain in the neck (or back).  Decision about what to take, how to pack it, what to pack it in tend to drive me mad but I thought I'd write a bit about my decision process and some cool gear incase it helps you out.

Define some parameters

Where are you going and what will you be shooting?

I'm about to do a bit of an around the world trip which will involve lots of landscape and wildlife photography followed by more city touring.  I would be doing lots of walking both city and trail and will want my camera with me.  [Regions: US, Canada, Southern Africa, Europe, UK]