Monday, January 25th, 2010
Everyone has their favourite photos, and this is a sentimental one of mine.
Nkuringo was an old silverback of the first mountain gorilla group we visited in 2008, the Nkuringo Group at South Bwindi in Uganda. There were sixteen in the group then, but the leadership belonged to another younger silverback called Safari.
Nkuringo was the last of the group we spent time with, of some fifteen minutes, and was stripping the vines of leaves, not much bothered by his visitors. He was very old and seemed to have an injury to his mouth which we later learned had obtained in a fight two years earlier, leaving him slightly paralysed and making it difficult to eat.
If anyone still thinks that gorillas have the persona of a 1933 style King Kong, then they’d soon be persuaded otherwise by this guy.
Sadly, Nkuringo died of natural causes in April 2008 aged forty-nine, just six weeks after our visit.
Taken using a Nikon D300 with a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens at 200mm, f/3.3, 1/125 and ISO 560.
Sunday, January 17th, 2010
Cameras never lie, but a computer can
Maybe I’ve two of three qualities required for a little premature success. I can take above average pictures, am an above average retoucher, but unfortunately I lack an important third quality, which is the appetite for fakery.
I’ve a long shelf of books by wildlife photographers and it’s a collection I’ve often sought inspiration from. But sadly I’ll be putting a couple of those away now, now I’ve seen that of the photographs within, many aren’t photographs at all. They’re manipulated images, or they’re composites — where two or more photographs are combined to create an image that existed only in the maker’s mind in the pretence that they’re photographs.
click to continue reading…
Saturday, January 16th, 2010
“We’ve just one minute remaining” said our guide when I took this photo, the last and one of my favourites of a one hour session. Then, just as I’d taken the picture and become distracted while securing a footing, he came quickly forward, surprising us and nearly knocking me sideways. Stepping shin deep into mud to avoid him, he brushed by, splitting our group of eight on the way through. He didn’t look back. We were ignored, but then he knows that the mountain belongs to him.
This was a previsualised picture, from the water to his pose. Before we’d arrived in Rwanda to visit mountain gorillas, I was already hoping for rain. The rain would bring in some texture to his fur and brighten up the colors as water can do. Sure enough, on nearing the group after a two hour hike, it began to rain lightly. At a minute short of the hour, we found Kigoma some four metres in front, and all I needed was to move a little way to my right, and found myself with the picture I’d envisioned a few weeks earlier. Sometimes, luck pans out well if you look for it.
Kigoma is the second silverback of the Kwitonda Group, in the Parc des Volcans in Rwanda, which we visited in March 2008. Park rules stipulate that the maximum time spent with any one group is one hour per day.
Taken using a Nikon D300 with a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens at 95mm, f/3.3, 1/125 and ISO 1250.
It was protected with an Op-Tec rain sleeve.
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Sunday, January 10th, 2010
Not wanting to miss Richmond Park with the recent snow cover, I arrived in time for the sunrise and made my way to the ponds near the centre to see if I can catch something bigger than this robin, ideally with antlers. There was plenty of ice and snow, but no deer, and by the time I got to the ponds the sun rose and soon enough the blue sky appeared.
I made do with this little red robin for a time, until two big unleashed dogs intervened. Later I found some deer, but I think the best pictures of that morning were of this little guy.
Taken using a Nikon D700 with a 300mm f/4.0 lens
with a 1.4 converter at 420mm, f/6.7, 1/350 and ISO 800.
Saturday, January 2nd, 2010
One morning on the Masai Mara reserve, we encountered a lioness and her three cubs hauling a wildebeest carcass to cover. The kill was fresh, it was out in the open plain and the nearest cover of scrub was a mile distant.
So we watched as she hauled the carcass for some forty-five minutes until it was safe under cover from any other hungry scavengers. She had no help, not even from her cubs, who, just like children, tried everything they could to slow the process. They indulged in tug-o-war, and at one point even jumped on the dead antelope for a free ride.
This picture was taken at about her halfway point, while she paused for a minute to catch her breath.
Taken using a Nikon D300 with a 200-400 lens at 400mm, f/4.8, 1/1000 and ISO 200.
Monday, December 7th, 2009
Fortunately for me, in these early days I’ve had requests for prints of the pictures on this site. So as of today I’m offering many of the pictures on this site for sale as prints, posters and wall mounts.
This is a consumer targeted service, where I’ve kept the prices reasonable (hopefully) and I’m to be offering a service for high quality framed and unframed fine art reproductions in the new year.
Prints and posters are made on high grade photo paper with two finishes, and wall mounts are printed on true photo paper, mounted on a 1/8 inch acrylic base and laser-trimmed to the size.
Prints sizes range from 10 x 12 up to 30 x 20 inches for posters and 15 x 10 up to 30 x 20 inches for wall mounts. More info on each product, and a full range of sizes is available at the photo sales order site.
The payment system is by Paypal, where you can pay by credit card (a Paypal account is not required to pay). Photo prints and posters are shipped in 12-48 hours, and wall mounts in 5-7 days.
To browse a selection pictures from this site and make any purchase, visit the Photo Sales site or see the link to the left of this page.
This is a new service, so if there’s anything you’d like that’s not here, then please let me know.
This service is hosted by Zenfolio, which uses PhotoBox in Europe and MPix in the US for prints and posters, and Fotoflot for wall mounts to both Europe and the US.
