Chobe Safari » Photo of the Day

Voting Help Needed: One of Our Photos from Chobe National Park is a Finalist

P. B. Eleazer — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 22:19:59 +0000

We have TWO finalists in the Digital Photo’s Great Escapes Photo contest ‘Popularity’ award. There is a total of 59 finalists so this result is quite exciting. One of ours is from Chobe National Park. It is the only African wildlife photo in the finalists. Our other image is from a sunrise at Monument Valley in the western United States. We would appreciate if you would use THIS LINK to go to the site and give your 5 star vote to our two finalists.

Two Finalist images by P. B. Eleazer

Beyond the Popularity Award, there will also be awards given by qualified judges. We hope our images will be selected by the judges, but a good result in the popularity category can’t hurt.

Guest Article: Leopards by Sergey Gorshkov

P. B. Eleazer — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 07:14:09 +0000

Following our ‘introduction’ of Sergey Gorshkov’s photography images which we called the “Botswana Water Jumping Competition“, we contacted Sergey to asked if he would like to provide a guest article on his work. Sergey quickly responded to our request with an email full of really special images.

From the email, Mr. Gorshkov is no stranger to Botswana as he has visited 21 times and is planning another trip there next week. Sergey stated that Botswana, in his opinion, is the best country in Africa. He noted that his favorite African safari subject is the leopard. Mr. Gorshkov has provied us with a stunning leopard series which we now present to you. (As noted on the images, all copyrights are the property of Sergey Gorshkov)

Nikon D3 at 24mm, 1/10 sec @ f/5.0, ISO 400

Nikon D3, 42mm, 1/640 sec. @ f/7.1, ISO 400

Nikon D3 at 200mm, 1/1000 sec. @ f/5.6, ISO800

Nikon D300S at 650mm, 1/50 sec @ f/6.7, ISO 1000

Nikon D3 at 400mm, 1/4000 @ f4, ISO 1000

Nikon D3S at 38mm, 1/640 @ f/5.6, ISO 1600

Nikon D3s at 24mm, 1/3200 @ f/5.6, ISO 800

Nikon D3s at 24mm, 1/40 sec @ f/5.3, ISO 12,800

As we reviewed Sergey’s leopard images, two things really struck us. First, Sergey is a master at creating a truly intimate portrait of his subject. If one had never seen a leopard in the wild, this series of images would be a strong documentary of the life of a leopard … and if you read the biography below, you will see that is a major goal of Mr. Gorshkov’s photography. The second thing we noticed is the Sergey has embraced the new camera technology and it’s ability to shoot at high ISO settings. Many of these images would have been near impossible if Sergey would have limited himself to ISO 400 or less. There is a lesson for us in this work.

Again, the editors of Chobe Safari would like to thank Sergey for providing these works for this article.

A Brief Biography of Sergey Gorshkov: For many years Sergey has taken pictures of wild nature . . . and every year his feeling of alarm grows. The world, which he photographs, is in danger now.

“I have begun shooting wild nature imperceptibly, taking pleasure which I can’t compare with anything. I want to photograph the native wildlife as it is, what it always was and what it should remain for our children” Sergey says about why he entered into photography. “My camera is a connecting link between me and wildlife. Through the lens of the camera I can see things, take pictures and try to reproduce beauty of the wild nature, a piece of what I have seen and I have felt being there, in their escaping world which is disappearing little by little from the face of the earth”.

Kamchatka region of Russia

Kamchatka, Russia is Sergey’s favorite place of shooting. “Travel to the world of the wild nature of Kamchatka is so fascinating and amazing that many years of work have gone as one day. I am happy that I had an opportunity to observe beauty of fauna of this peninsula. Memoirs, which I have got here, remain with me all my life…” Sergey says.

He thinks that each photographer should have an individual project, which he should know and develop. Sergey’s photography is focused on the wild world of Kamchatka, to be exact the wild world of a bear.

View more of Sergey Gorshkov’s images at the following web sites:

A Gallery of Images by Sergey Gorshkov

Sergey Gorshkov’s Journal/Blog site

Introducing the photography of Sergey Gorshkov

P. B. Eleazer — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 08:06:11 +0000

The internet is a wonderful tool. Programs like Facebook have allowed us to find many photographers from around the world that without the internet, we would never even know existed, much less know the quality of their work. Sergey Gorshkov is a fine example. Through many mutual photographers, we were ‘friended’ and I began to see some of Sergey’s work. In particular, an image of his of a fox in the snow caught my attention and I began more closely watching for his images. I looked up his web site and love the work there. One of the tabs features shots from Africa. Recently, he posted a link to his blog/journal with some interesting wildlife shots from Africa and (I think) Botswana. The journal is in Russian and I do not speak or read Russian … but I can enjoy looking at Mr. Gorshkov’s images … and I do.

We have chosen a few of Sergey’s ‘jumping animals’ collection to introduce you to his work …. so with no further ado, here are some of the typical images of Sergey Gorshkov (all images © Sergey Gorshkov)

Awards from the 1st Botswana Water Jumping Competition

First Prize is awarded to the Lioness

Second Prize is awarded to Sergey's Impala image

Third Prize goes to the Leopard, who may have one first if the image was taken 1/10 second sooner.)

Honorable Mention goes to the Waterbuck, who practically walks on water

Last Prize goes to Mr. Gorshkov's hippo, which made no effort to jump at all.

Links to Sergey Gorshkov’s images:

Photo of the Day: Elephants at Chobe among “40 Greatest Nature Photographs of All Time”

P. B. Eleazer — Mon, 17 May 2010 07:05:10 +0000

In honor of the 40th annual Earth Day on April 22, Christies Auction House auctioned off what was viewed as 40 Iconic Nature Photos. Within the group, this one, “Twilight of the Giants,” was taken by Frans Lanting in Botswana’s Chobe National Park in 1986. Selected by the International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP), the “40 Greatest Nature Photographs of All Time” include spectacular images of animals, plants and natural landscapes. The full gallery of photos is available HERE but you can click through our slideshow to see 10 of them. (Frans Lanting Photography, via International League of Conservation Photographers).

Chobe should be honored to have had one of these iconic shots taken within the park grounds … but we are not surpised. Congratulations to Chobe NP and to Frans Lanting on this nomination.

'Twilight of the Giants' by Frans Lanting

Frans Lanting Biography

FRANS LANTING has been hailed as one of the great nature photographers of our time. His influential work appears in books, magazines, and exhibitions around the world. For more than two decades he has documented wildlife and our relationship with nature in environments from the Amazon to Antarctica. He portrays wild creatures as ambassadors for the preservation of complete ecosystems, and his many publications have increased worldwide awareness of endangered ecological treasures in far corners of the earth.

Lanting’s work has been commissioned frequently by National Geographic, where he served as a Photographer-in-Residence. His assignments have ranged from a first look at the fabled bonobos of the Congo Basin to a circumnavigation by sailboat of South Georgia Island in the subantarctic. Images from his year-long odyssey to assess global biodiversity at the turn of the millennium filled the February 1999 issue of National Geographic. Lanting’s work also includes profiles of ecological hot spots, stories on Hawaii’s volcanoes, Zambia’s Luangwa Valley, and a series of photo essays on American landscapes. His global survey of albatrosses was published in the December 2007 National Geographic. A feature on groundbreaking research with chimpanzees in Senegal appears in the April 2008 issue of the Magazine.

In 2006, Lanting launched The LIFE Project, a lyrical interpretation of the history of life on Earth, as a book, an exhibition, an interactive website, and a multimedia orchestral performance with music by Philip Glass. Conducted by Maestra Marin Alsop, the multimedia production of LIFE premiered in Santa Cruz, California, in 2006 and is currently touring North America and Europe.

Lanting’s books have received awards and acclaim: “No one turns animals into art more completely than Frans Lanting,” writes The New Yorker. His books include Life: A Journey Through Time (2006), Jungles (2000), Penguin (1999), Living Planet (1999), Eye to Eye (1997), Bonobo, The Forgotten Ape (1997), Okavango: Africa’s Last Eden (1993), Forgotten Edens (1993), and Madagascar, A World Out of Time (1990).

Lanting is a Trustee of the Foundation Board of the University of California Santa Cruz. He serves on the National Council of the World Wildlife Fund and is a columnist for Outdoor Photographer.

Frans Lanting makes his home in Santa Cruz, California, with his wife, Christine Eckstrom, a producer, videographer, and former staff writer at National Geographic who collaborates with him on fieldwork and publishing projects

Photo of the Day/Photo Tip: ‘Saving’ a tough exposure – 2 tools

P. B. Eleazer — Sat, 15 May 2010 10:15:47 +0000

Today’s Photo of the Day is a really tough one. The original exposure is shot into the sun and at a distance. This required both a crop and the use of a lot of post processing to ’see’ the subject elephant. Why do it? Well two reasons: First, the elephant posture was good, so if the image could be saved, one may have a keeper shot. Secondly, it is always good to understand the limits of post processing recovery. These shots are probably at that limit. Here is our original conversion from RAW:

Original image - shot with Canon 30D, Canon 100-400L lens at 320mm and 1/3200 sec @ f/5.6

As you can see from the EXIF information, shooting into the sun created a very fast shutter speed. This is good, but a quick view of the histogram should have told the photographer (me) that this image needed more exposure to properly recover the dark regions. These dark areas lead to high noise when post processing. It should also be noted that the elephant is too centered in the frame to create a good composition. This latter problem can be fixed with minor image rotation and some cropping and was done for all of the below examples.

The first attempt to recover is the use of Topaz Adjust to raise the lighting and recover details. Levels were also used to raise lighting and a curve adjustment was applied to a layer of just the foreground elephant. Here is the result:

Topaz Adjust 'save' - In viewing this shot, I feel the foreground elephant has been lightened a little too much to look natural in this scene.

Another way to save the highlights and dark regions is to use HDR (high dynamic range) adjustment. To do this, I used Photomatix software. Typically, one needs at least three images to perform an HDR – one at correct exposure, one at 2 stops over exposed and one 2 stops under exposed. One can simulate this by using Lightroom or Photoshop an making exposure adjustments. I’ve successfully used this method in the past, so I thought I would try this method again. When I do HDR, I always blend the HDR image with a traditionally processed version in Photoshop by adjusting opacity of the layers. I feel this gives a more natural look. Here is the result:

HDR version of the image. This probably looked most like my eye actually saw the scene.

I am not thrilled with either of these as they stand but feel I have recovered this pretty nicely. This was probably the limit of recovery of low light. Unfortunately, the colors don’t quite look natural in any of the images.. Perhaps a better way to save this image is to do one of the above techniques and then convert to black and white. Here is the B&W conversion of the HDR version:

Black and White conversion of the HDR image

That’s my post. I’m not sure which version is the best, I will allow you to comment on your opinions. Thanks for reading.

Photo of the Day/Photo Tip – Post processing of a Kudu pair

P. B. Eleazer — Thu, 13 May 2010 09:13:20 +0000

This photo tip is an overview of capture to web photo adjustment.

Below is the original photo. My son, Justin capture this shot in Chobe NP. The camera EXIF data showed that for this shot, the image stabilized Canon 70-300 lens was used at a full zoom of 300mm. From our experience, we learned that this lens gets a little soft at greater than 260mm, but when you need the zoom, you often use full zoom anyway. On safari, we shoot images in RAW format, which means that the camera does not attempt to adjust sharpness or colors and that all of the original pixels are captured. The alternative to RAW is a .jpg file or jpeg (pronounced ‘jay peg’). A jpeg file is somewhat compressed, which saves file room, but ‘loses pixels’. Further, most camera’s will partially process images. RAW vs. Jpeg is a debate into itself and I’m not going to attempt it here. So here is the RAW file, converted to 800 pixels wide for this photo tip.

'as shot' RAW image of 2 kudus - Camera: Canon XT (350), Lens: Canon 70-300 at 300mm, 1/400 sec @ f/6.3 ©Justin Eleazer

Typically, I prefer profile and non-action shots to have the animal facing to the right. The reason is that the ‘western eye’ tends to flow through an image from left to right. If the animal faces right, we tend to feel more harmony. Once flipped, I typically create a new ‘layer’ of the image, which is just a copy, but allows me to not lose the original shot if I want to move back in my processing. With the new layer, I will first adjust ‘levels’, which essentially sets the white and black limits of my image. I will next adjust contrast, but I do this carefully as I feel contrast adjustment is a course adjustment vs. a curves adjustment. For this shot, I considered the background quite distracting due to the many limbs, so I decided to create another layer to adjust the background. On this new top layer, I applied a Gaussian blur. As one adjusts the Gaussian blur, you can preview the effect. You may be tempted to really blur the background, but that will look unnatural. I seldom go above the 2.9 setting (in this shot it is 2.2). I then add a mask to this layer so I can non-destructively ‘erase’ the blur effect on the animals. On the mask, I ‘paint’ the animals black, which reveals the layer below. I then go to that lower layer, which exposes the animals and sharpen the image using ‘unsharp mask’. As with the blur, one can easily oversharpen and for this first selective sharpening, I use a setting of 60 with a radius of 1.0. Looks pretty good, so I flatten the image, resize to 800 pixels and then lightly sharpen again (same settings as before).

The image now looks like this:

Kudu Pair with selective sharpening and blur added - © Justin Eleazer

With most images, this is all that is needed. On this particular image, I wanted to play with using Topaz Adjust plug-in. Topaz Adjust is a powerful tool that allows one to create numerous effects to increase detail, simulate HDR, simplify or just make the photo more ‘painterly’. The adjustment should be done in separate layers so one can adjust the opacity to gain the desired effect. For my final image, I used the ’simplify’ setting on the layer which reveals the background and the ’small detail’ adjustment for the kudus. I lowered the opacity on the ’small detail’ layer to 50% as more distracted from the facial expressions of the animals. I also slightly (setting of 5) boosted the saturation on the layer showing the bushes. Finally, I added a small ‘frame’ by increasing the canvas size a few pixels with a black fill. Now completed, I flatted the image, sharpened lightly (setting 60, radius 0.8) and this is Justin’s Kudus presented as our Photo of the Day:

Kudu pair ... with Topaz Adjust effect added - © Justin Eleazer

Photo of the Day – Cheetah and the Baboon Troops

P. B. Eleazer — Sun, 02 May 2010 06:47:42 +0000

One of the great things about this web site and the internet in general is the chance to meet other great wildlife and photography experts around the world. Out interest in safari photography led us to Marius Coetzee many months ago and we continue to enjoy following his travels and photography. Marius Coetzee is a professional safari guide currently based in the world renowned Sabi Sand Game Reserve, South Africa. He is an award winning wildlife photographer and his images have been published worldwide in various publication including high profile magazines like the BBC Wildlife Magazine and Africa Geographic. Marius photographs everything Africa and his image library contains thousands of images. Recently we ran across this really nice capture by Marius. Enjoy the photo and read onward to hear Mr. Coetzee’s own words on how this image came to be.

Cheetah vs. Baboon - © Marius Coetzee

While leading a photographic safari in South Africa’s Sabi Sand Game Reserve I got a call over the radio that a male cheetah was spotted close by. I approached the sighting and saw the feline lying nonchalantly under a small tree getting some much needed shade from the warm morning sun.

Suddenly a troop of Chacma Baboon approached the cheetah and a couple of males started to mob him. In minutes the whole troop approached and chased the cheetah until they were satisfied that he was no threat to any of the primates.

I am a firm believer that knowing animal behaviour and having an idea of what might happen next improves your chances of getting the perfect image. As soon as I noticed the primates I positioned the vehicle about 30 meters away from the cheetah and to my advantage the troop chased it straight past us.

Camera Equipment and Settings:

Camera: Canon 40D

Lens: Canon 70-200 f/2.8 IS USM

ISO: 400

Aperture: f/7.1

Shutter Speed: 1/2000 sec

Dive Mode: High Speed Continuous Shooting

AF Mode: AL Servo AF

Further information on Marius Coetzee:

Mr. Coetzee discusses his safari activity and also posts gorgeous photos at his web site: Marius Coetzee Photography (http://www.mariuscoetzeeafricanphotography.blogspot.com/). Marius also has a Facebook Fan Page which can be found within Facebook by searching Marius Coetzee Photography.

Photo of the Day and Photo Tip: They are your photos – They need to be special to YOU

P. B. Eleazer — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 12:16:03 +0000

That’s right. You were on the safari. You saw the sight. You captured the sight. Do others like your photo? Maybe or maybe not, but are YOU satisfied that you captured the moment and the memory? If you did, that is really all that is needed.

Today’s photo of the day is a favorite of mine. While I have one many photo contests, this one has never been entered. My photographer friends have given me feedback on the image and I appreciate that. Most do not love this image. The out of focus foreground brush is a bit distracting. The lighting is a bit harsh. The subject is too centered. No this is not an award photo, but it is a very special photo for me and my son.

A Great Photo Because it is Special to me

To understand why it is special, you need to hear a little background. Prior to this day, I had never been ‘in the bush’. This was my first safari day. I was excited to see game. I was nervous of driving the 4×4 in the deep sand. I was hoping that we saw game. I was hoping this would be a trip of a lifetime for my son. We entered the park and drove down to the Chobe River. From a distance, we saw a few elephants and some impala. Maybe this was going to be a good trip???? Our friends and South African guide experts, Paul and Patsy were in another vehicle ahead of us. They advised that we should take the ridge road into the park further … so we did.

After driving a few kilometers, we reached the peak of a hill and some heavy brush very close to the road. As I rounded the corner … there was a huge lone Cape Buffalo coming out of the bush and towards my truck. I was new to the bush, but have seen enough National Geographic specials to know I was confronting one of the Big Five. Yes, one of the most dangerous animals to hunt in Africa. I also knew that lone males were more dangerous … and I knew that this animal can be mean. Very mean just for the sake of being mean. I was nervous. I was tense. I took this photo.

Even today, as a more experienced safari traveler, spotting this single bull may give me a thrill, but I am sure it would not be ‘that special moment’ that it was the first time I confronted a Cape Buffalo.

Is this a great shot? Heck yes it is to me … and that is all that matters on this one.

Conclusion: If your photograph speaks to you, if it brings back a special memory, then it is a great photo … and don’t let anyone sway you from that belief.

My Great Photo - A Powerful Memory for Me - and sometimes that is what counts!

Photo of the Day: Giraffe Falls in Pothole

P. B. Eleazer — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 09:32:21 +0000

Today in the Us is April Fools day. A day when you are suppose to pull a spoof or joke on a friend. With that as a warning, we bring you today’s Photo of the Day.

We have written previously about the really really bad potholes that have virtually eaten away the road north of Nata. I also spotted a lot of wild game along that road. I never really thought of the dangers of this road to animals crossing, but …

So … April Fool’s – no this didn’t really happen.

Photo of the Day: The Catch – Fish Eagles 1, Tiger Fish 0

P. B. Eleazer — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 02:35:46 +0000

Close up of a Fish Eagle claws tightly own a tiger fish, fractions of a second after the catch. The precision at which these birds catch fish is truly a sight to behold.

Photographers, in particular, note the EXIF data in the caption. to stop the action of a fish eagle you really need greater than 1/1000 sec. and to make sure you have the needed DOF, f8 or greater is recommended.

Close-up of a fish eagle and it's catch. Canon 50D with Canon 100-400L at 310mm, ISO 400, 1/1600 sec and f8 - copyright P. B. Eleazer

For those of you that want to see the rest of the eagle, here it is for you:

With birds in flight, the danger of 'filling the frame' is the potential to clip part of the bird - in this case the wingtips.