Posts Tagged photography

Ugandan Kob – Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda

Nearing the end of our 21 day African trip, my wife and I spent 2 days in

Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda

. This turned out to be one of the most fantastic parks I’ve ever visited with a lot of different wildlife to the norm in South Africa.

For me one of the highlights of this park was the spectacular scenic vista’s throughout the park set against the most stunning and pristine grasslands.

The park offered fantastic opportunities to capture relatively simple subjects against magnificent backdrops.

This male

Ugandan Kob

stopped for a brief second to pose for me in a pristine grassland surrounded by Acacia sieberana / Paperbark’s.

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Unite Against Rhino Poaching for World Environment Day

With today being

World Environment Day

and #africantuesday on Google+, I felt it appropriate to bring to the foreground a very serious issue that has been plaguing South Africa for years but most especially the past 5 years. Since 2007 South Africa has seen over 1219 Rhino’s slaughtered for their horn, In just the last 2 and a half years the number slaughtered is just over 1,000 with still 7 months to go till 2012 comes to an end.

During the Honorary Ranger’s Annual Indaba in May 2012, hosted At Addo National Elephant Park, Unitrans VW & Audi Handed over the April donation of R 461 000 to the Chairman of the Honorary Rangers, Jansen Davies. This sizable donation raised by UniteAgainstPoaching brings the total amount donated to counter poaching in the last 9 Months to a fantastic R 3,61 MILLION!!!!

But this is not nearly enough and we must continue to put pressure on government to hand out stiffer and harsher sentences to those caught dealing in Rhino horn. Our

Rhino population

has been severely reduced in the past 5 and a half years and if this problem is not brought to an abrupt halt all we will leave for our children to see one day is photographs of these magnificent beasts. South Africa and the World must

Unite Against Rhino Poaching

we simply cannot leave only photographs of these magnificent animals for our children to see.

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Flora of Magaliesburg – Cotyledon orbiculata

It’s

World Environment Day

today and I dug this one up from my archives.

Cotyledon orbiculata

is a well known South African medicinal plant which grows in a variety of areas throughout South Africa. This one captured at sunset on a cool winters evening in the

Mountains of Magaliesberg

. The Magaliesburg district is facing an onslaught of mining applications that threaten the

biodiversity

of the area, you can read more about that here. Plans are afoot to establish a Biosphere for the Magaliesburg District to further strengthen and protect the environment surrounding the

Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site

.

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Fujifilm Getaway Wildlife Awards 2011

Greetings friends and readers, yesterday I received some really great news regarding the

Fujifilm Getaway Wildlife Awards 2011

.
 
My image “At the mercy of men” of a lone Rhinoceros in black and white was the overall winner of the Animal General category of this year’s competition. For several years this has remained a rather tough category to crack through but this year the judges saw something that really caught their eye and I am elated at being chosen as the winner for this category. In addition I received First Runner Up in the same category with another image of mine

“Lone Jackal on Etosha Pan”

which is another low key monochrome image taken in Etosha earlier this year. I was also chosen as winner of the Landscapes and Plants category for a second year running with my image “Deadvlei Sunrise” taken in the iconic and world famous dead pan nestled in the tall red sand dunes of Namibia. Last but not least, my image “Rush Hour” of a wildebeest migration in the

Maasai Mara

, received a Certificate of Merit in the Animal Behaviour category of the competition.
 
It’s been really wonderful news and I’m still pinching myself thinking I have dreamed this all up.
 
I would like to thank everyone at Fujifilm and Getaway for these great honours and recognition of my work. I would also like to thank you, my friends and followers, who have been there supporting me every step of the way.
 
The Fujifilm Getaway Wildlife Awards remains to be one of the most coveted awards by

South African photographers

. This is one of the few

photographic awards

left in the world that judges images based on the actual print instead of a digital image on screen.  This year the quality of the winning images and certificates across all categories was really top class and it’s great to see some of the top photographers in South Africa recognised for their hard work and perserverance.
 
With the total onslaught of

Rhino poaching in South Africa

over the last 2 years it is especially welcome to see my Rhino image displayed for all to see.

Conservation and protection of wildlife

are issues which have always been very close to my heart and the Rhino poaching issue especially is one that digs deep into the psyche of just about every nature lover in the world.  The image is very close to my heart and was that way from the very moment I captured it. To me it portrays a vision that I hope to never see in my lifetime, the last Rhino standing out in an open field long after all the other Rhino’s have been slaughtered. It would be a grim day if we ever see the headline “Last Rhino Killed”.
 
Thank you once again to everyone for their support and encouragement over the years.
 
Over the next few weeks I’ll be delving into each of these 4 images with a separate blog post on each where I’ll share a little about the locations, circumstances and thought processes surrounding the images.

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Golden Harvest | Magaliesburg Agricultural Landscape Photography

I’ve lived in a farming community in

Magaliesburg

for over 5 years now and it’s given me many great opportunities to

photograph the agricultural landscape

and activities. On the day this photo was taken it had been overcast and cool all day so I was not even thinking of shooting anything but close to sunset I noticed there was a nice gap between the clouds and horizon and thought I might just be in luck so I grabbed my camera and headed out.
 
My neighbor who had just completed his maize harvest had sent his disc plough out to process all the discarded plant material back into the ground. By chance he left his disc plough out for the night and just happened to leave it perfectly positioned for me giving me a nice anchor in fields that are otherwise devoid of anchors.
 
Just as the sun crept under the cloud bank the most beautiful light streamed across the farmlands. The yellow disc plough lit up in an intense golden colour and the sunlight clipped the bits of plant material still protruding from the ground turning them into flakes of gold.
 
This photo quickly found its way into my personal favorites and eventually went on to take second prize in the Nikon Lifestyle Photographic Competition 2011 held by the

Magalies Meander

and

Nikon South Africa

.
 
This is a single exposure, no filters or

HDR techniques

were used to compose this image. Image can also be viewed on 500px.com

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