Showcasing the beauty of Mother Nature
Each year, the transition into autumn hits me harder and harder. I find the grey skies and rain day after day a bit much to handle (the colder temperatures don’t impress me that much either). However, we have recently had some gorgeous weather, and I’m glad I had my camera with me to capture a little bit of it.
I had my “photo assistant” along to enjoy the lovely weather. While I took photos of the river, he dug in the sand 🙂
I spent time with my landscape photography class at Pacific Spirit Park last weekend, taking photographs on the theme of texture and patterns in the forest. It turned out to be a lovely day as the rains had stopped and the occasional sun beam burst through the trees.
I hadn’t planned on posting any photos, but when reviewing my favourites with some classmates in my Photoshop course, I was told that I should be enlarging and printing on canvas my forest photo. It’s not something I’m planning on doing, but I thought it is at least worth a share on my blog.
I spent the Labour Day long weekend at Whistler, enjoying wonderful company and witnessing the marriage of two lovely friends 🙂 The weather was perfect, and the beer and wine were free flowing. I dragged up all my camera gear… and made very little use of it. I was simply too busy relaxing and socializing to spend too much time staring through my viewfinder.
But I did take a few photos…
I’ve been neglecting working on this blog for some time – and even though I don’t have much to say about these photos, I really need to get back in the habit of posting.
I spent some time out in Maple Ridge collecting a few final shots for a photography assignment, here are some of my favourites.
I’m currently taking another digital photography course, so I have been busy the last few weeks snapping photos to meet very specific parameters. I was happy as the assignment this week was for landscape photos, both natural and urban.
I don’t yet have a macro lens, but I do really like the results of the close ups shown below – even though they really make me feel as if fall is on the way.
On a larger scale, I captured this lovely sunset near an area where I normally walk Spencer. I often see ducks, geese, heron and the occasional hawk and bald eagle in the area, as well as coyotes if we head out early enough.
Londolozi is well known for the number of leopards they have living within the bounds of the property, and I was lucky enough to see three of them during my visit. They were elusive at first though, and it wasn’t until our third afternoon game drive that we finally saw our first leopard; the lions stole the show for the first half of our visit.
It was around 4:30 when Talley took a call that a leopard had been spotted with a fresh kill, and even though the viewing was not likely to yield great photos, we headed in that direction anyways, since we had yet to see a leopard.
When we found him, he was deep under some bushes with an impala ram. He had already had his fill, but was still working on pulling the fur off of the impala. The view from the vehicle was obstructed by the bushes, while I managed to get a couple shots and a short video clip, mostly I just watched.
We came across this leopard, as well as others, the next morning. The photographic opportunities and the story of that morning viewing were amazing!
I’ve not been having much success in crafting regular posts these days. I had planned on dedicating a post to birds in flight, but many of the photos I thought I would use do not look as crisp as I would like, and are now in the reject pile. Besides, it seemed a bit discriminatory towards those birds I have had the pleasure photographing that do not have the gift of flight.
So instead I’ve put together a rather random selection of birds to feature this week, and fingers crossed I will have both the time and inspiration for something more next week.
So without further ado…
I’ve just finished a blog post for Londolozi’s guest blog page, and now it is time to get back to keeping up my own page. Except I’ve got a touch of writer’s block.
I’ve been trying to think of what angle to take, what animal to highlight, and right now, nothing is coming to me at all. But these past few weeks, I have been working on a photo book project with my Mom, so I thought I would post a few of the pictures we have selected to include so far.
I headed out at 6am on Saturday, armed with a travel mug of coffee, my camera, tripod and ND filter, in the hopes of practicing some long exposure landscape photos at the Pitt River. My intention was to work on techniques that when converted to monochrome, renders the water looking misty and any clouds in the sky ethereal. But the BC weather foiled me again – it was TOO NICE. I won’t complain about that, ever, I just couldn’t photograph what I had hoped to.
I’ve noted the settings that I have used and some of the combinations may seem a bit odd. I was playing around in manual mode and while it was bright, I was in the shade. Since I had my tripod, I went with the one thing my instructor repeated a good half dozen times in class “If you have access to a tripod, you have no reason to use anything other than ISO 100.”
The river was smooth like glass and a lovely Great Blue Heron sat on a pillar in the water the entire time I was out, giving me the opportunity for some lovely shots of both the hills and the water, and the heron. I’m sure I’ll be back to African animals later in the week, but I was pretty happy with these shots, taken so close to home.
Hey you – made you look! You probably weren’t expecting a post dedicated to Rhinos, were you?
Part of my desire to see a Rhino was based on fear. Fear that if I waited too long, they would be poached into extinction. I certainly hope that doesn’t happen. At last count, 273 had been lost in Kruger National Park this year alone. It makes me feel sad and dismayed that people cling to these outdated, and patently false beliefs about the power of Rhino Horn (or Bear Gallbladder, Tiger parts…) Sadly, as long as there is a market for these items, people will continue to brutalize animals.
The first time I saw a Rhino, it was somewhat anti-climatic. We were just about to stop for sundowners, and there they were…. It was one of those sighting that I had to be told where to look, and I still didn’t see them at first. They were far from us, in the tall grasses and amongst some bushes, in the falling light. Blackish grey blobs in the distance. Even at 300mm zoom, I couldn’t get a decent view of them. It didn’t help that the group of three was so focused on grazing, not a single one raised their heads the entire time we were stopped. It was exciting to know they were there, but I really didn’t get a sense of them at all.
It wasn’t until our last evening game drive that we had a proper opportunity to watch the rhinos and get some good photo opportunities. I was surprised by how close we were able to be to them in the vehicle, but they were completely unconcerned with us. We were completely captivated viewing them, and they were completely captivated by their grazing. I had heard previously that rhinos have terrible vision, and looking at them up close, it is easy to understand that fact, as they appear to have very small eyes in proportion to their body size, and they always look to me a bit squinty, like they need a strong pair of glasses.
