Jennifer Sawicky Photography

March 22, 2020

2020-03-22: Leopards at night

At the start of the month I shared a post with some images of leopards at night and this post is a follow-on to that, showing what images taken with a red spotlight filter look like.

I’ve done a lot of editing in the past of red spotlight filter images to black and white, as I find they turn out to be stunning (there are a few examples of lions at night in my gallery that were done this way) but I wanted to leave these as is, and do the best I could with editing the images, because seeing them this way gives another real life look at what being on safari, and on a night game drive in particular, can be like.

DSCF2718 copy-Edit — A young female leopard that we came across on our first drive while staying at Lion Sands River Lodge. This had been quite an epic game drive as about 15 minutes before this, I saw my first ever honey badgers!

DSCF3193 copy-Edit — This was a bit of a strange sighting, as we were tracking a leopard (not this one) but the ranger and tracker kept finding confusing tracks that backtracked over each other. We finally found this small female in a tree, with a much larger male on the ground nearby. There was also another male in the area, and once the team figured all that out, the tracks made a whole lot more sense.

DSCF3194 copy-2-Edit — The red filter puts less strain on the eyes for the animal being viewed, while still allowing for some viewing and photo opportunities. Even with the spotlight, the images I took were between ISO 5000 and ISO 12800. I had a couple even at 25,600, but didn’t select them as there were similar images with less noise, so why go through the extra work?

DSCF3219 copy-Edit — This image is at ISO 12,800 and there is definitely a deterioration in quality compared to some of the others (plus the noise reduction has made the images appear blurry), but the moment here was interesting as this female was about to head down the tree, but then spotted the male still moving below and decided to hold fast awhile longer. She was definitely a very nervous cat.

DSCF1759 — This is one of the males that was involved in all the drama; I didn’t have an opportunity to see the second male as we had had a really interesting sighting and another vehicle showed up with guests that hadn’t seen a leopard yet, so we let them take over our position and carry on trying to track the second male through the bushes. Even a leopard in the dark under red light, is better than no leopard at all. And they did manage to find him and have a quick sighting before heading back to camp for dinner.

I hope you have enjoyed, and wishing you a safe and healthy week ahead. Take care.

March 18, 2020

2020-03-18: Wordless Wednesday

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March 16, 2020

202-03-16: Monochrome Monday

A simple giraffe to end the day.

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March 15, 2020

2020-03-15: African Birds

It was far too cold for me to get out and photograph any local birds this week, so instead I have come up with quite a random assortment of African bird images to share this week.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead. Stay safe out there!

DSCF0531 copy-Edit — A pair of crested francolin, part of a large group that were foraging along the side of the road.

DSCF0890 copy-Edit — My personal favourite, the lilac breasted roller.

DSCF2467 copy-Edit — A female bearded woodpecker seen on an early morning game drive.

XT3X3188 copy-Edit — This photo makes me laugh, because when I look at it, I can hear the bird calling “Go Away”. These are a pair of grey go-away birds.

XT3X3703 — A coqui francolin pausing from it’s foraging to give me a photo op.

March 11, 2020

2020-03-11: Wordless Wednesday

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March 9, 2020

2020-03-09: Monochrome Monday

A gentle giant to start the week.

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March 8, 2020

2020-03-08: Redpolls

For two seasons in a row, I didn’t see a single redpoll over the winter, but over the last few weeks they have been in my yard in droves, jostling for position on the feeders with the chickadees and adding little flashes of colour to the otherwise rather drab winter landscape.

I still find it a bit baffling that anything would consider my area a good place to spend the winter, but I do get that in comparison to places even further north, it’s probably a bit easier to make it through the season here.

I’m enjoying their presence while it lasts, as soon bird feeding time will be over as the bears begin to emerge. There’s still a while to enjoy the birds as we are still pretty deep in the grip of winter, despite my best attempts to will the snow to melt with the power of my mind 🙂

Here are a few images I captured a couple of days ago, when it wasn’t -20C!

I’ll keep up my mantra, spring is coming soon! Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

March 4, 2020

2020-03-04: Wordless Wednesday

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March 2, 2020March 1, 2020

2020-03-02: Monochrome Monday

This image is a bit of a continuation of yesterday’s Leopards at night theme.

The one difference here is this was shot under a red spotlight, whereas the images shared yesterday were either with a spotlight without a colour filter, or under natural available light. I’ll be working on some more of the images shot under red light shortly, and share them as a separate post.

I hope you enjoy – happy Monday!

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March 1, 2020

2020-03-01: Leopards at night

Leopards are generally more active at night than during the daytime, which can make for challenging, yet thrilling, sightings when you are out on a game drive. I am always interested first in enjoying the sighting, with the photos coming second, but that’s not to say that I don’t like to try and capture images under these more challenging conditions.

Conditions vary whether it is dawn / dusk or at night; dawn and dusk images may be able to be captured with the ambient light available, but will generally need a really high ISO and as such be noisy. Those captured after dark will generally be lit by spot light, sometimes with a red filter, so there can be strange colour casts, blown out highlights and all sorts of other challenges. But, if you are capturing images in that situation, you are witnessing an apex predator in its natural environment, and what could be better than that?

I hope you enjoy my selection of images for the day; wishing everyone a great week, and a great month ahead.