South Africa – Page 33 – Jennifer Sawicky Photography

March 20, 2018March 18, 2018

2018-03-20: WPC: I’d rather be…

There’s a simple answer to the question posed in this week’s photo challenge “Where would you rather be?”.

I’d rather be on safari!

20180320_WPC I'd rather be3.jpg — I’d rather be watching the sun set over the bush with a glass of wine in hand, and great company to have a chat with.

I’d rather be watching the birds from the shade of a lodge veranda.

20180320_WPC I'd rather be2.jpg — I’d rather be looking out at the vast expanse of the universe, listening to the sounds of the bush at night.

I’d rather be taking the opportunity to discover new cultures.

I’d rather be out learning and experiencing different ways of life.

I’d rather be looking at this view over lunch, than working away on my computer.

201803120_I'd rather be Elephants.jpg — And of course, I’d much rather be hanging around with elephants.

WPC: I’d rather be

March 13, 2018March 11, 2018

2018-03-13: WPC Story

The photo challenge topic of the week is story. So, much like my wordless Wednesday posts, it’s images that tell there own story without having to get all wordy.

I hope you enjoy!

WPC: Story

March 12, 2018March 11, 2018

Happy Monday everyone! To start the week, I thought I’d share a group of mangy lion cubs, spotted near Ngala Camp last year. This was an excellent lion sighting; during the time we spent with them, we saw lots of interaction amongst the cubs and between the cubs and their moms and aunties. The pride males paid the group a brief visit, and we even had the opportunity to watch the little ones suckle and take trips to drink out of a deep puddle. There are a lot of times that you find lions in the daytime (or anytime really) and they do nothing but lay around like lumps, so it was wonderful to have so much going on during this sighting.

20180312_MM — A group of lion cubs, under the watchful eyes of one of the pride females. Ngala Camp, May 2017.

February 27, 2018February 25, 2018

2018-02-27: WPC: A Face in the Crowd

This might be an odd take on the topic of the week, a face in the crowd, but the purpose of the topic was to using different angles and orientations, shadow and silhouette to mask some of the features of the subject.

Portraits aren’t my thing, so I have decided to share a silhouette image.

Let me know what you think 🙂

WPC: A Face in the Crowd

February 26, 2018February 25, 2018

2018-02-26: Monochrome Monday

While I could have zoomed in on this rhino and created a standard portrait, I thought keeping things wide and showing the rhino in the landscape was far more effective for this scene. Had we been driving fast, we probably would have missed it completely, as most of the time the head was down and the horn wasn’t visible, making it easy to mistake the rhino for a rock (and vice versa).

May there always be rhinos to peacefully graze.

Wishing you an excellent week ahead.

A rhino grazing in the late morning. South Africa, May 2017.

February 25, 2018

2018-02-25: Revisiting Old Work

During this month of revisiting old work, I’ve had the opportunity to take many trips down memory lane, remembering amazing moments in nature and the challenging times trying to work out what to do with my camera to make the image that appeared on my LCD match the thought I had in my head.

What this monthly topic has hammered home is that the gear doesn’t matter, its what you are able to do with it. The software used to edit images doesn’t matter, its understanding how to make the tools work for you in the best ways possible. These things get said time and time again, but they really become apparent when you start reviewing a collection of work gathered over time that has been captured and edited with a variety of different resources.

No one looking at my images is going to say “You shot that on this camera body and then you edited it with that software program. There are times when I have been out shooting with more than one camera and once the images have been uploaded to my computer, I don’t know which image was shot with which body, without checking the info panel!

At the end of the day, the only thing that should matter is if the image moves you in some way.

And with that, here are a few images I have reworked this week. I hope you enjoy, and please check back next Sunday to find out what the topic of the month will be for March.

A rhino with her calf seen while doing volunteer work with Wildlife Act in 2014.

Not a spectacular picture, but a fun memory for me. I took a day off work and went out shooting for a school project I was working on. It was a fine fall day so I took Spencer with me, and he was overjoyed at having the opportunity to dig in the sand next to the river. October 2013.

My first foray into Botswana included viewing elephants in the water from a boat. An amazing experience! April 2013.

For my then and now image, I chose this wild dog lounging in the shade, seen while working with Wildlife Act in 2014.

Here is the now version of this image. I think I was much better able to highlight the texture of the fur compared to the original edit.

February 21, 2018February 20, 2018

2018-02-21: Wordless Wednesday

February 19, 2018February 20, 2018

2018-02-19: Revisiting Old Work

Before I get into today’s post, I wanted to say sorry for the lack of activity over the past week. I made the plunge to move to a new self-hosted website so I could combine my blog and gallery (something I have wanted to do for over a year now). And while the internet does make everything appear to be instantaneous, moving 4+ years of blog posts, migrating a domain to a new hosting provider and setting everything up just takes time. Especially when you aren’t a web professional! My gallery is very much a work in progress, but the blog is up and running as usual, and fingers crossed my followers have been migrated over properly so someone, besides my Mom, has the chance to read this 🙂

I was hoping to get this posted yesterday, but the Happiness Engineers at WordPress just finished with the behind the scenes work to get my followers transferred to the new site. So this post is better late than never.

Given all the behind the scenes work I have been doing, I am really glad I didn’t choose a topic that required me to get out shooting this week.

The photos below don’t have much rhyme or reason, other than they caught my eye when scrolling through my picture folders with the thought that I might be able to make something a bit better out of it now than I could when I shot it.

I hope you enjoy today’s selections, once I get the gallery up and running, I’ll post a note about that and start looking for some feedback on the redesign.

The steely gaze of a vulture perched on a dead tree. I didn’t do much to this; a little cropping, and a bit of work to bring out the texture in the feathers. April, 2013.

If you are in South Africa in November, when the leatherback turtles begin nesting, I would highly recommend the experience of going out to try to see them. It is such an epic experience; but not the best for photography, especially in the rain. The shots I captured were more proof that I was there then anything, and I really didn’t try editing them originally. Here I didn’t do much other than try to bring some of the texture back to the sand and correct the strange colour cast caused by red-lamp flashlights plus camera flash. For a sense of scale, this turtle is basically the size of a VW Bug; it weighed approx. 600 kilos.

Kalahari the cheetah climbing a hill under a dreary late afternoon sky. I loved the vantage point of the images I shot at this time, but the harsh light made them a challenge to work with. October, 2014.

For the then and now section this week, I chose this image of the Sand River at sunrise captured in 2013 on my first journey to Africa. I actually quite like the original edit that I did, so I tried to interpret it in a bit of a different way, focusing on the warmth and the fog on the updated edit.

Sunrise on the Sand River – original edit.

Sunrise on the Sand Rover – updated edit.

December 13, 2017

2017-12-13: Wordless Wednesday

November 30, 2017

2017-11-30: WPC Experimental

I am a few days delayed in posting for this topic, but I wanted to play along anyways. The photo prompt last week was experimental, and it gives me an opportunity to share some of the images I call my Artistic Impressions.

It’s timely, as I was just listening to a wildlife photography podcast that I really enjoy, discussing photographic art as opposed to straight “documentary style” wildlife photography. I thought the comments of the host, Gerry Vanderwalt, were absolutely spot on. His take on it was use your wildlife images in whatever way you choose to create the art you want to make, but just be very clear when presenting it to let people know that what they are seeing is not reality.

Now, I don’t think anyone would mistake any of these images for reality, and the comment was more aimed towards compositing work, but, I really do feel that people should create whatever moves them. If reality didn’t match how the moment made you feel, then turn your images into something that does invoke the feeling of the moment. Just don’t try to claim it is something that it’s not.

Anyways, on to the images 🙂