Today is World Giraffe Day, and an opportunity for me to not have to think what to post! I can just share a few images of these adorable and goofy looking animals 🙂
A pair of giraffes in the late afternoon light.
A very interesting, and very sad sighting. This was from my 2017 trip to the Skeleton Coast in Namibia. We found signs of a lion and followed it until we also found drag marks from a kill, and ended up, seeing this mama giraffe holding vigil while her youngster was being dined on by a lone lioness in the bushes. The track marks shows that the giraffe had tried to charge the lioness, but sadly nothing could bring back her calf. I have a few other shots from this sighting that you can find in an older post here. This image was so brightly coloured it looked like some type of HDR image; so I had to do some serious desaturation to get it to look reasonable. I’m not sure what causes that to happen every once in a while, but it does make for interesting editing. This young giraffe was part of a group of 4 or 5 that were scattered in the trees enjoying some browsing.
Here are a few images of Mom’s in the bush, all taken during my last trip to South Africa. Looking through my photos brings back such lovely memories, made even better by the fact that I experienced them with my Mom 🙂
I’m working on a guest post for a friend doing an Armchair safari series, and thought I would share the images here as well. I decided that the theme of my post would be sunrise to sunset on safari; showcasing images from dawn till dusk while out in the bush. These are all shot during my last trip to South Africa and were from all of the camps that I stayed at. I would have to plan a lot more in advance while out in the field to have a sunrise to sunset images from a single day (note to self, do that next trip!).
Rather than a highlight reel of amazing sightings, these are just a collection of moments out in the bush.
I hope you enjoy.
6am – Lions. Two of the Torchwood Pride greet each other.
7am – Hyena and Impala. A group of impala look on wearily as a hyena approaches down the road.
8am – Elephants. A pair of youngsters tussle while the older elephants graze nearby.
9am – Giraffe. A giraffe bull paused in the road allowing me to capture this image while on the way back to camp for breakfast.
10am – Waterbuck. A waterbuck heads towards the dam for a drink.
11am – Hippos. A group of hippos making their way back to the water to beat the midday heat.
12pm – Yellow-billed hornbill. A “flying banana” perched just beyond the deck at camp.
1pm – Landscape in infrared. Midday was a great time to wander around camp with my infrared filter and play around with long exposure photos. This was shot from the deck at Lion Sands Tinga Lodge.
2pm – Purple Crested Turaco. I tried for ages to capture a good image of this beautiful bird from my balcony, but given they like to be deep in the branches, it really wasn’t meant to be. It was a fun way to spend part of the afternoon though.
3pm – Cheetah. We’d only been out on game drive for about 10 minutes when we came across this cheetah, and had the chance to watch her stalking some impala. They spotted her right away so supper wasn’t in her immediate future.
4pm – Wild Dog. Spending time with wild dogs always makes my heart happy. We had a good half an hour with them before they took off in all directions, setting out to hunt.
5pm – Honey Badgers. I had always wanted to see honey badgers and on my first game drive of the trip I finally had my chance. It only lasted about 30 seconds but it certainly was thrilling, even if all I could get were butt shots!
6pm – Leopard. We were heading back to camp for drinks and dinner and came across this leopard heading in to this large puddle to drink. It was a quick stop before the leopard was on its way.
Happy Monday! I am super grateful that I was able to get my computer back out of sick bay this weekend, complete with a new SSD drive, so hopefully it’ll be running well for a couple more years (at least).
I got the computer back, but haven’t actually had an opportunity to do anything with it in terms of editing. Even with the system restore from a backup, there are little quirks that need to be addressed.
So here is a giraffe image I edited a few weeks ago and had ready to go. These two were part of a group of about 6-8 that were spread out amongst the acacia trees. We were on our way to check on a lion sighting from the previous day, so we didn’t spend too much time with these guys. Not that we needed to rush to the lions; they had barely moved since the previous day.
I’m focusing on photo art this month, and decided to start things off focusing on giraffes. The easily recognizable shape of a giraffe meant that no matter how far I took the editing, the shape of the animal would still be recognizable as a giraffe.
Since I don’t have any natural talents in drawing and painting, creating these painterly interpretations from the photographs that I take is my opportunity to set aside the need to keep an image looking realistic, and instead focus on what the image is saying to me.
I hope you like my selections for the week; check back next Sunday to see the next instalment.
I took this image in a lot of different directions before coming up with this final edit. It is almost starting to resemble a photograph of a giraffe painted on the fabric.
The rosy tint and soft focus effects give this image the feel of a vintage photograph.
Even though they are enormous animals, giraffes have an amazing ability to blend into their surroundings. I wanted to highlight the camouflage nature of the coat in this edit.
This giraffe image reminds me of some of the animal paintings I have seen in old stately homes.
I’m sure most would have expected me to start with elephants for my first post in a series on babies in the bush; and I was tempted to. We spent time with so many large herds, and saw so many young elephants, I am spoiled for choice with images. But, I decided that I would start with something different, and chose to focus on animals with hooves instead. My timing was wrong to see tiny impala, but I did see a fair number of young giraffe, waterbuck and zebra during my travels.
I hope you enjoy my selections, and wishing you an excellent week ahead.
This giraffe was acting a bit like a crossing guard for several youngsters crossing the road in front of us. Not the best images, but great to show the size difference between the babies and the adults. I only wish there had been an impala in the shot too, to really show how large the young giraffe actually are.
Fulfilling the cross guard role as another youngster moved from one side to the other. There were about a half dozen giraffe in this group in total.
A herd of zebra pause to allow the littlest one a chance to suckle.
A young waterbuck blending quite nicely with the autumn tones of the bush. Mom was nearby grazing.
A zebra and her foal pause to check out our vehicle, before carry on slowly strolling through the bush.
One waterbuck mama acting as babysitter for a group of youngsters. They were all lounging close to the dam at Chitwa Chitwa, while other members of the group were grazing or drinking.
I was fortunate to see lots of youngsters during my latest travels. While the young elephants are definitely my favourite to watch, especially when they start waving their tiny trunks around trying to act tough, all the young animals in the bush are a delight to see.
Here are just a few of the sightings that I had.
A giraffe calf having a late afternoon milk break.
We spent some time with this pair of rhinos while they grazed away the early morning. Here the young one had just turned to look as another vehicle was heading in to take over our viewing position. Moments later, the head was back down and he was happily munching on the grass again.
A pair of lion cubs suckling.
A young leopard doing a very accurate impression of a sulky teenager.
