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.
First off, I must apologize for not posting for the last couple of week. I had the best of intentions while away to keep up with my regular posting schedule, but that fell by the wayside pretty quickly as I relaxed fully into holiday mode. I’ve been back a little over a week and am just now getting into organizing photos.
It may surprise some that the first images I am posting are pretty crappy photos, but I was so excited about the sighting that I had to share them. This was my 6th trip to Africa, and after hoping and wishing that one day it would happen, I finally saw honey badgers. Not only that, I saw them on my very first game drive of the trip!
We were in quite a dark, tree lined area near Lion Sands River Lodge, and these two honey badgers shot out of the bushes onto the road, ran in front of the vehicle chattering amongst themselves, and then disappeared back in to the bush. All told, we probably had a view of them for 30 seconds or so. The images that I captured were only in a 6 second window. So while the images aren’t great, at least they are proof that I finally saw the elusive honey badger. We actually had one run across the road in daylight while at another camp towards the end of the trip, but that was literally a blink and you miss it moment, and I didn’t even have time to get my camera up to my eye before it was gone.
I edited these images using both On1 Photo Raw (for basic corrections) and then using Topaz Studio and the new Topaz Denoise AI program. The Denoise AI was able to get the best out the image that I could. These won’t be featured images printed for display around my house, but they are a wonderful reminder of an amazing game drive filled with interesting sightings (I’ll share some of the other interesting creatures at a later date, as for now, duty calls and I have a lawn to mow).
