Well I’m sure you’ve all just been dying for another of my blockhouse walk photodocs… I had a cold and was waiting to come right before re-embarking on exercise. Hopefully the fact that I’m typing this rather than lying dead from a stroke means I waited long enough. For the first time I decided to listen to music on my walk. Well… you add that mountain feeling to those music feelings and you can get pretty close to ecstasy, no lie. I had some thoughts: ...
I can’t remember if I posted one of these pics from Punda Maria restcamp in Kruger in Jan 2018. It’s far in the tropical North of the park. The waterhole you can watch from inside the camp is full of amazing visitors. Without having to be worried about gate-closing times, you can also catch them in the best evening light.
A waterbuck bull. It has big horns and a ring around its butt. What’s not to like?
This was the second leopard posing on our drive this afternoon. We only stopped for a few minutes for this one because it was 20 minutes to gate closing. The other one that @withoutaleaf photographed was even more amazing.
An old chap chewing on a grass stem.
There have been heavy rains. We’ve never seen Kruger this green before. Photos can’t convey the glowing, emerald green of parts of the Southern Park. The animals look like they’re in one of those English ‘safari parks.
After three days on the road it’s great to finally arrive at the best place on Earth.
Mad kitter. I’ve shot a lot of wildlife footage over the years but I’ve never done anything with it. Maybe it’s time to actually cut some of it together - even though the gear I used is pretty primitive by todays standards.
Not my best pic from the trip. But you can’t beat this for excitement. We were given bad instructions on where to look for this leopard - so out of 35 mins we spent there we spent about 5 mins actually looking at the animals. But shortly after we did spot them, this little leopard kitten stuck up it’s little head and I grabbed a couple of pics. This also shows you why people use such enormous lenses for wildlife photography. This was with a long lens (500mm) and a 1.4x extender. And this is still a crop of only probably 40% of the image area. On a phone this leopard cub would have only been a few pixels. ...
Crested Barbet. Not uncommon to see in Johannesburg gardens. I managed to photograph a few things that got close enough for my Pentax 67 film camera. I’ll have to wait and see whether any of them worked out. I might try it again though. It’s a lot of fun to use and the clatter of that enormous shutter is very satisfying.