I’m still playing with close up photography with flash. Off the camera this time. This little running cactus on our front stoop - placed there by @cara.stacey - didn’t flower at all the first few years we were here but now is running colours up the mast it seems like every two or three months.
And here she is: the African Honey Bee. Known in the USA as the African Killer Bee (they’re a lot more venomous than European or American honey bees. You do not want to piss off a swarm of them). I came so close to nailing focus on this one. Insect photography is hard.
I think this is a bee of some kind. I’m not sure how many South Africans realise we have many different kinds of bees besides honey bees.
Doing a bit of close-up photography with flash for the first time really. I had more ambitious plans which fell apart but this on-camera flash with a tiny soft box was actually a great introduction. ISO and aperture darkened the ambient light so that the flash did most of the work isolating these flowers against darkness. Kirstenbosch naturally an ideal place to experiment.
Lovely morning at Intaka Island with my dad and my dear cousin @joydemillar Waiting proved worthwhile and this living jewel of South Africa’s rivers and lakes eventually settled close enough. It had a ring on its tiny leg. These little Malachite Kingfishers are about the size of a large hen’s egg. This one is, I think, a sub-adult with traces of black still on its bill.
Another one from Kirstenbosch the other day. This is the remnant of a protea flower.
Tiny critters in a big landscape. Almost every pile of boulders (ancient magma chambers exposed by erosion and then crumbled by weather, plants, and time) has a pair of resident klipspringers (rock-hoppers) - an adorable, agile, and feisty little antelope. These plaques on the rocks are the kind of memorialising that used to be de rigueur in the old days. Now such things are usually confined to camps and gates rather than forced onto the landscape.
Kruger is about landscape as well as beasts, birds, and trees.
The prettiest kitty. Dozing on a branch over the Sabie just like her ancestors have probably done for thousands of years.
The smallest hyena I’ve ever seen. Its ma is obsessed with it.