It’s not hard to love the warthog. Knee-high to most of the things you see on the savannahs and deserts of sub-Saharan Africa. Tough as nails. Trotting along with their maned and whiskered piglets in a train, their tails up like flags. Or down on their wrists nosing in the dirt. Unlovely but loveable - they’re jaunty endurance in the face of powerful challenges. This, like the last one, was taken in 2012.
The very beautiful Impala. While the lowveld is thick with these, I never get tired of them. One of the most beautiful and graceful antelope you’ll ever see. In full panic they make astonishing leaps during their dashes for safety - taking to the air like 75kg swallows. Impala is one of the all-time most beautiful animal names. But I also like the Afrikaans, “rooibok,” - which means simply red buck. ...
Klipspringers. Look at the little ballet hooflets. Found this as well, while scrolling through Lightroom. I got some great footage of Klipspringers over Christmas. Now I just have to bring myself to face Davinci and edit that stuff. In the meanwhile, here’s a pic I took in 2012 at about the same place in the Karoo National Park - Klipspringerpas. These are basically the Southern African equivalent of mountain goats. The name means ‘rockjumper.’ Those dainty little hooves do great work for leaping about cliffs and boulders.
I now have a contact for reasonable slide film processing in Cape Town (thanks to @goodweatherforducks). I have a plan for this beasty. I brought a couple of lenses from the Pentax 67 as well, with an adapter. Once a droolworthy piece of pro kit, the Pentax 645N is now seen as a “beginner’s” medium format camera (probably mostly because of its ’80s styling more than anything). It’s a brilliant camera and great fun to use.
I’ve been taken with a real hankering to use my Pentax 645 again. Such a great camera. This was in 2012 at the little airport outside Beaufort West that was a bnb at the time. Hence @withoutaleaf hanging out on the air traffic control tower. When we were next there a couple years ago the runway was in action again training Chinese pilots for their indentured servitude in China’s commercial aviation industry. Worse jobs to be enslaved to, I guess.