Lone Photographer, Lions Head Cape Town - February Essay

Lions head has been good to me. I walked up it in 2004 and managed to put together one of my best images of the moon rising and the sun setting simultaneously. This was stitched into a panoramic, which I have printed up to 4.7m long!
So I wasn’t exactly expecting much on my walk up Lions head this last December, I mean, I had covered the place really well in 2004. What I didn’t remember though, is just how beautiful Cape Town looks from that beautiful vantage point on top of the head. I took the camera along, leaving all tripods and other camera kit down at the bottom. If photos were to be taken, they were going to be snaps- nothing serious. Or so I thought.

We reached the top and settled into an awesome picnic complete with Camembert, tapenade and red wine to complement the sun setting over the Atlantic. What a way to end your day! As the sun set, the wind picked up and clouds started drawing over Table Mountain. We were about to head back down the mountain when I noticed another photographer taking pictures of Camps bay below.
I realised that this was a great image- except I had left my tripod down in the car…

Fully reliant (and optimistically trusting) on new technology, I pushed the ISO up to 1600, rested the camera on a bag and snapped off a few frames at 1/3 sec. Very, very slow, but I needed the image!
This was the one that came out sharp and in focus. The rest were image blurs (probably due to the red wine.) It was an agonisingly long wait to see if the images were sharp on the laptop.

Was taught a small lesson on top of the mountain.
Never drop the standards you set.

Exposure information:
Nikon D700 - 18-35mm lens
Exposure – f 4.5 Shutter Speed: 1.3 sec
Exp. Comp. 0. EV
ISO - 1600
Flash - none
Exposure mode– Manual, Metering Mode– Matrix
File type– NEF (RAW)
Focal length: 20mm
Camera resting on bag

This article first appeared on Shemimages.com

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Botswana Tour Trip Report, December 2009. Part 2

December 2009 was a good month for C4 Images and Safaris. Firstly we had a 2-week safari to Botswana and then it was Christmas holidays for us!

We wont write about the holidays, but we do want to share with you a great photo tour to the Okavango region of Botswana. Ill document each day as the tour went along.

The tour was led by Shem Compion and Greg du Toit. There were 7 clients and between us we had 3 private vehicles for our sole photographic use.

Part 2:

Day 8
Leopard at dawn. What a way to start the day. It was a classic scene- a large tomcat resting on a low horizontal branch with the sun softly glowing through the clouds. A perfect set up, but unfortunately an unwilling model. The beauty of travelling into such wilderness areas is that animals like this male leopard determine your photographic success. In this case, this leopard might not be seen for another year by another vehicle and we were very fortunate to see him. That is the beauty of true wilderness areas. The morning wasn’t a waste though- we enjoyed photographing a black bellied bustard doing its champagne cork courtship pop and an open billed stork fishing away on fresh water mussels. Tea time was to be the real treat though, as we witnessed nearly 150 elephants emerging out of the bush to drink, play, mud wallow and swim in the lagoon in front of us! It was a sight to behold and we slowly got right in amongst these silent giants- brilliant! We left one hour later with some of the elephants still not having completed their watery activities!
The wattled crane is a highly endangered bird- with the Okavango being its largest breeding ground- so it was very pleasing to be able to approach a pair preening in the last light of day. It was the closest I have ever been to a pair and they gave us a real show, calmly cleaning their feathers with the wattles swinging away.

Day 9
This morning was rain filled, which doesn’t always make for great photography. However, it does bring out the unusual animals and a honey badger was spotted while Harry spotted and photographed a caracal out stalking!
Unfortunately the rain continued in the afternoon, making photography impossible.

Day 10
After the rain, out comes the Velvet mites! These tiny creatures attracted the interest of all on the vehicles and resulted in some very unusual poses with many bottoms facing skywards trying to get nice and low angles on the mites!
However, the best was to come, as we tracked the wild dogs and found them lying up in the shade. The next few minutes turned out to be one of the best sightings of 2009, with all the wild dogs getting up and playing in a pool of rainwater. I have written about this in a post entitled “wild dogs in 409”, but I will say it again- this was simply magnificent animal behaviour of the highest order. Great subjects, good light, excellent action, repeated motion, willing subjects and excellent positioning!

That afternoon, we sat with the wild dogs again and followed them as they went off on the afternoon hunt in perfect golden light. You could say it was a “wild dog day”.

Day 11
Cheetahs and wild dogs. Lagoon camp is famous for its wild dogs and by the end of the day we knew why. It started with finding the three brother cheetah, who posed on a termite mound before heading off to hunt Impala which once chased ran right past one of our vehicles! In the afternoon, we found wild dogs running like crazy dogs along the road- a kill had been made and the adults were coming back to the pups. Again we witnessed brilliant behaviour of these dogs playing, regurgitating, chasing and feeding in an open clearing.

Day 12
Rain hampered our start to the morning, but keeping a keen eye out on the weather, we headed out as soon as it started to clear- that being 13h30. A long afternoons drive it was going to be- and what a smelly one it was. A dead elephant was located, attracting hundreds of vultures and marabou storks. The fighting and hissing around the carcass was something to behold. The area surrounding the dead elephant was littered with hundreds of scavengers filled to the crop with food. They decorated the large dead trees like Christmas decorations!
We left the smell and headed to a peaceful lake where we photographed hippo in lovely light before the sunset stopped us and we photographed in the opposite direction. (Were far from the hippo by now!) En route back to camp we chanced upon the rare roan antelope. It was many peoples first sighting of one and although it was shy, we all got a good look at its “clown like” facial features.

Day 13

Last day blues were to be banished by the excitement of the morning’s sightings. Cheetah buffalo and wild dog saying their good byes were the morning’s main attractions. We followed the cheetah, scent marking and patrolling- making for very good images. They rested up eventually and we were off to find the buffalo- a nice breeding herd with oxpeckers providing that extra bit of colour.

From there we raced back to camp for brunch and the flight back to Maun, civilisation and unfortunately the end of a wonderful tour.

The start of the rainy season is my favourite time in the bush. Everything comes alive, the migrating birds are back and the animals are dropping their babies. Some mornings, you can literally feel the bush buzzing with excitement.
With our clients on this tour, we certainly had a few days of “buzzing excitement”!
Thank you to all our clients who once again provided a great tour.

At the start of our safari, I asked one of the clients what they were particularly interested in. “Insects”, they replied… well at least I had just completed an insect book! However it highlights a typical C4 Images and Safaris safari. We aren’t here only for the big 5 and their kin. We take tours for people who enjoy experiencing nature in its entirety; and then photographing it to capture its beauty.

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Botswana Tour Trip Report, December 2009. Part 1

December 2009 was a good month for C4 Images and Safaris. Firstly we had a 2-week safari to Botswana and then it was Christmas holidays for us!

We wont write about the holidays, but we do want to share with you a great photo tour to the Okavango region of Botswana. Ill document each day as the tour went along.

The tour was led by Shem Compion and Greg du Toit. There were 7 clients and between us we had 3 private vehicles for our sole photographic use.

Part 1:

Day 1
Arrival started in South Africa and the first game drive started in Rietvlei Nature Reserve, near Pretoria. This allows visitors to see and photograph species they wouldn’t see in Botswana. Thus the first day started with black wildebeest, blesbuck and white rhino as the new species to be seen. Of course the highveld birds were in full song and this allowed us to see a few grassland birds.

Day 2
The flight to Main is hot, but the reward is worth the heat. Kwara camp greeted us with its open lagoon filled to the brim with hippos. It set the scene for the afternoon game drive; which led us straight to a large male lion. He had been mating and lost his mate. So we followed him as he roared away trying to contact his lioness. The soft evening glow of the late afternoon glanced off his mane beautifully, allowing for some great portraits. A great start to the tour!

Day 3
Our morning drive started photographing plains game- and even a fungus growing out of elephants dung was photographed at teatime! The afternoon turned very dark with overhead clouds and didn’t offer us much until sunset, when we witnessed one of the most stunning sunsets of 2009. It certainly was also the most photographed sunset in Botswana!

Day 4
Oh my what excitement wild dogs bring! We discovered them early morning running along as they do. For a frantic hour we followed them across floodplains, mopane bush and into apple leaf thickets. They provided an assortment of photo opportunities, making all us photographers very happy.
This afternoon we transferred to Camp Okavango, or Camp-O as it is known. It’s a water-based camp, with our focus being birds, hippos and macro work.
The first afternoon was off to the Hippo pool, where we watched a small pod snorting away in the golden afternoon light.

Day 5
This morning’s focus was the remotely located Godikwe lagoon. Godikwe is the largest breeding colony for marabou storks as well as one of the most important heronries for egrets, herons and other storks. The colony for some reason was not nearly as large as it has been in former years; however, it still provided some excellent opportunities for large birds at close quarters. The beauty of the location is that due to its remoteness, the birds don’t know humans on the island and thus allow you to come really close to them. The photography was excellent, but just being so close to a variety of bird species and seeing them interact was a real highlight.
The afternoon was one of the most relaxing game drives ever taken! It was time for the Mokoro ride on the shallow waters of the delta. Gliding along in a mokoro, is one of the most under rated experiences of the Okavango. It is a silent, smooth ride that makes you concentrate on the essence of the delta. The cleanliness of the water, the thousands of tiny fish, the way the water lilies wind their way up from the bottom and the tiny reed frogs clinging perilously to the reeds all combine to give one of the most serene experiences ever.

Day 6
The last day at Camp O was one concentrating on birds, with the odd hippo thrown in for good measure. The technique was to glide slowly down the reed lined channels approaching birds slowly and quietly. It does seem that the real insect bloom hadn’t occurred in our area yet, as the normal sheer number of birds weren’t evident. However, our persistence paid off and we managed to get good images of slaty egret, squacco heron, African darter, white-throated bee-eater and the beautifully marked malachite kingfisher. The day ended with another splendid sunset overlooking a shallow lagoon. To cap it all off, 30 wattled cranes flew in to roost in the shallows just at sunset, prompting us to all drop the drinks and set up the cameras!

Day 7
From Camp O it was up north to the refurnished Lebala camp on the edge of the Linyanti swamp. We started with a bang, as a young leopard stalked in between thickets in search of prey. The most exciting scene being when it chased an African wild cat right past our vehicle! After the excitement, the leopard went on the search and with some good positioning, we managed to predict it moving onto termite mounds to scan, providing us with some beautiful photo opportunities!
From there it was off to the waters edge where we photographed waterbirds and hippos in abundance. Another excellent days photography.

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C4 Delta Safari, December 2009

Words and Images by Greg du Toit.

Just prior to the Christmas holidays I had the pleasure of co-guiding a photographic safari with my good friend and colleague Shem Compion. The group we had the pleasure of leading were all from the UK and all experienced travelers and photographers. Landing in Maun, we had some time to kill and Maun, not exactly a buzzing metropolis, meant that we walked across the road to a small pilots café for a soda. While sitting whiling the time away, the group suddenly became excited and most notably Eric and Lesley! I swung around to see what was causing the excitement and sitting upon a lamppost were to rather common Pied Crows? I immediately realized that my traveling companions were not the usual shutterbugs interested in only hunting down the ‘big and hairies’. No, this group comprised keen naturalists and birders using photography as a tool to document and record all of nature’s splendours! This excited me a great deal as the wet season in the African bush simply heaves with life! Most photographic safaris run during the winter time when the big game concentrates around the last remaining water pools and although this is a good time for the predators and mammals, my favourite time in the bush remains the summer time when life abounds in all its forms!

Looking back, the 12 day safari certainly was a celebration of life and this indeed in all its forms! The first camp that had the pleasure of hosting us was Kwara in the northern reaches of the delta! Who can forget the cicadas singing so loudly that their friends in the south of France would have been able to hear them? There were so many special and unique moments on the safari that it is impossible to share them all? For me, the highlight of Kwara was certainly not the beef but rather following a pack of Wild Dog through the bush! It was such a privilege to follow a truly wild pack of hunting dogs as they simply went about their frantic high-paced daily routine. The dogs would turn to and fro unperturbed by the thickets of Kalahari Appleleaf trees! How our drivers managed to not get lost I really do not know? Our poor safari guests had to duck and dive to avoid random branches striking them in the face or perhaps even knocking them clean off the vehicle! At one point I became concerned and glanced back only to see John merrily performing some in-camera editing while branches tore all about him? He seemed not the least bit concerned about his health and in hindsight the tangible energy and excitement of the dogs rubbed off on us all. Other highlights from Kwara were spotting a rare Serval and enjoying two of the most splendid sunsets imaginable!

After three pleasant nights in Kwara we enjoyed some duty free shopping at Kwara International before taking a lengthy 10 minute flight to Camp O! This camp is water based and all our activities were on boats of sorts! The first afternoon saw us whizzing along narrow channels that bisected waterborne Papyrus forests. Without the slightest forewarning, we happened upon a large hippo pool and spent the next hour photographing! Well that is too say, all, except poor Pauline who suffers from Hippophobia! We were unaware of her chronic condition and tried our best to avoid hippo for the rest of the safari which included removing the hippo-shaped butter dishes from the breakfast table! Although the birdlife at Camp O was disappointing, our bird list was indeed creeping up as the camp gardens graciously offered us sightings of Kurrichane Thrush. A highlight at Camp O was no doubt the Mokoro Canoe trip, which gave us opportunity to get close and personal with the tiny yet gorgeous Painted Reed frogs.

From Camp O, our next stop was Lebala, North of the Delta and in the Linyanti region. This was a most beautiful tract of pure wilderness with two distinguishable highlights:

The first being the spotting and subsequent photographing of a beautiful leopard amid lush grass and termite mounds! To see Africa’s most striking predator amidst the superb green foliage of the summer bush will remain a highlight for some time to come! Another very special sighting saw us enjoying our morning tea on the banks of a small lake. An elephant herd appeared out the bush on the opposite side of the lake and proceeded down to the water’s edge. Gazing back to the brush line, we were surprised to see another herd making its way down to the water and then another and another and another. The elephants just kept coming until an entire clan lined the lake fringe leaving some of us spellbound and the rest of us frustrated at not being able to capture the immensity of the sighting on camera? Even Brian, who is no stranger to photographing immense Antarctic panoramics, seemed overwhelmed?!

Our last stop of the trip was at Lagoon Camp and although the weather stopped playing ball, we still managed to end on a high note with wild dog sightings almost everyday as well as a superb cheetah sighting. As I mentioned at the beginning however, our group was not just about the big five and we enjoyed getting down low and personal with velvet mites and fungi! A very special sighting at Lagoon was finding a Whalberg’s Eagle on a fresh Yellowbilled Hornbill kill!

The food throughout the safari was exquisite but perhaps none more so than at Lagoon Camp where they provided additional protein in the form of flying ants (termites actually)! Who can forget my bush-whacking colleague (Shem), walking up to the lantern aloft the dinning table, grabbing a flying ant and gulping it down with a look of glee upon his face?

When all is said and done, the safari was a sublime experience that offered up not only many memorable sightings of wild dog, cheetah and elephant but also many unique, smaller and more peculiar sightings (see photos attached). My only regret to the entire safari was promising Eric and Lesley 200 bird species, only to land in Jo’burg on 198 species! Glancing up at the airport terminal I was hoping to see a Rock Pigeon and a Little Swift but alas my time was up!

Thank you ever so much to my traveling companions Eric, Lesley, Brian, Fiona, John, Harry, Pauline, Maggie and Peter. It was a pleasure hosting you and I hope to do so again in the future!

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Masai Mara tour report back- November tour

When advising a tour to a client, we at C4 Images and Safaris always decide on the best destination by weighing up various factors that will make a tour successful. It’s not necessarily about having a happy client or showing them a good time.

To us it is about showing them the best game viewing for their specific requirements so that they can get the best images. It’s as simple as that, and for us, that is all that matters.

So when we were asked about where is the best place in Africa to photograph predators on a daily basis, we pointed to that piece of land in the heart of East Africa- the Masai Mara. Going in the first week of November, I wasn’t expecting the migration, and the client knew as much. We were there for the predators, and there were other advantages…
• Tourist traffic has significantly decreased- meaning less vehicles
• Predators are all in excellent condition from the feast of the migration
• Many predators have cubs/pups now due to their good condition from the feast of the migration
• Grass is still very short, making visibility and photography very easy

And the best advantage of all for us on this tour? The migration was still in the area! We had millions of wildebeest on the open plains around camp.
Nature is a wonderful thing sometimes. The beauty of it all is that we are just visitors in the dynamics. This year the migration stayed very late and we lucked out. Next year will invariably be very different, as each year is here.

But on this tour we had that extra bonus. What a brilliant tour it turned out to be, with great image taken by all!
It’s as simple as that, and for us, that is all that matters.

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The Chiefs Island Experience - Isak Pretorius

Chief’s Island in the heart of the Okavango Delta is known as the predator capital of Africa. C4 Images and Safaris has just concluded its first of many safaris to the island and the place had more than lived up to its reputation and everyone’s expectation. We met our guests at O.R. Tambo International from where it’s a two hour flight to Maun and then a 20 minute flight into camp. Flying low over the Delta is always thrilling with spectacular views of this unique waterway system alive with large herds of elephants, buffalo, giraffe, and zebra which are easy to spot from the plane. This got the safari off to an exciting start.

We were looking forward to sunny weather and good photography. Chief’s Camp is located on Chief’s Island on the edge of a large floodplain hidden away between beautiful Jackalberry and Sausage tree woodland. The lounge, dining room, bar and pool are situated on a large wooden deck overlooking the floodplain and became our general meeting area for the next few days doing everything from our afternoon photo workshops, eating, relaxing and talking photography while watching nature unfold in front of us. Growing up amongst the animals in the surrounding areas, our guides Ali and Ishmael were masters of predicting animal behaviour and locating our photographic subjects. They had obviously dealt with many photographers before and knew exactly how to position the vehicle for us to get the perfect shot. Chief’s Camp is also different from anything we’ve experienced before in that they’ve modified their vehicles for driving through water. A lifted suspension and snorkel did the trick but occasionally we had to lift our camera bags and feet off the floor during the deeper crossings. Twice during the safari we had water over the floor of the vehicle that drained away quickly once we got through. Apart from the thrilling sightings this added some additional exhilaration.

The game drives took us onto both the floodplains as well as the higher dry areas of Chief’s Island itself. It provided typical Okavango Delta scenery of wide open plains with grazing herds of animals and islands of woodland vegetation and palm trees. Game viewing and photography were excellent with numerous sightings of lion, leopard, huge herds of buffalo, elephant, lechwe and the other general game like zebra, wildebeest and giraffe to name but a few. The Delta is of course also a bird paradise that provided us with terrific photographic opportunities of many “specials” like wattled crane and slaty egrets. The water level on the floodplains was dropping quickly, leaving behind numerous pools with trapped fish. We came across a number of pools with hundreds of yellow-billed storks, marabou storks, hamerkop, and egrets all trying to make the most of the fish’s misfortune. One afternoon we did the makoro experience where you get close encounters with birds and some of the Delta’s smaller subject while gliding quietly over the water.

Each day usually starts with a wakeup call from staff who also brought us coffee in bed. This is followed by a light breakfast, morning drive and early lunch after which there were time for relaxation. The afternoons were spent doing the photography workshops that included lectures on light, composition, technique, digital workflow and processing. Afternoon tea and game drive followed, after which we had time for relaxing drinks and dinner.

This safari would definitely be remembered for a spectacular late afternoon fast moving thunderstorm on our last afternoon drive, and a sighting where a black-backed jackal had killed a baby impala. As a natural history sighting this was very special, though gruesome at times. It was an opportunistic kill by the jackal of a few day old impala amongst a large herd of impala. I will also never forget the water crossings that we did with the game viewing vehicles. In areas better suited for makoros than vehicles we made our way through the water en route to the sightings. In one particular incident, our guide Ishmael were driving over a dry area of the floodplain when he spotted some lions in the distance. At that specific place we had a deep water filled deception between us and the lions and it would have taken us too long to drive around and through the water at the shallower regular crossing on the other end to get to the lions. Ishmael asked me if I think we should attempt to drive to the lions straight from there through the deep water. Not knowing what difference my opinion would make anyway, I think I was more curious than anything else to see how his attempt would unfold. I told Ishmael to go for it. Amazingly with water high over the bonnet of the vehicle and tyres gripping slowly but surely at the sandy bottom, we made it through and were rewarded with great photography of the lions and then lechwe running through the water.

Chief’s Camp delivered the magic of the Okavango Delta in many ways. During our last evening we showed a presentation of the top images from the safari from every guest. It was wonderful to see everyone’s own interpretation of the last few days and how the different photographic techniques we taught got put into practice with great success. It was sad to leave the island and although the flight back to Maun over the Delta was something to look forward to, it was of little comfort. We all wanted to visit Chief’s Island again soon!

Thanks Charl, Semma and the rest of the staff for making this a trip of a lifetime.

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