Hi all, after asking for your support in getting the right lenses to take along on my safari trip, I've finally found the time to post a few pictures.
Total volume is about 1000 pictures so obviously can't show them all. Let's start with a few that to me represent the feel of the park.
This Impala buck is nibbling on some green shoots. Madikwe was just hitting spring and plants and trees were noticably greener from one day to the next. Obviously good eating.
A fresh lion print. Our tracker tried to find the actual lion that made the print but no luck after driving through bushes and small lanes for 30 mins. Of course, it would be easy for the lion to cross behind some bush and just hide...
I was struck by how green this one tree looked against a rather dry and grey hillside. Not quite sure about how this pic came out. I probably would need a bit more distance to get the perspective right. The other thing I'm not too happy about is that the colors look a bit flat for me. I've since started shooting with my Nikon D80 colors set to Vivid (following Ken Rockwell) but time will tell if this makes things better. Any suggestions?
I made this picture in an effort to show off the blossom. Not sure it worked.
This picture was taken during the morning coffee break. Practice was to have 2 game drives per day, one leaving 0700 and the other leaving 1530. We shared a jeep with one other family. The picture shows the ranger off to the left, my wife in blue and the other couple. The picture was taken in a large clearing, I estimate a few km across.
A few other thoughts:
- I used 2 zoom lenses: 18-135 Nikkor and 70-210 Sigma. Both worked well for me but the situations that warranted one or the other kept changing. As a result, I kept changing lenses during the day. This made me nervous in viewing the environments for photo opportunities. It also ended with a small speck of dust inside the camera that is visible in some pictures. I since got a blow bulb that got rid of the speck.
- I got an 8 GB SD card that finally gave me enough storage capacity to not worry about what I shoot at all. It fits about 650 pictures in RAW. More than I shoot in a day.
- I shot most of my pictures in Auto mode. I'm pretty sure using the capabilities of the camera better would give me better pictures.
- Shooting fast moving animals in sometimes fading light isn't easy....
