Sparrow fart at Thornybush Game Lodge
It seems it’s just me and the birds that are awake. The electricity is off so I am working on the battery. There is no signal so this will be put up later. I think there may be enough signal on the runway, I’ll check later. I arrived at about 3:30 yesterday.
How Much does photography cost? Photography is a time intensive occupation. First you spend say 6 hours on site, then you spend 4 or 5 hours preparing a proof disk, Thereafter another 6 or 7 hours “developing” the chosen images in photoshop. and another couple of hours printing and then building the albums.
On Saturday a crocodile captured in the wild was given a biopsy to check for disease in wild crocodiles. I was there to capture images on “film”. The 4 m crocodile had been given enough drugs to sedate a 3m crocodile by the capture team.
harvesting the crocodile steak
closing up after surgery, superglue works a treat
By the time the biopsy was done a local anaesthetic was needed as the croc was semi awake. The blindfold and the local kept him calm while the cutting was taking place. Thereafter we unloaded him after treating his wounds and moved him into the translocation camp.
Local canoeists on the river in the Schoemanskloof have been complaining about a few crocs in the river so they are being moved to other homes. Once we had her in the camp we were able to take a few photos up close and personal under the watchful eyes of the experts.
Here are a few shots for you to look at. Soon I will be processing many more and putting them on the Mpumalanga Photography website.
It’s not the camera, no really it’s not. I have seen awesome pictures taken with a cellphone camera. I keep seeing the NIKON/ CANON argument and I can safely say that the cameras all seem to be pretty good, although the Canon ones seem to be just a little better. I am kidding, the pictures taken with Nikons are indistinguishable from those taken with Canons at the same spec and using equivalent glass.
Expensive Thrill is so over being upset at dutchmen that she wrote a post about why South Africa is great. The thing is that I agree with much of what the lady had to say, I am however going to add a few things here that make it special for me.
African Sunset
Let me start off by saying I left and came back. Thats right I ran for the buiteland like a greyhound after being hijacked in 1998. I have a wife whosé daddy is Irish so getting permission to go and live in the buiteland is easy. The last time we did everything in less than 4 weeks.
But here is the think my African arse needs African sun, African music and to occassionely tune a taxi driver grief.
Here is my list.
We don’t have a sun that just gently warms the air before the rain cools it down again. No we have a real sun. It burns and bakes. It turns a white boy into a red boy in 20 minutes if you spend too much time at the wrong time. I regularly hear people bitching about the heat, These are the same people who bitch about the cold. It was 39 degrees celcius here last week, thats right just a few degrees cooler than hades and I loved it.
Keep your paltry 22 degree heatwaves, I want real heat waves. The solar panel on my head needs to feel its wrath regularly. You see if I get into the rain for more than two days I become suicidal. The sun is my friend. I love her dearly.
The earth trembles
Being a photo nut, I can’t help but believe we have the best of the best. Photographers all over the world take photos of lions at the zoo. A fucking zoo I tell you. Give me the wide open spaces, the plains, the rooibokkies, the lizards, agamas and chameleons. No more wild horses, hedges and pruned forests for me.
The scenery in South Africa also calls me, we have everything from rocky crags to desert plains, dunes and the mighty Karroo. Why the hell would anyone want all the grass to be green, It gets boring. In my land I can find the greenest grass, the reddest dirt and sunsets that are awe inspiring.
We have the bluest seas, the greenest forests, muddy dams, lakes and rivers.
From the palest to the blackest, we have it all. Greeks, Porras, Zulus, Afrikaners, Xhosas, Mpondos, Swazis, Seswatis, Germans, Russians and English people all live her under the African Sun. All the cultural differences mean nothing when there is help needed. Have you seen the Rainbow people laughing together, crying together.
7.25% IS kak
I know I am awestruck by the Moves of the traditional dancers. Our people don’t do the polka or the Samba. The earth trembles beneath their feet. The drums create instinctive knowledge that these people are not to be trifled with, A 1000 years of the sun beating down on the ancestors has made these people tough. Nowhere else have I seen men working in the midday sun. The rest of the world siestas while our people laugh and get the job done.
I can step outside my front door at night and watch the twinkling lights in the sky. I am not an astronomer and I don’t know Ursus from Cassiopea but I can recognise the Southern Cross. The sky is just not complete without it.
I could probably find another hundred things to say, but I want to leave some for you. Tell us what you love, come back here and tell us you have or just link here from your wordpress site and I will check out your writing.
