Tag Archives: Africa
Photo of the day: The Drakensberg Rockjumper
Today’s photo is of the endemic and endearing Drakensberg rock-jumper (Chaetops aurantius). This little guy lives in the drakensberg mountains in South Africa and can be found, as his name suggests, jumping around on the rocks.
Along the Sani Pass, where this image was taken, they are very curious and even if you encroach on their ‘comfort zone’ they only hop away a bit before coming back to investigate what you are and what you’re doing. Their other name, the orange-breasted rock-jumper, tells you about one of their most striking features. However, I was most taken by the vibrant red/orange eye. This really catches the attention.
Watching them move around the rocks, you wonder whether they actually fly at all – certainly the ones I saw didn’t seem to make any effort towards heading to the sky, instead content to just hop around the rocks foraging for insects on the ground. Overall a most interesting and cute little bird.
Photo of the day: The Sani Pass
Today’s photo is from South Africa. The hawk-eyed among you will have noticed this panorama in the blog post I did on my SA trip a couple of weeks ago, but I decided that I liked the image sufficiently for it to have its own story and showcase.
This shot is a stitched pano of 11 images. On the trip we took up the Sani Pass I’d stopped a couple of times to shoot some panoramas, but I knew the shot I really wanted was at the top of the pass, looking across the valley rather than back down it. Once we’d made the top of the pass, I set off for a short walk along the ridge to find an area I thought would work. Sadly, I didn’t have long as we were due lunch in the Sani Pass pub (the highest pub in Africa) so I had to make a choice about where to shoot quite quickly.
When shooting panoramas like this, the exposure can be very tricky to get right, and using a polariser to bring more drama into the sky is possible but very difficult to do well. As such, the polariser was left in the bag but the Lee Filters were, as usual, brought out to play.
I flipped my Acratech GP ball head over into levelling base mode so I could pan from a level platform, and then set about creating the panorama. The camera was tilted to shoot in portrait mode and therefore gain a greater height in the final image. With a cable release and everything locked down level, I was able to take the shots I wanted to quickly and efficiently – speed is quite important in panoramas… if you take too long between each frame the clouds can move and then they will either not line up accurately or the light will change in the scene.
For the pan, I moved the head 15degrees between each shot. It is possible to work out exactly how many degrees to move the head between each frame depending on the lens in use and the amount of overlap you want between each shot, in fact I wrote an article and excel calculation sheet for it for EOS Magazine a few years ago! However, without much time and without my calculation formula and the Angle-of-View data for the focal length I was using I’ve found that 15degrees is actually a pretty good figure. Sure in some cases you’ll have more overlap, but I’ve yet to have a situation where it’s not enough overlap…
The images were processed in DPP and then stitched using Panorama Factory using the focal length from the image EXIF data to ensure a good stitch.
With that done it was simply a case of cropping the image and resizing for the web.
The Drakensberg Mountains, South Africa
It must be post ‘holiday’ blues. I’m sitting here having returned from a week in South Africa yesterday and well, let’s just say I’m not feeling like I want to stay in the UK much longer!
My trip to the Drakensberg mountains in South Africa was to visit a friend who owns a part share in a house there. He, along with seven of his friends, clubbed together and bought some land. In this case, the “some” was 650acres bordering a national park and just a few km from the UNESCO world heritage site of the Sani Pass that runs up through the mountains to the plateau of Lesotho at the top. Not a bad place on which to build a house, so that’s what they did.
There was quite a group of us there and the majority were into both photography and wildlife, so it made for a great collection of people to talk to. Although not a ‘photographic’ trip in the true sense, I did get a lot of time to take pictures – fortunate really as had I not been able to take so many pictures, I’d have been frustrated the whole time! You see, the Drakensberg are stunning. Truly epic, and well worth a visit whether you want to photograph them or not.
Anyway, back to these post holiday blues. It’s not something I usually suffer with. Not that I’m happy to be home, but maybe I’ve just not felt a connection to somewhere quite as strongly and therefore the pain of leaving is reduced. In this case though, it reminds me of my New Zealand trip – I really didn’t want to come home. And now I am home, I’m trying to work out why!
So why was I so smitten with the Drakensberg mountains? For a start, they’re quite impressive mountains. Despite being flat topped (like table mountain) they still have a grandeur and presence to them. No, they are not created by continental uplift like the alps, instead being the result of a slow rising lava flow running over sedimentary rock to create a cap. But even without the jagged tooth-like peaks, they are so vast you can’t help but wonder at them. Secondly, the wildlife is pretty impressive. Sadly I didn’t get to see any of the super-elusive leopards in the area, nor the worlds largest antelope – the Eland. But the bird life made up for it, with Cape Vulture, Crested Eagle, Secretary birds, Crowned Crane, Drakensberg Rockjumper, Bearder Vulture, Jackal Buzzard and Rock Kestrel among many others. There were a few mammals too – Mountain Reedbuck, Grey Rhebok and the endemic Slogget’s Ice Rat were all seen, and in the case of the last two, at quite close quarters as well.
I think the time of year helped too – sure the southern hemisphere is heading into winter, but 23degrees was more than enough for me, and the rains that were present on some afternoons or evenings made sure the scenery was lush and green.
All in, it was a remarkable trip in which the 1 week I spent there was no were near long enough to do it justice. That just means I’m going to have to go back again….and again and again until I feel I’ve captured it sufficiently well enough to do it justice.
So what are those blues about? Well, currently I’m trying to figure out why I live in England….!
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