Great Photos Thread

[jpmcwjr]

It's an old phone, but better than the one I had before it! I thought I had the top of the colorful tree in there, but no...

When you can't adjust exposure on a back lit scene, your only choice is to move to the other side of the tree!

 

[jpmcwjr]

View attachment 342191

Lovely! Where and when did you take that shot?

 

[JoburgB2]

I have a story about this photo. I can post it later tonight. Is it ok to put it here, or in a different thread?

 

[JoburgB2]

Lovely! Where and when did you take that shot?

Londolozi private game reserve, Sabi Sands, eastern edge of Kruger Park, Mpumalanga, South Africa. March 2002.

 

[jpmcwjr]

I have a story about this photo. I can post it later tonight. Is it ok to put it here, or in a different thread?

Sure, here is fine when it's photo related. You might repost the photo since it's "moved" upthread....

 

[JoburgB2]

Thank you jpmcwjr, it’s a long story (as all mine are), so thanks for the indulgence to post it. I had the Minolta XG-M SLR camera about a year; it passed to me when my father died the year before. I was hopeless with it. I struggled to take a decent photo with it. Leopards are elusive, mostly active at night, solitary hunters favouring riverine habitat. The camp Londolozi is kind of exclusive and expensive, but by good fortune found myself there with my wife for the weekend In March 2002. It’s on the edge of the Sabi Sands and Kruger Park region. During our pre-dawn game drive in an open-topped Land Rover, we came to a stop for a coffee break as the sun came up. One of our two ranger guides took his rifle and the Shangaan tracker and disappeared down the sand track into the thicket. Twenty minutes later the guide came running back and shouting they’d spotted a leopard. We drove after it, off dirt road, off any sand track, just bouncing violently up and down rocks, branches, termite mounds, ruts, etc. We met up with the tracker (who had the rifle), found the leopard, a female with a cub (which I never saw in the thick dry grass). We tracked her for a while. She spotted a herd of impala and leapt up into a wide branched marula tree to get a better look. The guide pulled our Landy around to put the leopard into view, in the sun, about 5-7 yards from my nose. I fumbled with the camera (this is the part that is ‘photo related’); speed, aperture, shutter, lens, focus, the whole complicated catastrophe! I pointed and clicked! This photo was the result. I have never taken a decent photo with that 35mm SLR Minolta before or since. I think it turned out rather nice. I show it off to everyone I can. About ten years after this episode, when I’d moved back to the US in North Carolina, I wrote to Londolozi and sent them this photo. The general manager wrote back, one of their veteran rangers recognised this specific female, no longer still living, she had a name (I did not save it, damn!), and had a couple generations of offspring now mature adults roaming the bush there. Anyway, that’s more than enough. Here the photo again.

 

[JoburgB2]

Here’s the companion photo to the leopard; its lunch.

These two of the impala herd were taken with the same Minolta XG-M SLR camera the previous year (2001) in Kruger Park, South Africa, somewhere along the Gomodwane Road between Crocodile Bridge and Lower Sabie. This image here in the post is an iPad photo of the prints so there is some distortion and glare. As for the composition, not ideal, and you get a sense of how chaotic it was trying to direct the subjects, with the herd blatantly ignoring my instructions to pose, turn this way or that. Oblivious.

 

[JOHN72]