It has been some time since I did some bird photography but I got a chance to dust the cobwebs off my 500mm Canon lens recently on a trip to the Denmark area of Western Australia. The small country town of Denmark is situated on Wilsons Inlet and is also close to the coastal strip. Birds can generally be found wherever there is water so Denmark and its....
Read MoreNamibia's Living Museum
I have always been an admirer of the San (commonly known as Bushmen). I had read about them in fiction and non-fiction on many occasions and it was clear they were one of the hardiest and most resourceful of indigenous peoples to be found anywhere. Pushed into marginal arid area's of Africa (places like the Kalahari desert) by more dominant and war-like Bantu peoples, the San had to survive where others could not. They were highly skilled hunters.....
Read MoreOkonjima Nature Reserve - Big Cat Haven
There are very few places in Africa where you will be guaranteed a wild leopard sighting. I have spoken to people who have made several trips and never seen one. I myself have been lucky to see and photograph quite a few leopard in Botswana, Kenya and Namibia but this is not necessarily the usual course of affairs. There is however, a place in Namibia where you can be very confident that you will be able to see and photograph leopard and cheetah. Okonjima is a unique game reserve located an easy 2-3 hours drive from Namibia's capital Windhoek. The.....
Read MoreWyadup Rocks: A lesson in light.
Recently I was reminded how the quality of light and the time of day affects the look and feel of landscape images. An identical location photographed on different days can obviously look different because of changing conditions but pure direction of light is equally important. All the photographs below were taken at Wyadup. Wyadup is not far from Dunsborough, Western Australia. There is an interesting and popular spot here where an eroded portion of a rock finger allows wave surges to burst through and create nice waterfalls into a narrow sea.....
Read MoreCute & Cuddly Wildlife
All wildlife photographers like capturing images of lions or other large and charismatic animals. As we search for those opportunities we shouldn't pass up any chances that come our way for some of the smaller and cuter wild characters. I was reminded of this in Namibia recently after getting engaging shots of a scrub hare and a mouse (see below). I took the mouse photo at a waterhole where everyone else had their lenses trained on elephants and I was facing the other way shooting the mouse in a tree behind us. Sometimes the Aaawww! factor.....
Read MoreDunes and Pinnacles
Nambung National Park is about two hours drive north of Perth - not far from the small coastal town of Cervantes. I recently made my second photography oriented trip to the region. It is host to the famous Pinnacles Desert with its unique rock formations but also to large stretches of pristine white sand dunes. Unlike the Pinnacles which are easily accessible by car and is set up for tourists, the dunes are a little harder to get to. You can see them from the highway as you drive past, drifting glacially over the scrubby vegetation like advancing fog-banks. All you have.....
Read MoreNamibia Trip Report: Chudop Waterhole Etosha
Having now recently completed my second trip to Namibia, I have visited quite a number of the waterholes that are to be found in Etosha National Park. One must understand the geography and ecology of Etosha to visualize the situation you will find yourself in when photographing wildlife in this part of Africa. Etosha pan is a long dried-up expanse of crazed white clay. Parts of it do see water at times but it has not been properly filled for thousands of years. This featureless, vegetation-less, water-less 'lake' makes up the majority of the area of Etosha National Park and apart from a few animals seeking refuge there at night (or oddly a rhino I saw way out on the horizon once) it has no.....
Read MoreProject Spindrift
Landscape photography largely boils down to light, skies and location. If you have a great location then all you need then is to be there when the light is good and the skies are dramatic and you have the ingredients for an excellent shot.
I've recently been taking a number of images at the same location to see how many different versions of the same scene I can get. The location itself is unremarkable - just a standard beach near my home. The variables are the conditions on the day - light and sky plus whatever.....
Read MoreNew Images added - Namibia 2015 Trip
I recently returned from my second trip to a country who's people, wildlife and landscapes I really love: Namibia. I have uploaded a bunch of new images into my main galleries but the summary of them is below. I'll have more to say about the experience in future blog posts but for now I hope you enjoy the images!
Read MoreKarijini National Park
One of the most amazing places in Western Australia is Karijini National Park. It is located in mining country in our 'red centre' and its main feature is the layered rust-red rock canyons. The geology of the Pilbara region is interesting. The rock has a high iron content so when it is exposed to the air through erosion it oxidizes to a distinctive red rust colour. If you break open a rock you can see the black iron colour of the natural rock. The gorges show the layers that have built up over millions of years and in some places (like Hamersley gorge) you can.....
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