Wildlife Photography Blog

Caption: Male lion (Panthera leo) licking his lips, digital color image converted to black and white, Mashatu Game Reserve, Botswana.

Camera: Canon EOS 400D (Digital Rebel XTi); Lens: Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM; Focal Length: 300mm; Shutter speed: 1/1000; Aperture: f/5.6; ISO: 400.

In the early 90s I worked as a news photographer on The Witness, a South African daily newspaper. We used 35mm film cameras, loaded mostly with black and white film.

The film of choice amongst Press photographers of the time, certainly in South Africa, was Kodak’s Tri-X, a 400 ASA black and white film ideal for Press work because of its high speed — good for action, low light, and the type of unexpected situations that news photographers have to deal with.

If circumstances demanded, for example in low light with no flash allowed, we could “push” Tri-X to 800 or even 1600 ASA. In the latter case, we were under-exposing by two stops and would compensate for this by over-developing. (Note that ASA, a measure of film speed or sensitivity, has been replaced by ISO, the International Organization for Standardization’s method of measuring sensitivity).

This push-processing increased contrast and grain, but the results were usually acceptable for printing on newsprint and produced those gritty, grainy shots one associates with hard news pictures from the latter half of last century (wow, that sounds sooo long ago!).

You’re probably wondering where this is going … okay, it’s just some background to explain why I still love black and white images, and why I’ve been playing with DxO FilmPack 3 from DxO Labs. This software, either standalone or as PhotoShop plugin, lets you “rediscover the magic of film” by applying vintage film effects to digital images.

So you can make your digital photo look like it was taken with Kodachrome or Fuji Velvia, or a bunch of other positive and negative color films, plus a range of venerable black and white films.

The digital image above (taken at ISO 400) was converted to Kodak Tri-X 400 black and white using DxO Film Pack. Ideally you want to print the converted images with a good quality printer to fully appreciate the effect. The software also allows you to apply various filters. The image below has an orange filter added. A bit too dark, but it gives an idea of the possibilities.

Lion picture converted from digital to Tri-X black and white plus orange filter using DxO Film Pack 3

Caption: Honey bee atop a passionfruit flower (Passiflora edulis), Currys Post, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Camera: Canon EOS 50D; Lens: Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM; Focal length: 300mm; Shutter speed: 1/1600; Aperture: f/5.6; ISO: 400.

According to Wikipedia, Passiflora edulis is a vine species of passion flower that is native to Paraguary, Brazil, and northern Argentina. It is widely grown in many parts of the world and often commercially cultivated for its fruit.

In South Africa, passionfruit (or “granadilla” as it’s often known), is used to flavor yogurt and soft drinks, as a topping for cakes and desserts, and also eaten raw as a fruit.

A passiflora vine in my neighbor’s garden is flowering at the moment, with blooms so colorful and exotic that I couldn’t resist taking some photographs.

There were honey bees buzzing around the flowers, so instead of a simple flower shot, this became more challenging as I now hoped to get a clear shot of a bee or bees on the flowers.

I’m not a bug photographer and don’t even possess a macro lens, so had to rely on my Canon EOS 70-300mm zoom lens. It has a minimum focus distance of less than five feet, which allowed me to fill the frame with a flower at maximum zoom of 300mm.

I initially tried hand-holding, but even at high shutter speeds plus image-stabilization, I battled to keep the camera steady at such close range. With the camera on a tripod and the lens’s image-stabilizer turned off, I felt more confident of minimizing camera shake and getting sharper pictures.

Clipped from: www.telegraph.co.uk (share this clip)

The winners of the 2011 British Wildlife Photography Awards have been announced. The competition is unique in that the images must be taken of British wildlife in their natural habitats.

This year’s winners included:

Animal Portraits Category: Mark Smith, image of Fallow Deer (Dama dama) titled Mystical Mist

Animal Behaviour Category: Andrew Parkinson, image of Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea) titled Grey Heron Walking on Water

Urban Wildlife Category: David Biggs, image of European Starlings (Sturnes Vulgaris) titled Champagne Starling

Hidden Britain Category: Leslie Holburn, image of Scorpion Fly (Panorpa communis) titled Scorpion Fly on Leaf

Coast and Marine Category: Richard Shucksmith, image of Jellyfish (Pelegia noctiluca) title Jellyfish in the Blue Sea of Sula Sgeir

Wildlife in my Backyard Category: Rana Dias, image of Common Wasp (Vespula vulgaris) titled Busy Wasp on Blackberries

See British Wildlife Photography Awards for more.

Caption: Spring Flowers, Curry’s Post, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, using Canon EOS 450D digital SLR camera fitted with Diana Lens.

Camera: Canon EOS 450D (Canon Rebel XSi 12.2MP); Lens: Diana 38mm wide-angle with Canon adaptor; Shutter-speed: 1/800 using manual exposure; Aperture: Unknown; ISO: 400

The colors of the indigenous flowers in my neighbor’s garden are certainly bright and vibrant in their Spring finery, particularly the startling reds and shimmering pinks of the Lampranthus in the foreground.

Normally though, one would not photograph such flowers in the harsh midday African sun — except of course if you’re using a plastic Diana lens.

Diana lenses, traditionally used by adherents of Lomography, are known for their low saturation, soft surreal blurs, and unpredictable colors. But if the subject is already low in contrast, with muted colors, the Diana can render it too flat and desaturated.

I wanted to retain the vibrant colors, but soften and blur the details, which the Diana did remarkably well in the bright, contrasty lighting of the midday sun.

The Diana+ 38mm Super Wide Lens is designed for use on medium format film cameras, where it yields a 120° angle of view (roughly equivalent to a 25mm lens on a 35mm camera).

So what’s the approximate focal length when fitted to a digital SLR? According to the Lomography site: “When used on a 35mm SLR camera, the Diana+ 38mm Super Wide Lens is equivalent to a 72mm lens. Used on a APS-C sensor DSLR it has the effect of a 115mm telephoto lens!”.

Now I don’t know if the custom Canon adaptor makes a difference to this, but when I tested the Diana against a Canon EF-S 18-55mm kit lens on my APS-C camera (Canon 450D), the Diana provides the same angle of view as does the Canon lens at 39mm, which is roughly equivalent to 62mm on a full-frame camera — in other words, pretty close to a “standard” lens.

See also this previous blog post, Dreamy Diana Lens on Canon Digital SLR.

Clipped from: news.blogs.cnn.com (share this clip)

While ordinary people worldwide, together with international conservation bodies, mark World Rhino Day today, there is little cause for celebration.

According to the WWF (World Wildlife Fund), poachers have this year killed 287 rhinos in South Africa alone — more than one a day. These stark statistics are enough to cast a black cloud over any celebrations; instead, the universal call is for an end to rhino poaching.

Official delegations from Vietnam and China will visit South Africa later this month to discuss the growing demand for rhino horn in Asia, where it is used for traditional medicine.

Meanwhile, Dr. Morné du Plessis, CEO of WWF South Africa has called for governments in Asia and Africa to work together to disrupt trade chains and “bring wildlife criminals to justice”.

“Demand for rhino horn and elephant ivory is threatening to destroy a large part of Africa’s natural heritage. We want to see illegal markets for these products in Asia shut down for good,” he added.

Caption: Blue wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) on the run, panned for motion blur effect, Serengeti National Park, Tanzania.

Camera: Canon EOS 450D (Canon Rebel XSi 12.2MP); Lens: Canon EF70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM; Focal Length: 300mm; Aperture: f/45; Shutter Speed: 1/20; ISO: 200

I like using slow shutter speeds to create motion blur for moving subjects. Of course, this technique is not always appropriate for action photographs, and it also doesn’t appeal to viewers who like to see all the fine details in a moving subject. This is particularly so for sports photographs, where it’s important to capture defining moments by freezing the action.

But with wildlife, I feel that motion blur works well when depicting an animal fleeing through the bush. The background vegetation, when blurred from panning the camera, adds to the sense of movement and speed rather than becoming a distraction.

Antelope, including wildebeest, make good subjects for this style of photography as they often dash off, individually or in groups, at any hint of danger. This allows one to follow the action, panning the camera while keeping the subject in the viewfinder.

Usually for wildlife photography, I keep my camera set on AV (aperture priority), often at the widest available aperture. This allows a high shutter speed, necessary to minimize camera shake when using telephoto lenses.

But for motion blur photographs, one needs a slow shutter speed, requiring a bunch of different settings on the camera. I switch to TV (shutter priority), select my shutter speed (between 1/15 and 1/30) and let the camera set the aperture.

In good light, with an ISO of 400 and shutter speed of 1/20, the required aperture for correct exposure can be around f/64 or smaller, which is beyond most lenses designed for DSLR cameras. So, if time permits, I also drop the ISO from 400 down to 200 or even 100 to prevent over-exposure.

I also like to change the auto focus mode from One Shot, which I prefer for static subjects, to Servo, as the subject is moving so you need to follow focus as you pan the camera. Finally, I change from Single Shot to high-speed Continuous, which allows me to shoot in bursts as I follow the action.

It’s often impossible to change all these settings in the time available, unless one can anticipate that a bunch of happily grazing animals is likely to get spooked and suddenly dash off.

I now have a Canon EOS 50D that has a couple of “Custom” settings on the mode dial, so I can allocate one of these to motion blur and dial in all my preferred settings. Then, if an opportunity for motion blur presents itself, I simply click the mode from AV to C1 and I’m good to go. Once the opportunity passes, I click back to AV and my preferred settings are all still there, so there’s less chance of the mistakes that happen when you forget to change a particular setting.

Below is another panned wildebeest picture, taken in Botswana’s Tuli Block. It’s from the new page of Wildebeest Pictures that I’ve added to the Gallery section of my website. It features wildebeest pictures taken in South Africa over a number of years, plus more recent images from the Serengeti plains of Tanzania.