Did you know I also have my own Youtube channel? Full of tutorials and photo presentations from my various tours. I invite you to click this is a link to my latest tutorial but please check them all out and SUBSCRIBE for more!
LAKE MANYARA NATIONAL PARK, TANZANIA – DAY 2 OF MY GREAT MIGRATION PHOTOGRAPHY TOUR
This post really begins at the end of day one. After an incredible day at Tarangire National Park, we stayed overnight at the Maramboi Tented Lodge on the edge of Lake Manyara. It’s one of those places where the scenery is terrific, but you have to be smart about how you enjoy it…you don’t go down to the lake without a guide, and you don’t leave your tent after dark, due to the real possiblity of a predator encounter.
On many tours, the place you stay is really just somewhere to sleep. We were quickly finding that in Africa, the place you spend the night can be just as exciting as the daytime adventures. But after an impressive stay (and an equally impressive breakfast!) we were off for our next destination…Lake Manyara National Park.
With such a huge variety of wildlife the day before, one big category we DIDN’T see was primates. It was clear from the outset that today was going to be a very different day. We had barely entered the national park when we came across a family of Blue Monkeys. The seemed a little shy…not remotely concerned by our vehicles or the snapping of our shutters, but also never leaving the security of the thick foliage.
Our next primate enounter – Baboons – were a whole different story. Clearly the lords of their domain, the ruled the road and decided when they were going to let us pass.
Before I left for Africa, I was a bit concerned that our close encounters in vehicles would somehow tarnish the wild experience…that our presence might frighten the animals, or cause them to become overly friendly and interested in human visitors. But with every species we encountered, it was becoming clear that the wildlife is so accustomed to the presence of people in vehicles, who are neither a threat nor a source of food. that they simply ignore us. They just go about their daily business as if we are not there…which means we got much closer to them than I ever expected, and every encounter really felt like an authentic experience of animals in the wild.
We weren’t done yet in the monkey department. After getting through the rainforest and into more open country, we soon came across some Vervet Monkeys.
…also known as Blue-Balled Monkeys for reasons that would soon become obvious.
As we continued into the park, we saw an impressive array of wildlife…eagles, impala, hippos, buffallo among them. Inevitably, some were too far away for a good photo, others appeared in poor light…all things that can make life difficult for a vehicle full of photography enthusiasts. But one very special encounter came quite unexpectedly and was one of the most special sights of the day. An elephant was spotted in the forest only meters from the road. We stopped and turned off the engines.
As yet another sign of how accustomed the animals are to human visitors, this elephant could have moved in any direction. But after a few moments it came straight towards our vehicles and passed by so close we could almost reach out and touch it.
After a pretty exciting (sometimes emotional) day, we stopped for a late lunch. It was almost the end of our visit as we still had a drive to get to our accommodation for that night. But even as we ate lunch, the opportunities kept coming. We attracted the attention of some Masked Golden Weavers, and then watched as they returned to their nest-building. It was a terrific end to a second day of great photo opportunities…and our guides assured us the best was yet to come!
THE GREAT MIGRATION PHOTOGRAPHY TOUR IS HAPPENING AGAIN IN 2020! With me as your photography host and Bushbaby Safaris running the tour, we are returning for another feast of wildlife experiences, and a new group of photographers to share it with. All the info can be found on my website HERE.
TARANGIRE NATIONAL PARK: A GREAT START TO OUR TOUR
My recent trip to Africa started with a ten-day tour in Tanzania. Our main goal was to see the Great Migration but Bushbaby Safaris had planned a full itinerary showcasing plenty of great wildlife locations. Our very first stop was Tarangire National Park where we enjoyed a full afternoon game drive. As Africa newbies, we had no idea what to expect. Obviously we hoped to see some animals, but nobody expected to see such a variety – and in such numbers – as we did on that first day.
It was less than five minutes in the park before we came across our first sighting – a group of Impala. Little did we know at the time that Impala would be our constant companions, seen almost everywhere we went for the next month. But over the next couple of hours the sightings came thick and fast, with species after species on display. Some were easy to spot and right near the road, some were seen only thanks to the keen eyes of our spotters.
This was one of those days when after a while you have seen so much, it is hard to imagine you could see any more. But the sightings just kept coming. As well as all the four-legged critters running around, there were also plenty of bird sightings. Again, some of these proved to be common throughout our tour but some were a bit more special.
By lunchtime, we had seen so much already, but still we had not spotted any elephants or big cats…two things Tarangire is famous for. It’s a very big park and you can’t expect to see everything, as there is plenty of room for animals to wander far from the roads. But with high hopes we kept moving, and it wasn’t too long before a couple more dreams came true.
Remember, this was the very first day of my very first African tour. If I ever had any doubts that this thing would be a success, they were erased in those first few hours. It was clear that we were heading into a week of true spectacle. And our host Pierre (Bushbaby Safaris) kept reminding us…this was just the entree…the main course was still to come!
To find out about all my tours including future Africa tours, please visit my Nature’s Image Photography website, and be sure to subscribe to the mailing list to receive my monthly newsletter. You can also ask to be added to a Facebook group dedicated to planning and discussing the Africa tour.
AMAZING AFRICA! The Great Migration Photography Tour Was Awesome.
Well what an experience that turned out to be! I had high hopes for my African photography tours and I can honestly say they exceeded all expectations. Too big for just one blog post, I will add a few stories here over the coming weeks as I work my way through thousands of photos.
I hosted two tours along with Pierre Duval of Bushbaby Safaris. Pierre and I had met in Australia in 2019 and quickly saw the potential of working together. Bushbaby put together two terrific itineraries aimed at creating great photo opportunities. The first was the ten-day GREAT MIGRATION TOUR.
Essentially a wildlife tour (although we traveled through some remarkable scenery as well), I and my fellow photographers all had our wish-lists of animals we thought we might see. I am sure everyone’s list was a little different, but I am also sure they had plenty in common – lions, elephant, giraffe, zebra, cheetah, leopard, and of course the migration of the wildebeest. Well we saw everything we came for and more.
I would attribute our success to three things. First, to Pierre for a meticulously planned itinerary. You can’t overstate the importance of an experienced local guide when it comes to knowing the best places to visit, and the best times of year to be there. Pierre even make a few last-minute changes to locations on the Serengeti leg of the tour as he tracked the movement of the migration across Tanzania.
Second, I put down to the quality of our drivers/wildlife spotters (also a great reflection on Pierre who hired them). It is no exaggeration to say they could spot a shadow in a tree from half a mile away and know they had seen a leopard – when all we could see was a shadow, if in fact we had noticed anything at all. Some of our sightings were truly remarkable and only possible thanks to the quality of our guides.
Finally, I have to pay tribute to Tanzania itself. We expected wildlife, but we had no idea of just how much wildlife we would see, both in quantity and variety. I had a dream of Africa – this is where my dream came true.
The best part is…IT’S HAPPENING AGAIN! We are already close to announcing dates for a second Great Migration Photography Tour in 2020. Stay tuned to this blog for an announcement, and please visit my website www.naturesimage.com.au and subscribe to the monthly newsletter for updates.
AFRICA HERE I COME!
Very exciting to be jumping on a plane this Sunday to launch my very first African photography tour. Actually, make that two tours. Working with Bushbaby Safaris, I will be hosting the GREAT MIGRATION tour in Tanzania from May 20 to May 29 followed by the NORTHERN EXPLORER TOUR visiting three countries in 19 days. It will be a wildlife photography event and I am thrilled to be sharing it with friends…most of the people on these tours have travelled with me before.
I don’t really have any more photos to share as I have never been to Africa before. I have been staring at this elephant photo (supplied to me by Bushbaby Safaris) for months, looking forward to the day I could start taking some of my own – that day is almost here! When I get home I look forward to sharing some images here.
Pierre from Bushbaby Safaris is already hinting at possible tours for 2020 and beyond. If you want to stay informed on all my tour announcements, I invite you to visit the website www.naturesimage.com.au and subscribe to my monthly newsletter. You can also check out all the tours currently on the site HERE.
Red Centre 2019 – Another Great Tour Experience
My Red Centre Photography Tour finished a week ago and now I have had a chance to get through a lot of the photo and pick out a few favourites. The tour itself was quite different to my previous visit for a number of reasons. First up, this group of travellers were all ‘newbies.’ None of them had traveled with me before and many of them were quite new to photography. So as well as taking photos of my own, I had plenty of teaching to do which kept me pretty busy from start to finish!
The big thing that set this tour apart was the light cloud that accompanied us along most of the tour. While some people might wonder why we would welcome clouds on a holiday, any photographer knows that an interesting sky adds a whole new element to a landscape. In 2017 we saw amazing sights but not a cloud in the sky the whole way. This time we were blessed with some terrific opportunities, so that even though I visited the same locations as before, I came home with a very different batch of photos.
We also enjoyed some great little wildlife opportunities along the way. The Red Centre Photography Tour is primarily about landscapes, but you grab any opportunity that comes your way. It does mean carrying ALL your lenses on your back just in case, but the rewards are worth it.
The unwelcome wildlife on this tour was the flies…millions of them, wherever we went. They are a standard feature of the outback, and this year they were very bad because there has been no rain for a couple of years, and lots of bushfires which have taken even more moisture out of the landscape. Flies crave a source of moisture and we were it!
It’s just one of those quirks of outback travel that you get used to. Most of the people in our group invested in fly-net hats. I stubbornly refused and was rewarded by swallowing a few flies along the way. Not something I would recommend and next time I will add one of these hats to my collection.
Ultimately a photography tour is all about the friendships you make and the photos you bring home. On those scores this tour was a resounding success. Already several of those ‘newbies’ have declared plans to join me on more future tours, and I have brought home a new collection of images I will enjoy for years.
You can find out all about my upcoming tours HERE. And when you visit the site, subscribe to my monthly newsletter to keep up to date with future tour announcements.
Now I get to look forward to my next big adventure, starting in just a few weeks – AFRICA!
Red Centre Here We Come!
Next Monday sees the beginning of my first tour for 2019, to the stunning Red Centre of outback Australia. This tour was sold out ages ago and for the first time in ages the group will be made up of entirely new faces; every single person on the tour has NOT travelled with me before.
The tour revisits most of the same places as the last time in 2017. An all new experience for the tourists, but familiar ground for me. But it never gets repetitive revisiting familiar locations. There is always something different; more water in the waterholes, different weather and cloud formations…no matter how many times you visit a place, you can always find new ways to photograph it.
I don’t know if I will do any posting while I am away but I will stop in and report how it went when I get back. And I have a LATEST IMAGES page on my website, so in a few weeks it will be full of Red Centre images if you want to check it out. https://naturesimage.com.au/galleries/latest-images/
Photography Tutorials On Youtube
As a photography teacher, it kind of cheeses me off that when people go online wanting to improve their photography, there is 100 times more information on how to edit your photos in Photoshop/Lightroom, than there is on how to take a better photo in the first place. I don’t pretend for a moment that I don’t edit my photos (I shoot in RAW so it comes with the territory). But beginners would prefer to learn camera skills before they get to the computer.
I have started working on a series of short videos on Youtube called “How I Took This Photo.” It works on a simple premise…one photo per video, with a look at the techniques and camera settings that went into taking it.
Here’s the link to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyJvGWGIerF9ugbFnxUIAUvAJoj9S_BTF
Or, you can go straight to my full Youtube channel to see all my videos including my tour presentations: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVtZiFKWtHzNuC7HqVB1Hww?
I hope you enjoy them and please subscribe to my channel so you can see all the new videos as they are released.
Great Day For Student And Teacher
One of the great things about being a photography teacher is the great experiences I sometimes get to share with the people I teach. I taught an afternoon of one-on-one tuition yesterday. I do that occasionally for people who can’t make it to my regular scheduled workshop, or for people who have already done it and want help with something a bit more specialised. We met at Coolum for an afternoon photographing birds in flight. I have to admit I did not have high hopes as I had been to the exact same spot the day before and seen almost nothing. But within minutes we could see there was a lot more activity, in particular from a pair of White Bellied Sea Eagles.
We picked a spot near where they were circling, and after only a few minutes, an osprey landed on a branch just below our vantage point.
I think we could have declared the afternoon a success right there, but the show wasn’t over yet. The next time the eagle came past, the territorial Osprey flew out to try and frighten it off, and then followed a mid-air battle that was exciting to watch.
I call these “David Attenborough moments,” where you get to witness something with your own eyes you usually expect to see on wildlife specials on TV.
The photos I took were hardly world-class, but it was an experience to remember nevertheless.
The difference between a photography tour and a regular tour
When I first travelled around Australia in the early 90’s, I drove a little Subaru station wagon and slept in a two-man tent. It was, until the money ran out, a life of total freedom. If the weather was bad in the north, I could go south. If I really liked a place I could stay a little longer, but if not I could pack up and move on at a moment’s notice.
Of course you look on the past through rose coloured glasses. There was also the frugal living on two minute noodles and a few veges, the frightening isolation when the car broke down in the middle of nowhere…not to mention getting it towed and fixed used up over a month’s worth of the travel budget.
During all that time I would look at the people getting on and off the tour buses, stopping sometimes for a few minutes in places I would stop for a few days. The people seemed so old to my young eyes, their schedules so structured, and I thought what a horrible way to travel that must be.
These days I am somewhat older myself and a lot wiser, and life has taken a peculiar turn…now I am the host of many photography tours, both in Australia and overseas. And although it would horrify the younger me – I absolutely love it!
Working with serious travel industry professionals, naturally the standard of transport and accommodation is much higher. While roughing it may be fun for the young, there is definitely a lot to be said for travelling in comfort in custom-built vehicles and sleeping in three and four star accommodation. Not to mention two-minute noodles have been replaced by a much higher standard of fare. It is also surprising to find just how enjoyable it is to let someone else take care of the driving and the navigating, while taking us into places you might never travel in a regular car.
But this could be said of any type of tour. What is it that is so special about a photography tour? Well at the risk of stating the bleeding obvious…it’s the photography.
First of all, the itineraries are planned around photo opportunities. Where other tours may focus on the food, the shopping, and finding a coffee shop in every town, these tours are planned around photo opportunities. Unlike most tours, we don’t try to visit 15 places per day (rush to a spot, jump off the bus, snap a photo on your iPhone, jump back on the bus and keep moving) we are more likely to visit just a few places each day but allow more time in each spot to take photos. Proper photos.
Wherever possible we aim to stay overnight near some of the prime locations so we can photograph them in the early morning and/or late afternoon light. And staying in beautiful places, you don’t have to travel to your first location to start taking photos. A lot of our best bird photography is done in the campgrounds and gardens around our accommodation…the truly enthusiastic photographers are up at dawn and have already enjoyed an hour of photography before breakfast.
Of course you can’t be everywhere at sunrise and sunset. If you tried that the tours would take three times as long and be way to expensive. And you do have a schedule to keep, so if it rains today you can’t decide to stay on for a few extra days for some better weather. So you do have to make the best of the conditions on the day, and stick to the program.
So what is the HUGE bonus that makes a photography tour so special? Simply this: we are all photography enthusiasts and we are all there on the same reason.
“Turn that camera off, don’t you have enough photos by now?” This is something you will NEVER hear on a photography tour.
For a photographer, you are treating yourself to a week or more of pure indulgence. You will never feel like you have to rush to take a photo because everybody else is waiting to go and do something else. You will never be ridiculed for the time you spend or the number of photos you take. Nobody will think it peculiar if you go out after dark. In fact, half the tour group will probably join you! Meanwhile you are learning new skills and sharing your knowledge with others, and making new friends along the way.
There is a small but growing group of friends who have come together for so many tours, they are more like a travelling family. Some tours sell out before we even have a chance to advertise, and many of those people book in not just because they love travelling with me, but because they love travelling with each other. For a photography enthusiast, there is nothing quite like travelling with friends and fellow ‘togs’ who just loving sharing these amazing experiences together.
To find out all about my photography tours, visit https://naturesimage.com.au/tours and while you are there, sign up for the monthly newsletter to be notified of all future tour announcements.
NATURE'S IMAGE PHOTOGRAPHY 