Wild Light Photography

Catches the fish!! (in this case)


Having recently arrived in Africa and Journeyed to Cape Town I was eager to get out and do some photography. During my research I had quickly come across the famous Boulders Beach and the African Penguin colony (Originally named Jackass Penguins, after their call which is reminiscent of a donkey). As usual an early start was order of the day (night as it happened). Unfortunately due to (not so) youthful exuberance we set out at 4am not thinking that so far south the dawn in winter is appreciably later than I had anticipated! So it was still dark when we arrived at Boulders Beach much to Kate’s, my partner, annoyance at not having another hour in bed!
It did however give us time to discover that the gates to the famous beach were shut and so we explored the area where we found plenty of penguins near by. As the sky lightened to the East I could see a group of penguins on the rocks with the city (southern suburbs) lights in the background. Perfect.
Approaching wildlife is always a slow and time consuming endeavour, though I was later to discover that you can walk well within 2m of African Penguins without them batting an eyelid. I found a small gully in which to stand and rest my bean bag on the upper lip, very comfortable apart from the odd wave that come up to my knees, believe me, the waters around Cape Town are not warm, especially during mid winter.
By now the sun was just below the horizon behind me giving me a chance of a decent exposure time if I kept the aperture open while the background lights were still clearly visible. The Light was perfect and the colours fantastic. I was using a short telephoto (200mm) and so even at F3.5 I had plenty of depth of field and I just hoped the shutter speed was fast enough. The bean bag and image stabiliser took care of any shake but nothing prevents motion blur except higher shutter speeds. I took plenty of photographs to make sure I had at least one that worked.
As I photographed the penguins played a game of dare. They were all reluctant to be the first to enter the water (due unseen danger of seals). It took one bold (or very hungry) individual to take the plunge and then another until only a couple of stragglers were left behind. Eventually even these too dived in. Moments later they jump out of the water back onto the rocks. Whether they had seen a seal or were just over cautious, I couldn’t tell.
Unfortunately the exposure times were too short for the diving antics but were fast enough (barely) for the photograph shown. Even so there is a small amount of ghosting on a couple of the heads as they shook them as if to show what they thought of the decidedly dodgy situation. Several other frames have excessive motion blur but they are kind of arty.
The sun came up and changed the scene completely with the subtle colours vanishing and the distant lights disappearing. The Penguins had pretty much all jumped in again but I was happy as Larry (at least I assume so not having met Larry). It was a good start to my African trip!