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Chobe National Park, Botswana
Chobe, Unhelpful Lighting?Chobe Park in Botswana is an incredible wildlife destination. Famous for its huge Elephant population and prides of Lions, some of which apparently specialise in Elephants! I never witnessed that spectacle (not sure I would want to, to be honest) but the prides of lions were the biggest we have seen in Africa.
Unfortunately alongside the Chobe river banks of you are on the south side and the sun moves across the northern sky (In the southern hemisphere the sun moves in the North and on the equator right above, it is also upside down but you don’t notice that, with the moon it is more obvious). It is further exacerbated by the fact that the campsite is on the west end of the most productive area. So going out in the morning you are heading into the rising sun and coming back in the evening you are heading into the setting sun. Heading the other way takes you away from the river and although wildlife can be found throughout Chobe it is the river and flood plain that makes that part of Chobe so rewarding.
What is a poor photographer to do with such conditions? Surely not give up and go home. No, its time to practice dramatic silhouettes and back or rim lighting. In reality things aren’t so bad as you can always look back the way you have come but I can’t resist a challenge!
Elephants are one of my favourite animals. They are intelligent, social and playful and are fairly active throughout the day. They are also big which means that you can use a larger choice of lenses without them being reduced to specks on the photograph and they are grey so are fairly easy to meter for. Unfortunately all of that grey fools your auto white balance, not a problem when using RAW (as I do) but beware if you are capturing jpegs. Luckily their shape is so distinct that they are recognisable using any artistic exposures.
Elephants Crossing River.
This was an easy silhouette. I don’t like true silhouettes but prefer to exposure enough so that features can just be made out. I do that by metering on the subject and underexposing just enough but not too much. That means sacrificing control over the highlights but in this case the water drops are accentuated by ‘blowing out’ without being detrimental to the overall effect.
Dusty Elephants
Dust (along with mist) is fantastic at showing up rays of light especially at sunrise and sunset. Luckily elephants tend to throw up a lot of dust and even throw it over themselves which can create amazing photographs. Expose for the dust and if the animal, Elephants in this case) silhouette then so be it. I dial in a little overexposure to prevent the true silhouettes but still keeping detail in the dust but that’s just personal preference.
Baboon
I love photographing baboons. They are very sociable, travelling in large family groups (troops) often comprising of all ages and the interactions amongst them are fascinating. Often over looked because they are relatively common means that you get left alone to watch their hilarious antics and intimate, tender grooming.
The large male in the photograph was getting a moments peace and having a good scratch. The setting sun was behind and the hair of his fur catching the blood red light caught my attention. As the sun was so low and almost directly behind the baboon I had huge amounts of lens flare even with the large lens hood the 500mm lens has. Lens flare is caused by strong light entering the lens and bouncing around the internal optics. It is generally frowned upon although I actually quite like it in some instances. Moving would have been the obvious thing to do but that was likely to ruin the effect, startle the baboon and risk losing the sun altogether. Instead I jumped into the back of our Land Rover and rested the lens on the back of the seat where the door frame was casting a shadow. It didn’t totally eliminate the flare but it was acceptable and in fact looking at the finished photograph it adds to the overall colour.