As pensioners living in a retirement village with limited space, my wife and I share the same study/art workshop. This serves as my dry lab where my editing is done. A while ago I was doing some editing on sport images and noticed the busy bird life in the bottlebrush just outside my garden on the pavement. I thought this might be an opportunity for me, despite my limited equipment, to take some ‘wild’ garden bird photos.
During one of our trips to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, we had a wonderful opportunity to photograph the behaviour of a black-chested snake-eagle at the Nossob Camp waterhole.
When we spotted a leopard, the excitement was palpable. The magnificent animal was on the move, however, and although I was a wannabe photographer, I was also the driver of the vehicle. Trying to get my camera with the long lens ready to capture something worthwhile was no small feat. I had no fancy stabiliser or platform. Instead, a small window bean bag had to do the trick.
On a trip to Mata-Mata Camp in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, we had the privilege of photographing the daily comings and goings of a family of meerkats that had taken up residence in a burrow behind the chalets.
Cape turtle-doves arrive in their hundreds, in the early morning, for a drink at some waterholes in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. The doves are a good food-source for lanner falcons and black-backed jackals...
We were on a game drive and had just had a lion sighting, when two cheetahs crossed the road in front of us. Little did we know how exciting the next 50 minutes would be. The cheetahs went into thick bush, heading for the main road so we drove up there quickly to locate them again.
When we booked our first Kgalagadi trip for December 2018, we had no idea what to expect. We dreamt of possible sightings. One was definitely a cheetah hunt.
t was 23 December 2018 and the Savuti Game Reserve was baking under the summer sun. At around 18:15 we went out for a short ‘sundowner drive’. The park was parched so we stopped at a small waterhole a few kilometres from the camp to see what would come down for a last drink.
Buffalo often drink twice a day, so it is not unusual to see them quenching their thirst at a waterhole. However, the symmetry of this image appealed enormously to me.
