We just got back from a fantastic trip to Africa, and you can see the images in the Gallery. There were three distinct parts to the trip: sharks in South Africa, a game reserve, and an abandoned diamond mining town in Namibia. Each was incredibly distinct and provided some great photographic opportunities!
Let me start by saying that South Africa’s entrance requirement is a little different. You don’t fill out a form, but rather you’re required to show proof of a ticket to leave the country. Thankfully, they’re happy to look at an iPhone, and the 3G connection to United’s website is quite fast inside the customs area. At $20/MB, it definitely should be.
Over the years, I’ve shot whales a number of times. It’s always great to see a whale breach, but let me tell you, in hindsight, a whale breach seems slow. You have time to see it in the distance, get your camera up, focus, and shoot. On the other hand, sharks are insanely fast. By the time you register that you saw a breach, the shark’s gone. That challenge made shooting them infinitely exciting! We joked that we were trying to photograph seals, but the pesky sharks kept jumping up and eating them.
Being in the shark cage is also exciting (oh boy was that water cold, especially on the day that we had record low temperatures). As crazy as it sounds, you find yourself sitting there going “hello shark, please come closer and swim at me with your mouth open.” One shark did pass so closely that I decided it was smarter to pull my hands back into the cage. Our boat’s crew was really skilled at grabbing the shark’s attention!
We were also fortunate because for a few days, there was a very large school of dolphins (thousands) in the water, and it was rather amazing to see them swimming along with the boat, porpoising from right next to the boat out to the horizon.
Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t terribly cooperative, and about half of our shark excursions were cancelled due to swell and storms. But such is nature photography, and it’s probably better to not go than to have a boat of heaving passengers.
The next part of the adventure were a few nights in the Shamwari Game Reserve (about an hour drive from Port Elizabeth). Honestly we were fortunate enough with all the wildlife that we saw with our ranger, Ben, that it didn’t completely feel real.
The first day, we encountered a herd of elephant (with a 2-week old baby no less), and one of them decided to check me out. He stuck his trunk about a foot from me and was looking me right in the eye as I sat in the back of the safari truck. While I’m rolling camera (I was shooting a lot of footage using a 5D MkII on this trip), the ranger’s saying “don’t move.” I seem to be popular with elephants (must be my deodorant) because a couple days later, another elephant decided to check me out, too, and he got so close to the truck that he inadvertently punctured the cloth side with his tusk!
Each time we went out, we found something great. The absolute highlight was a morning that started with an hour with a leopard and its cub out in the open. The leopard even passed so close that we could reach out and touch it (of course we didn’t) twice! That morning continued on, ending with watching a lion and its cubs eat a fresh kill. Ironically, and completely by chance, every time we saw a kill, the animal that the predator killed was on the menu for dinner.
As a side note, if you go to Shamwari, let me recommend that you ask for Ben to be your ranger. He’s a very smart, easy-going guy who will explain to you both how waterholes start with an elephant’s footprint and what differs between black and white rhino dung.
The last stop in our journey was an abandoned German diamond mining town in Namibia at Luderitz called Kolmanskuppe. This town was built in the early 1900s and then abruptly abandoned, and the desert is gradually reclaiming the land. It’s worth seeing and provides some very interesting still life photos, especially now with HDR photography, but boy is getting there an adventure!
Windhoek is one of the big airports in Namibia. Unfortunately it’s an 8-9 hour drive to Luderitz from there. Luderitz, however, has its own airport, and Air Namibia flies there once a day. Well, the plane that took us to Luderitz held 19 passengers, had no overhead bins, had a window that was falling off on the inside, and had some metal shearing off the outside of the engine. It also listed 3 major “features” of the plane right by the door on the outside, including “air conditioning” and this new-fangled contraption called “radar.”
Despite the physical condition of the plane, the flight was perfectly fine. But I should mention here for other travelers that Namibia’s time is 1-hour behind South African time. We found that out when we arrived at the airport to return home. And here we all thought we were lucky, getting to sleep in until 7. Mealtimes were actually a bit odd, though not because of the time difference. Each restaurant we went to served enough food to feed at least 2 people as a standard portion. It’s weird to realize that there are people starving in the country, and you feel very guilty when you don’t eat your whole meal.
However, despite that dose of reality, everything worked out well, and we got some great images! The trip was everything we hoped it would be, and boy are we itching to go shoot sharks again!
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