By Kah Kit Yoong

Sand Dunes of the Namib-Naukluft Desert, Canon 1DsMkIII, 24-105mm, ISO 200, f5, 1/1600

Last night, I was having a brief look through my archives from Namibia last year and found this aerial shot from a microlight. Over the years I’ve unearthed a few gems through this process. It usually makes me sleepy so it’s an activity I reserve for just before bed. The image you see shows some of the wind-sculpted dunes of the Namib-Naukluft desert. Having had several experiences in aerial photography (microlight, Cessna and helicopters) over the past year, I thought I would share a few thoughts. The exposures are going to vary a bit depending on the speed you’re flying and distance from the ground but here are a few general comments.

The importance of getting the balance of speed versus depth of field is amplified once you’re in the air. Since landscape subjects are much further from the lens in aerial photography compared to when you’re on the ground, you can often obtain adequate DOF at wide apertures. My favourite lens in the air is Canon’s 24-105mm 4L IS. The focal length allows me to shoot wide landscapes and it’s also long enough to isolate structures for abstracts like the one above. The image stabilisation is irrelevant since I never shoot at a slow enough shutter speed for hand shake. Perhaps it may have some benefit given the vibrations you get from flying. In any case I leave it on. If I’m able to bring up a second lens and body, I use a 70-200mm 2.8L IS.

Wide open at f4, the 24-105mm, provides enough depth of field for most aerial images. However I usually prefer to stop down to f5-5.6 since the lens is sharper and less affected by vignetting. Occasionally, I’ll have a composition where there’s a definite foreground and background. In this case, a little bit more depth of field may be required to get everything in focus necessitating me to stop down further to 6.3-7.1.

Shutter speed is obviously critical in maintaining a sharp image while moving at fast speed. I’ve found 1/500 the absolute minimum exposure I can get away with using the 24-105mm. However I much prefer to use 1/1000 as a minimum and 1/1600 to be safer still. With a telephoto lens, I stick to the range 1/1600-1/3200.

I use whatever ISO is necessary to make the exposures as suggested above. This will obviously depend on the available lighting but usually I start off with ISO 200 or 400.

ND grad filters are just about impossible to use while flying so I don’t bother with them. My preference is to expose for the highlights even if that means a bit of under-exposure. I find that my ability to shoot at adequate shutter speeds takes too much of a hit from polarising filters so I don’t use them either.

Lastly, an important thing to do is to make time to occasionally quickly check the images on your LCD screen (chimping from CHeck IMage Preview) at 100% crop to make sure that the images are sharp enough and adapt if necessary.

On the Run. Canon 5DMkII, 70-200mm 2.8L IS, ISO 400, f5, 1/3200

By Andy Biggs

Gosh, where do I begin? We had such a jam-packed day with so many rich photographic subjects. To put it bluntly, we had lions, lion cubs, leopards and rhino. Ok, so I said it. Now on to the day’s sightings.

We stumbled upon two adult females of the Styx pride, and one of the adult females is quite the legend in the area at 14 years old. She is a different looking lion, in that her nose rides high on her face, and you always know who she is when you see her. She has a young cub at the moment, and it may be the last she will have due to her ‘old’ age. We sat and watched the two lionesses in the open grass opposite Mala Mala Main Camp on the other side of the Sand River, and after an hour we noticed the younger female was interested in a bush buck on the river’s edge. She stalked and eventually took off running after the bush buck, only to end in failure. I could see the excitement in the other photographers’ eyes, as any chase is a great thing to see.

We were back at camp at 10:30 for brunch, and then back out by 3:00. In the wintertime many camps offer breakfast before the morning game drive, however for the next few days were are going to eat brunch after the game drive. This will allow us to get a few more minutes of sleep, without foregoing the good light in the morning. It also helps out the camp staff.

We left camp by 3pm, and photographed more lions in and around the Sand River. We had 3 cubs and 2 adult females, and we had a very difficult time getting clear shots of the cubs in the tall reeds in the river. The mothers felt comfortable enough with us, and the cubs were heard growling for their mothers to provide milk for the hungry little guys. So we had intimate experiences with these gorgeous cats during their nursing activities. I just couldn’t get a clear photograph, due to the tall grass, but it was a great moment indeed. After their feeding, the cubs played in the sand on the water’s edge. We left them and headed towards the west street bridge to photograph white rhinos that had been seen.

Rhinos are funny creatures, and I get a good chuckle when I spend time with them. They are difficult to photograph past the obvious types of shots, so I always have to find new ways of interpreting gestures, moods and behavior. After my obligatory head shots, I noticed that some of them had good gatherings of oxpeckers on their backs, so I tried my best to get these emotional birds in my viewfinder. My biggest challenge was getting a good angle, good light and a good background, but the best I could muster was a background with the bridge in the background. GRRRR. Oh well.

On the way back to camp, we tracked down the son of Ngoboswan, one of my favorite male leopards in the reserve. There are only two others that I enjoy more, and that is the Bicycle Crossing Male and the massive Emsagwen Male, and it was good to see this beautiful guy before the sun went down. He was obviously hunting, so we kept our distance and watched as he tried to sneak up on a nyala in the forest. The nyala had already figured out what was going on, but it was fun to watch the game of cat and mouse until we could barely see in the moon’s light.

At dinner we all laughed about our good fortune, and added up that we had collectively kept Sandisk in business due to our appetite for flash memory.

Note: All images in these daily blog postings are very very rough edits of the things we have seen, and I often omit the photographs that take too much time to process. I don’t take much time off during the day, as I am working with people with their photographic needs. All of my images in these posts will have to be re-processed when I get back home, and they are only included in these blog entries for illustration purposes.

El Grupo

Oxpeckers on the back of a white rhino

By Kah Kit Yoong

Swept Away

I’ve had quite a few emails and comments about my photo “Painted Wave” which was featured in the last blog entry “Deconstruction Zone”. Just to put the photo into perspective, here is the grand view of the same location. A couple of years ago I might only have come back from a sunrise shoot with the big wide-angle seascape. These days, I’m always on the lookout for more creative ways of shooting landscapes to increase my yield of ‘keepers’. This is of course in addition to trying to make horizontal and vertical versions of each composition.

Eight new images have been added to the New Zealand gallery this week. In addition to “Painted Wave” and “Swept Away”, these include : a serene intimate autumn scene at Lake Benmore, some spectacular magic hour lighting in “Swept Away” and a 47 minute exposure showing startrails over the Church of the Good Shepherd at Lake Tekapo.

Congratulations to Nick Board for his photograph from Auschwitz.

“This is a photo of a washroom at Auschwitz 1. From here the unfortunate victims were forced to strip and wash, before being marched out to the adjacent enclosed courtyard, to be shot.”  Nick Board

Travel should not be avoided because one is female and single.  Travel can be safe irrespective of one’s gender.

Generally the world is safe, in fact many countries are safer than one’s own.  The key to safe travel is good planning.  Knowledge is power.

Know everything you can about where you are going.  An excellent resource are travel guides published by the Lonely Planet.  The books are exceedingly detailed with lots of vital and useful information.  Expect to pay about $25 for a country guide, excerpts can be downloaded in PDF format for less cost to you.

Check out the US State Department’s website for travel warnings.

Review the CIA’s World Fact Book.

Visit Christine Columbus who has an outstanding website about travel. Her travel tips are highly recommended.

Resources for female travelers:

* Hermail.net – connects traveling women around the world. Good place to find traveling information from other women.
* Hitchhiking Vietnam – a woman’s inspirational experience hitchhiking Vietnam alone. Offers plenty of advice and tips too.
* Journeywoman – online travel magazine for women who love to travel.
* Vagabunda – a travel e-zine written by a group of enthusiastic women. More than tips on how to fold your clothes so that they don’t crease, Vagabunda! wants to encourage the wonder of exploring the world.
* Women’s Travel Club – self-proclaimed as the largest travel club in America, they plan and organize over 20 trips abroad each year. They also offer plenty of travel advice, tips and a thorough packing list.

Don’t feel overwhelmed, read how Hilary Fouweather went around the world backpacking!  You can do it too.