Nothing is more exciting than flying for 8 hours above herds of wildebeest and other critters of the Serengeti, above Lake Natron’s spectacular mineral deposits and lesser flamingos, and finally around the summit of “Ol Doinyo Lengai” volcano the Maasais call the home of the gods. The surface of Natron is surreal, colorful, and geometric, seemingly made for me. In some of the flamingo images you will see both reflections and shadows from the same birds resulting in beautifully complex compositions.
See the First and Second videos in the series of East Africa Video Journals.
While the Serengeti always offers its share of fine wildlife sightings, I was quite excited by seeing the 120,000 year old Engaresero Footprints. These are among the oldest modern human tracks in the world.
I’m traveling in Africa with friends. We’ve been trekking at the base of the mighty Virunga Mountains looking for a troop of Mountain Gorillas and were not disappointed! Do note it’s up to the gorillas to get this close, we’ll approach the troop from a respectable distance but their curiosity can occasionally have them close the distance to check us out as well.
I make my office staff very happy when I photograph in a new location. For the last few days of this journey in Africa, we traveled in the Simien Mountains in the Ethiopian Highlands, filming the highly endangered gelada or bleeding-heart baboon. They live in an extraordinary landscape with other fabled creatures such as the lammergeier or bearded vulture.
The Gorilla Forest Camp nestled in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest is a tremendous place to see the endangered mountain gorillas as well as other wildlife large & small. I love photographing the gorillas, their calm intelligence shines through in their eyes. Now, on to Ethiopia!
David Slater is currently embroiled in an argument with Wikimedia over the now famous ‘monkey selfie’ images.
Like other conservation photographers at the iLCP, I support David Slater’s copyright to the now famous ‘selfies’ of the critically endangered crested black macaque.
This past week I was in Katmai National Park photographing brown bears with filmmaker Abraham Joffe. The bears were wonderful, cooperative models for us & I can’t wait to see the resulting TV special.
While I wasn’t so happy with the tour operator on this my second trip to the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, I was able to capture some interesting landscapes and wildlife shots. I was able to concentrate on one of my favorite subjects, abstracts, especially in the glacially carved mountains of Spitsbergen. Also, I wish Vanishing Act didn’t already go to print because I got a couple really good camouflage photos involving a hungry Arctic fox.
