The Alien Photographer

A few years back when I started photographing wildlife, I had taken some disappointing photographs of white pelicans. Basically, I was too far away. I decided to get closer to my subjects with the aid of camouflage attire and for good measure one  decoy. I  purchased a camouflage hat and netting, even painted my face like a soldier does. In additon to these items, I acquired a belly tube (boots that fisherman use), this I thought would allow me to venture closer to the pelicans in the waist deep lake.

Okay so there I stand at the edge of the lake, looking like some alien with this weird attire as the park warden drives up. I could imagine in his career there is a first for everything and I was probably it. So I am now under pressure to remain calm and cool with his eyes upon me, I therefore take my first step into the  water. Unfortunately for me, the soil under the water is like quicksand and there I stand wallowing and mired in the soft sticky lake bottom which is like.super glue. My foot sinks down about 6 to 8 inches and won’t release. At this point I don’t want to lose my balance and drop my big expensive lens and camera body into the water. To my relief the park warden drives away, (laughing for sure) but I am still stuck. Over the next 5 to 10 minutes with panic about to set in, I managed to get out of the super glue soil and walk back to my vehicle. Then and there I decided to buy an inflatable kayak, which turned out to be a much better option for photographing the pelicans and other wildlife from the lake.

Lions Too Close For Big Lenses

Normally, as a wildlife photographer your subject is further away and you have to use your big lenses, you know the ones that are 2 to 3 feet long. Not so for my wife and me at Ngorongoro Crater, we had 2 lions come so close, that I could smell them. The lions were less than 6 feet (2 metres) away. I was able to take some video of them (very shaky) with my I phone from the open roof top. Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMYEQFW0vyc

After about  eight minutes one of the male lions left and I was a little more relaxed. I decided to carefully and slowly open the lower window ever so slightly and proceeded to do a second video from the lower window which was even closer than the open roof top. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQoEKyVFlsM

Leopard Scare

In December of 2011, my wife and I were in South Africa photographing a 21 month old female leopard.  The young leopard was sitting at the base of a small tree in some tall grass, only her eyeballs were visible. We were positioned in the back seats of an open Land Rover vehicle.  I was looking directly at her with a 300mm lens and she was looking at me. The next thing that I could see was her charging towards me and I just about crapped my underwear (excuse my English). My wife had a good laugh at my expense as I jumped back with a look of fright, fortunately the leopard stopped the charge.