A shout out to teachers!

It is that time of year when all the kids are going back to school. And what a fitting time to give a shout out to all those hard working teachers out there who are doing their best to inspire our kids. They work so hard and invest so much of their time, all for mediocre pay. But what they do can change the future for their students. Heck, I was one of those kids. I had numerous teachers take me under their wings and create the spark that would change my future.

I went to an elementary school back in the 70s that actually had Super 8 video cameras in a lab, and let us students create our own films. I created a stop motion animated film about dolphins. It was simple, but I think back to that film often. My teacher, without even telling me, entered it into a nationwide contest and I won my own video camera. I will never forget Ms. Folz.

Over the last 8 years I have received many emails from teachers who like to use my blog as a teaching tool.  This ranges from high school students who are interested in learning photography, to elementary school kids who are learning about the world.

Our good friend, Andrea has her students read the blog every week, and I even video conferenced them from the Olympics in PyeongChang, Korea in February. I am not sure who was more excited, them seeing me at the Olympics, or me seeing the excitement on their faces. Andrea not only uses the blog to educate the kids about the Olympics, wildlife, foreign lands, and other worldly things, but she even uses it to teach math. When I posted the images of all the Canon equipment at the Olympics, she created an assignment to see if the kids could determine the value of all the lenses and cameras. (Being a teacher, she also isn't afraid to let me know of any typos I have in my blog posts. And that is much appreciated too.)

This week I received a bunch of photos from Laura (my sister-in-law) and her classroom in Sacramento where she is using images from my recent trip to Africa to teach the kids language arts.

I video conferenced with their class the other day and took questions from the students. They asked about many of the animals in Africa and were most interested in the hippos. 

Here is a photo of my wife and her twin sister in her sister's 6th grade classroom in San Diego (when they did their best to fool the kids with my wife going in and teaching the kids to see if they would know that it was not Michelle). Michelle loves sharing the blog with her students as well.

I have visited numerous high schools to present at their career days, done show-and-tells at elementary schools, and will be doing a keynote speech at a university in Washington in October. I feel so lucky to be able to share photos and stories from all over the world, and to know that maybe it is affecting others. 

If you are a teacher using the blog, or know someone who is, let me know about it. Maybe I can video conference with your / their class too. 

And don't forget to thank the teachers in your life.

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If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, Europe, Asia, India and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.
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Botswana Photo Tour - Our last day, and what a day of photography it was!

We woke up at our customary 5:30am time, ate breakfast and bundled up for the cold morning game drive. It was our last full day in Botswana and we hoped for one last productive day of photography in this amazing country.

Our first sighting was a large pack of elephant.

We watched (and photographed of course) as this one elephant sprayed itself with dirt.

This is not an uncommon sight, as the elephants can actually get sunburned. They cover themselves with dirt to protect themselves from the harmful rays of the sun.

As you may know by now, I am sucker for the baby animals and loved photographing these large females with the youngsters.

Then it was time to motion pan these elephants...

How can you not love these little ones?

One of the things that I teach the guests when on safari, is to shoot wide shots to include the environment. I loved the trees and cloudy sky behind the herd and felt that it would make a nice composition.

We saw these animals running through the water, one after another. I followed this one as it jammed through the marsh.

Once I knew that I had a nice "safe shot" of these guys running across the frame, I decided to slow the shutter speed down again and try for one last motion pan shot, and I am glad that I did. I changed the camera settings to ISO 100 and f/22 which gave me a shutter speed of 1/25 sec. As I was panning along with this guy, he jumped over a puddle and I was thrilled to capture him mid jump.

Our last stop was to another water hole occupied with hippo. Steve (our guide) said that it was safe to get outside the vehicle.

A couple of us got down on the ground and shot images low to the water, which created much more dynamic images than shooting high over these beasts.

I was laying down on the dirt and had the Canon 1D X Mark II with the Canon 100-400mm lens resting on a rock in front of me.  It was so awesome to photograph these active hippo at their level!

Those are some teeth!

This hippo looks a little nicer than the last one.

I saw this one hippo flipping his head around and trained my camera on him, hoping for more action. Just as I moved my camera and locked focus on this hippo, it flipped it's head high and splashed the water in a nice arc.

Steve and I were shooting side-by-side on the dirt, about 60 feet from the hippos when this one decided to charge forwards at us. I shot off 4 or 5 images before I bolted to my feet and prepared to jump back in the vehicle. This was the last shot I took before I chickened out. I stepped onto the vehicle, looked down and saw Steve still laying down shooting. He told us that the hippo would not charge us since we were not invading their space in the water. But, hey, I didn't know that, and this shot was good enough for me. :)

I hope you all enjoyed the blogs from this 5 week trip to Africa.

We have a bunch more trips coming up (most are sold out, but we have more coming that are not announced yet). Come with us to see all this for yourself!


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Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!
__________________________________________________________________________
If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
__________________________________________________________________________
Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, Europe, Asia, India and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.
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Botswana Photo Tour - Our second to last day on safari

After being in Africa for almost 5 weeks, we were in the final days of our trip. But the best was yet to come...

Our morning started with us stalking this cheetah as it moved through the brush near our camp. I just love the look of these cats and could photograph them all day. But this cat had other things in mind and gave us the slip pretty quickly.

Even though we had seen many zebra on our trip(s), this group was near the edge of the road, with a nice background and in really nice light, so we stopped for some photos.

Once we got back to our campsite, I decided to convert one of the zebra shots into a high key black & white photo. I used SilverEfex Pro for the conversion and really like this. I will likely print this and hang it in my office.

We saw these two wart hogs and I laughed at their manes. I don't remember ever seeing hogs with this much hair. I don't know why, but this reminded me a little of Donald Trump's hair.

We went back to our camp for lunch, and while there, we heard some elephants nearby. I walked around the back of my tent and saw some elephants grazing. A couple of us ran back, grabbed our cameras and took some photos. We walked pretty close to them, but not too close.

After lunch, we were back in the vehicle for another game drive. We saw a couple of large groups of African buffalo. At one point, I saw these three standing close together and quickly shot off a handful of photos. I laughed as I was looking through the camera, as the proximity of the three buffalo look like one really large animal.

This is one of my favorite photos from my African safaris, partly because of the image itself and partly because of the story behind the photo. Let me explain.

As many of you know, I love taking motion pan photos (setting a slow shutter speed and moving the lens at the same speed as the moving subject). We were driving up to a water hole when our guide, Steve, spotted a large group of hippo on the shoreline. Knowing their behavior, he told us that they would spook and all run for the water when we drove up close to them. Before he continued driving, I encouraged everyone to change their cameras to shutter priority with a shutter speed in the area of 1/40 sec.

Steve drove up to the hippos at a pretty good pace, and as expected, they started running for the water. They were moving quickly as Steve did his best to get us close for the shot. We had to wait for him to hit the brakes and stop the vehicle completely before trying to pan with the animals. I think we had no more than 5 seconds to grab our shots of the last hippos entering the water.

I was able to pan at the right speed to get the middle hippo tack sharp with motion everywhere else. As you can see from the image, the slow shutter shows the movement of the water really well. It was a great challenge with a nice resulting image too.

We saw some more hippos in the another nearby pool, and I loved this one with LOTS of ox peckers on it's back.

One of the hippo lifted it's head high and splashed water into the air. I thought that this would be one of my favorite hippo action shots, but I did not know what was in store for me the next day.

The sun was setting, and we headed back towards our campsite. We drove up to these Lilac-breasted rollers who were warming themselves in the last minutes of sunset.

With colors like this, we could never get tired of photographing these little beauties.

The sun was almost completely down when we saw this herd in the distance. The animals had just run across the plains and kicked up some dust. This created a great environment for a back lit silhouette shot.

I was hoping for a nice sunset, and looking for an elephant or good tree to put in the foreground. Well...the sunset was not as vibrant as I had hoped it would be, and we didn't find a great foreground subject. Then I realized that we had the best foreground subjects in our vehicle. I asked each of the guests to hop out and let me get a silhouette shot of each of them. This was a shot of Pat wearing his trademark outback safari hat. And so another day had come and gone, with only one left before we flew home. But it was an epic one. Stay tuned!

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Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!
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If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
__________________________________________________________________________
Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, Europe, Asia, India and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.
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Botswana Photo Tour - Lions and their cubs crossing a river

It was fairly early in the morning as we came across a family of lion who were hanging out along a rivers edge. We were all excited to see the cubs and started taking photos right away. Our guide pulled up nice and close so that we could get some nice shots of the mothers and cubs interacting, and we were treated to some great playful moments.

I was taking photos of the female with the one playing cub when the adult female turned around to check on one of her other cubs. It was great morning sunlight on their faces and I thought I had the best shot of the morning...

...but as I kept shooting with my Canon 1D X Mark II and Canon 100-400mm lens, mom decided to grab onto the tail of the oncoming cub, while the other cub looked with this great expression. This is one of my favorite photos from the Botswana trip.

We sat there photographing the cubs for a while, when all of a sudden, they all started moving towards the water.

I have seen many lions in Africa, but never seen them in the water. I watched as this cub prepared to jump across a small stream of water.

I waited for the jump and fired off a couple of shots.

The large female crossed the larger flowing river and waited to make sure that each of the cubs would successfully make their way from one side to the other.

You can see the one cub climbing up the rivers edge as mom watched on. Our guide told us that the adults were concerned about crocodiles in the water.

These little cubs were so cute.

I watched as this one cub walked towards the flowing river and reminded our guests to shoot wide and include the great reflection in the water.

Many of the other lions came over and joined the one cub, giving us an even better reflection shot. All of us were excited to photograph this scene.

We were driving back to our lodge when our guide spotted this owl in one of the nearby trees. We were happy to get a nice shot of the owl in really nice light.

At the end of the day, we had a sundowner at the edge of this water hole filled with hippos. It was fun to photograph the sunset with the camera in one hand and a cold gin and tonic in the other hand.

After our sundowner, we packed up the vehicles and made our way back towards our lodge. On the drive back, we saw a couple of male lions hanging out.

I reminded our group to increase the ISO of their cameras, since the sun had already set and we did not have a lot of light to work with. Even though we were shooting at ISOs of 6400 or more, the photos came out nicely.

As always, we waited to see if either of the males would yawn, giving us this type of shot. As if on command, this one male did just that. Another great ending to yet another amazing day in Botswana!

__________________________________________________________________________
Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!
__________________________________________________________________________
If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
__________________________________________________________________________
Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, Europe, Asia, India and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.
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