Tanzania, Africa - Day 5 - Lion, Cheetah, Giraffe and the circle of life

Here we are, recapping Day 5 of our incredible Tanzanian safari, and we have photos of animals large and small.

And on this particular day, we saw the circle of life first hand. There are a couple of photos in today's blog which show Cheetah and Hyena feasting on other animal. This might make you wince a bit, but I can tell you that when I was in Tanzania and taking the photos, it was not disgusting at all. It was a real life example of what happens every day in the Serengeti.

Time to take you through the fifth day of our trip.

On this morning, we left Ndutu Lodge and started our quest to find more animal. first coming across this Zebra and her colt. These little Zebra are just so darned cute.

A little later, we were driving along in our Landcruiser, when Sam (our driver) stopped seemingly for nothing. We asked Sam why he stopped in the middle of nowhere. I figured that he, or someone else, needed to get out and "check the back tire", but that was not the case. Sam pointed out these Dung Beetle who were rolling this ball of dung to a burial spot. You see, these beetle (which are about an inch or two in length) cover their eggs in these balls of dung and then roll it around until they dig a hole and bury it. I got out of the vehicle (quickly) and took this shot of our two crappy friends.

(Photographer's note: On this trip, I took almost all of the photos with my Canon 1DX and the newer Canon 100-400mm II lens. Even the photo above was taken with the version II of the 100-400mm lens, which has a much closer minimum focus length than the old version lens. It is also  much sharper than the previous version and no longer has the push / pull zoom.)

As we came to a large flat area, we got our first glimpse of what I was expecting from "the migration", with a sea of endless Wildebeest and Giraffe. We were really captivated by this site, not knowing that we would see an even greater concentration of these animal in the days to come.

We were driving along this long flat area when we saw a large group of Vultures up ahead. That usually means that there has been a kill.

The Vultures were fighting with each other to get to the food source.

Here is a Vulture showing it's dominance.

As we approached the scene, we saw a group of Hyena who were coming back to stake their claim to the food.

There is definitely a pecking order when it comes to food. If an animal is killed by big cats, then they are the first to the food. Then, after they are full, the Hyena come in and have their share. And then we they are done, the birds get the final bit of food off of the carcass. In the above photo, the Hyena had returned to the Zebra remains and scattered the Vultures.

We watched as these two Hyena picked through the remains of the Zebra.

All of a sudden, the one Hyena picked up the Zebra's head and walked off with it. It was a little shocking, but I was not about to stop shooting photos of this.

I saw these three Vultures sitting in a tree and it made me think of the movie "Jungle Book" with the birds and their British accents. Do you remember that?

Not long after we left the site of the carnage, we came across these Impala. They were challenging each other.

We drove along the side of a small lake and saw this large male Lion taking a nap. It was the first adult male Lion that we saw up close, and I was hoping it would do something more than sleep. It is a cat after all, which means that it could sleep for hours.

We were all waiting to see what would happen, when 7 minutes later (I know this from the metadata of the photos) the big guy woke up.

Right after he got up, he gave us this nice big yawn. I was VERY happy to have this shot.

We watched the Lion for about 15 minutes before continuing our drive along with water's edge. As you can see from these photos, we came across hundreds, if not thousands of wildebeest.

We all found it interesting how the different species coexist in the wild.

Whenever we saw Wildebeest, there were always Zebra in the mix.

And then we saw this Cheetah hiding under a tree, eating a freshly killed Wildebeest.

I would venture to say that this Cheetah likes his meat rare. (I cropped this photo to try and spare you the more gruesome site of the open Wildebeest.)

OK - that is it for the carnage. On to more beautiful and peaceful photos...

We saw this other Cheetah up on a hillside and positioned our vehicle in the perfect spot. Well, the perfect spot if the Cheetah would get up and walk to it's left. And as luck would have it, the Cheetah went right where I was hoping he would.  Why did I want him to go that direction? You see the background was far in the distance, and with the Cheetah walking along the crest of the hill, it gave us great separation between the Cheetah and background. This is definitely one of my favorite photos from the two weeks in Africa.

The Cheetah walked over to a nearby tree and plopped down. We moved our vehicle to get a better view. Everyone was photographing the cat when I turned and looked the opposite direction. And what I saw was just beautiful.

On the right side of the vehicle were these amazing waves of green grass, with Acacia trees and blue sky in the background. I have showed this photo to numerous friends, and many of them have asked if I pumped the colors. Nope. This was straight out of the camera with minimal tweaks to exposure.

Check out these playful little Bat Eared Fox. This pack had a whole bunch of little ones who played endlessly.

It was getting late, and we started to head off to our next lodge. But not before coming across this group of Wildebeest and Giraffe.

This was the first and only time that we saw a large group of Giraffe in close proximity to each other. I quickly rolled the aperture of the camera to f/8 so that all of the Giraffe would be in focus, and was excited to get this shot.

Just after taking the Giraffe group shot, all of the animals started running.  Luckily, even though I was still at f/8, I had a shutter speed of 1/640 sec so I could freeze the action.

How is that for an action packed day on safari?

Stay tuned for the blog of Day 6 and more.

And, for those of you who missed this amazing opportunity, we are going to do this amazing safari again next year...check out the site HERE to sign up for the 2017 trip! We have a limit of 12 people.

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If you are interested in purchasing any camera 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.

_________________________________________________________________________________

And also, remember that you and your friends can enter your email address at the top right of this blog to get an email any time I write a new blog post or send my monthly newsletter.

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Happy Valentines Day (Images of love from the animals in Tanzania)

Happy Valentines everyone!

To celebrate this day, I thought I would post some photos of love from the recent trip to Africa.

This photo pretty much says it all. We all laughed when we were photographing the hippos, because many times their mouths would come together and form the shape of a heart.

I see kids put their hands together to form the shape of a heart, but I think these hippo have them beat.

Zebra kisses...

Valentines Day is not just about our partners, but also our children who we love so much.

 I love the special connection between adult and youngster that I saw out in the wild.

This photo made me laugh, as this mother was cleaning the child, and the youngster has the same look that I give my wife when she tries to clean me up.

Ahhhh, Lion cub love.

Most likely, you will be having a Valentines meal today. Enjoy that time with each other. These two are.

This blog post is dedicated to my wife and kids who I love so much. Although we are currently spread out across the country, this is my virtual box of chocolates to each of you. :)

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If you are interested in purchasing any camera 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.

_________________________________________________________________________________

And also, remember that you and your friends can enter your email address at the top right of this blog to get an email any time I write a new blog post or send my monthly newsletter.

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Tanzania, Africa - Day 4 - Landscapes and a visit to a Maasai Village

For the first 3 days of our safari we concentrated on seeing as much wildlife as possible. On our 4th full day, we decided to change things up a bit. We decided to spend the first part of the day checking out the local landscape, followed by a visit to a local Maasai tribe. Both were great, but the visit to the Maasai village was exceptional!

Come along and join me (virtually) on Day 4 of our safari.

Our day started with a really nice breakfast at Olduvai Camp, with good food and lots of laughs. At this point of the trip, everyone was time adjusted and slowing down to the relaxed pace of Africa. After finishing my omelet and cup of coffee, I went back to my tent to grab all my camera gear. As I was walking along the path to our waiting vehicles, I saw this Rock Hyrax hanging out on a nearby rock. I grabbed the Canon 1DX, which already had the 100-400mm lens on it, and shot this photo. Actually, before I shot this, I moved my position so that the tree was positioned behind the Hyrax. If I had the bright sky behind the animal, the photo would not have been very good.

My Maasai friend was waiting near the vehicles, standing near some of the hand made jewelry. I decided that this would make a good portrait. I had him turn slightly so that his ears were more visible.

We started driving off towards Olduvai Gorge when we came across these Dik dik. These are actually tiny little antelope which only live in Africa. And yes...they are really called Dik diks.

As we were driving, I saw this one Maasai walking and liked the way that his bright red outfit contrasted against the green field and mountains.

And then we came across these Maasai who were tending their goats. I asked our driver to move us into a position where the mountains would be in the background and got this photo. I really like this photo, because it shows these Maasai in their environment.

After shooting the other photo, the Maasai continued on their way, and I continued to shoot to get this action shot.

We came across more Giraffe. Even though I had many photos of Giraffe from the day before, I liked that these were in a completely different environment.

I also liked having wide shots of the Giraffe in their surroundings.

I saw this Maasai woman walking with her baby through one of the fields, and captured this portrait. The colors that they wear are really striking.

And here is another wide shot, showing the Maasai tending a herd of goats in front of the Tanzanian background. (Photographer's note: You will notice that I like to shoot tight and wide shots of the same subject matter. But you will also notice how different they are. Each type of photo tells a different story. When you travel somewhere like this, I recommend that you shoot tight shots to show detail and wide shots to show environment.)

After a couple hours of driving and photographing, we arrived at Olduvai Gorge. Looking at the colors of the rock here, I decided that this was a great place to teach our guests about polarizing filters. I grabbed my Canon 5D Mark III and attached a Canon 16-35mm lens. I also attached my Tiffen Circular Polarizing filter, which pulled the colors out of the rock and helped increase the contrast in the cloud sky.

For those of you who have never heard of Olduvai Gorge, this is the location where they found what is believed to be the oldest signs of mankind.

There were Acacia trees lining the rim of the gorge. Since we had this nice blue sky with puffy clouds, I once again used the 5D Mark III, wide lens, and circular polarizing filter to get this shot highlighting this one tree and it's shadow.

After visiting the gorge and exploring the countryside for most of the morning. we returned back to Olduvai Camp for some lunch, another photography lesson, and some rest.

Then, late in the afternoon, we drove to a nearby Maasai village. This turned out to be a favorite stop for many of our tour attendees (and myself).

For this part of the trip, I did something that I usually do not do. I used my Black Rapid Yeti strap and carried two cameras with me. I had my Canon 5D Mark III with the 24-70mm lens and the Canon 1DX with the 100-400mm lens and a Canon 600EX-RT flash). I don't usually like having two cameras hanging on me, but knew that I would want cameras with a wide and a long lens for this visit.

Upon our arrival, the tribe members got together and did a traditional dance.

You can see that part of this dance has the men jumping.

This is part of the Maasai culture as the warriors jump high to make themselves bigger, and therefore more threatening to predators.

As interesting as the dance was, I was fascinated by the people who surrounded me.

I used the longer zoom lens to zoom in tight and capture the character of these tribes men and women.

I saw this beautiful woman standing with her baby and waited, for what seemed like forever, for the baby to look up. It was worth the wait.

More great details, not only in the face, but also in the jewelry.

I did mention the beautiful colors that they wear.

I saw these two women standing by their Enkang (hut) and grabbed this shot. I was invited into one of the Enkang. They are very low and very small inside, but it was really interesting to see how these nomadic people live. The Enkang are made mostly with brush, cow dung and even cardboard. There was a small fire pit near the entryway, where they would cook their food. Also inside, there were two rooms, one for the woman and children and another for the man. The Maasai men are polygamist, so they are at different Enkang throughout the week. We heard about one chief who had 30 wives. Yikes!

A little more dancing from the men. (I do have video from the village and will edit it soon to share with you all.)

I was walking around and saw this great composition. I had the Acacia tree, the Enkang and the brightly colored women off center, all in one shot. Another favorite from the trip.

And then I was back to taking portraits. Looking at these faces, you can probably see how I was captivated be these individuals.

I stood outside their little school hut and shot photo of the children. Michelle had stepped in and was teaching them an American song at this very moment.

The kids loved it.

Kudos to Michelle for having the guts to sing in front of the kids! I can take photos but I definitely can not sing!!

As I was walking away from the school hut, I saw these three women walking away from the village, and just had to get this photo. I know that they are not looking my way, but this is another favorite from the trip. I love the colors, the background and the placement of the three subjects.

Yep - and then I was back to taking more portraits.

This boy had such unique characteristics and such an intense look about him. His long hair signifies that he is one of the tribe's warriors. All others have shaved heads.

And if you have ever photographed with me, you know that I love turning the camera around and showing people what I am capturing. These tribesmen could not wait to see the photos on the back of the camera.

One of our guests, Hal, had been on this trip with M&M Photo Tours once before. He was nice enough to print photos of many of the tribe members from the previous trip and bring them this year. That was a real hit, and I plan on doing the same thing next year with my photos.

Right before leaving the village, I got this photo of Tina, Joanne and Michelle with the tribesmen.

This was the end of yet another great day. Not only did we get great photos, but we got a chance to learn about and experience the Maasai culture.

Stay tuned for the blog of Day 5 and more.

And, for those of you who missed this amazing opportunity, we are going to do this amazing safari again next year...check out the site HERE to sign up for the 2017 trip! We have a limit of 12 people.

_________________________________________________________________________________

If you are interested in purchasing any camera 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.

_________________________________________________________________________________

And also, remember that you and your friends can enter your email address at the top right of this blog to get an email any time I write a new blog post or send my monthly newsletter.

_________________________________________________________________________________