Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Mr ChriZ]

For those that have been watching I did a trip to Africa
between the 23rd August and the 1st October.

I've been uploading Africa Photos to a Frappr map
http://www.frappr.com/africansoutherncross/photos
(Please don't edit anything on that link)

I'm also slowly uploading higher res pictures to my JRiver Gallery
http://yabb.jriver.com/cpg/displayimage.php?album=46&pos=4

However theres so much to do and time gets spread so thinnly so easily!
 (Hence the batch resize plugin which will speed things up if I get round to finishing it!)

If anyones considering doing a trip like this I highly recommend it!

I'll start in Zambia since thats where I started.
The Victoria Falls are an awesome force to be seen.  Ideally I think you need
to see it from the Zim side, but at that point I was still feeling a bit ginger,
so I still need to return to see that again.
I done a days White water rafting down the Zambesi.  That was awesome
Grade 5 down to 1 rafting.  We came off at the first rapid!
I then found that despite being in the top 3 places for white water rafting,
Zambia probably isn't in the top 3 for saftey! 

Despite giving you life jackets they don't actually have much bouyency.
As a result I made a fairly good attempt at finding the bottom of the Zambesi.
The first rapid was called the boiling pot, because it had a very large amount of water
pouring into a very small area....
I went down in this area and by the time I came back up again I was trying
to learn to breath like a fish.... (I'm a pretty strong swimmer too)....

Still it was an awesome day, even when the guide pointed out the crocodiles
at the side of the river!
We flipped over various times.  The guides had this amazing nack of staying
on the boat, even when the boat ended up upside down!
They wouldn't let us do 1 rapid out of the 25 because it was grade 6 and called
"Commercial Suicide"!

After moving on from Zambia we moved to Botswana.  We were travelling
aboard the orange truck you can see (stuck) in some of the pictures. ("Tango")

From this point on we were Truckers.  (Note a Truck, not a bus as some people seemed to think, this made the driver mad!).

Our first night in Botswana consisted of a night next to the river,
with great big signs saying "Dont camp closer than 10 metre, Crocodiles in river!"
That night one of the guys on the tour got quite drunk (and it wouldn't be the last time)
and some how lost his flip-flop (thong for the Australians) into the river.
Most people might have called it a night there, but Dave went in and got it....
He did actually make it to the end of the trip though with all his limbs intact...
Lesson 1 Don't swim with Crocodiles...

The following day we done a safari tour around Chobe National park.
Unfortunatley that day I accidentily stuck a high ISO b&w film in my camera not even aware
that I'd taken one with me.  Hence what would have been some really good
shots of a lion crossing the road right in front of us were some what ruined....
However to be fair that did mean I got the Zebra shot which may not have been
quite so good in colour...
Lesson 2 Take a Big Digital Camera with great big lens...

That evening we done a boat cruise which got real close up to elephants as
one of the shots show.

 Litterally within 20 metres.  Strange feeling being
near to something that big.  We also saw crocs, eagles, hippos, and all sorts of other stuff.
As we came back in I got the sunset shot on water...  Overall I can't admit to being
impressed by sunsets in Africa.  The sun had a tendancy of looking like it was going to go
seriously red and then just disappearing!  Still that wasn't a bad one as they went!


We then crossed into Namibia to an area called Ngepi.
For the entirety of the trip almost we were camping in these old fashioned A-Frame tents.
Everything cooked was on a fold out cooker from the truck, which had four hobs, and there
were 14 of us in total. 
Overall the campsites all along the trail we took were probably some of the best campsites
I've ever used.  Not what I was expecting in the heart of Africa! 
Most had at least one bar, a place to light a fire, and hot (or at least tepid) showers.
Where the Ngepi campsite was special was the showers....
oh and the hippo cage.  The worlds only hippo cage apparently.  A bit like a shark cage,
only to stop hippos rather than sharks.  It was at this point that I jumped in it with my passport...
yeh that wasn't a clever thing to do!
Back to the showers they were well cool!  No Ceiling!
They consisted soley of bamboo surrounding a hot shower (coal powered).
The door consisted of a sign which said "No Entry" and could either be up in the hooked
position... or not hooked...
Why was this so good? Well theres not many places where you can stand under a hot shower
under the stars!

We were warned at Ngepi camp not to venture to close to the river side.
There are two dogs at Ngepi camp - 'Slim' and 'Shady'.
'Fatboy' had apparently succombed to the hippos...

[InflatableMouse]

Thanks for the story. Looks like you had an awesome time over there.

What camera did you use?

[Mr ChriZ]

Glad you liked it!
Will write some more in a bit...
I've got my ye old faithful Canon EOS 600. (Which is now somewhat full of Namibian dust)....
I wanna go digital this year, and fork out some big money
on something like a 5D and some decent lenses.
I'm spending too much on Film! (OK there's a contradiction in terms on those two sentances...)

[InflatableMouse]

5D sure is nice.

I decommisioned my 1000fn recently and got  30D with a Canon 50mm 1.8 and a 70-200mm 1:4L. I still need something smaller, like the EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM.

My reasoning for getting the 30d wasn't it extra features over a 350D (although its speed sure is nice) but for me it was its bigger body and steel lense mount. Now that I got it I kinda regret spending so much for just that. A 350D would have given me the exact same quality and the optional grip would have helped overcome the smaller body. My point is its better spending all the money you have on glass than on a body, unless maybe when you are a photographer for a living.

Whatever you choose is your choice of course, but I would advise to think 10 times before getting anything that expensive if its just for leisure.

Ingemar.

[Mr ChriZ]

Yeh, my mums actually a professional photographer, and
she's got a 5D and a 20D
The stuff I see coming off the 5D is quite simply incredible,
where as the 20D is more just credible...
I've still got a lot to learn in photography, I've been using the
600 now for about 4 years.
Part of me is tempted to make it a part time money earner
in the long term future, simply because I enjoy getting out so much
and using it.  That is however a long way away in the future!

I just feel the last thing I want to do is buy
something and then think, oh but I'd wish I'd bought
the one above.  I've just started a new job which considering
I've just finished uni has got a pretty good salary so I'm thinking
by the end the middle of next year that sort of thing
will be quite within my reach (Plus as always it will have dropped
in price a lot by then, (rumours are still around about a 3D as well)).

[Mr ChriZ]

After one nights stay at Ngepi we re-entered Botswana for
a trip to the Okavango Delta.
The Okavango Delta is the world's largest inland delta.
We left the truck for a couple of days, with all our stuff
tents, cooking equipment and all and started off on a very
bumpy 4x4 ride across a very much off road sand track.
After about 1/2 an hour of bumping up and down squeased in
like sardines we arrived at a small jetti.  By this point
we had bruises in places we didn't even know we could
get bruises and had to unfold ourselves out of the vehicle.
All the equipment was placed aboard one speedboat,
and ourselves on another.  This was slightly scary because
our guide stayed with the truck and drove back to Ngepi camp,
and we didn't really know what was going on!

The speedboats  shot off, and we moved into this reeded area.
It was amazing so sureal. I don't appear to have taken any
photos there, I think it was because I was just so absorbed by the
experience!  The boats were just shooting through these little channels,
before long all sense of direction was lost, and we were just in
this complete maze no idea where we'd came from or where we were going
too.  The water was crystal clear and you could see right down
to the bottom.  There was also alot of bird life in the area,
which I'm sure if I was a birdologist I'd be able to tell you the names of.
The speedboat eventually came out of the reads to a small island.
The boats slid up on to a small beach where we unloaded everything again.
After passing through a little wooded area through
to the other side of the island, there were some other guys were waiting for us.
These guys were Okavango Bushmen.  However these weren't
the sort that had spears and hunted for food, these were the type
that had cans of Heinz baked beans and Vango camping equipment.
Each bushman had what we learned were called Makoro
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makoro

We were placed two to a Makoro and poled out in to the delta.
It was a perfect contrast to the speed boats.  The whole
area was almost perfectly still and silent.  The only noises
were that of the poles slipping in and out of the
water pushing us along.  Lillys dotted the surface of the delta,
which was still crystal clear to the bottom.  Very relaxing!


We set up camp on another little island right in the middle of the delta,
before going on a hippo search in the Makoro's.
We were totally unaware how close we were until this snout
came out of  the water about 40 meters in front of us.
Followed by about 5 more!  Apparently hippo's kill more
people than all the other animals in Africa!
They make this absolutley amazing honking noise, which just seemed
to fill the area.

After this we got to watch a sunset on the Delta, which was pretty cool.


>>Fast Forwards to the Cheetah Park... >>
And then we arrived at the Cheetah park.
The history hear basically involves a farmer who caught a Cheetah
killing cattle on his land, and decided he could make more money
keeping Cheetahs through tourism than he could trying to protect his Cattle!
So he ringed off his 60 kms^2 of land started collecting Cheetahs, from
neighbouring farms, where other farmers were keen to get rid of them.
He's got something like 40 of them now.


We got to go on a feeding tour which involved once again climbing
on to the back of a pickup and moving out to this area where the Cheetahs were.
I'm sure they were quite keen to have us for dinner, but luckilly
the owners had brought these Dustbins full of meat.
They then got out of the cab of the pickups with nothing but
a long stick to protect themselves and came round the back
of the pickups to get the meet out.  If a Cheetah came to close
to them they just tapped the cat on the nose!  They'd then throw
the meat out to the cats.  When you saw how fast these things moved
and how they teared at the meat once they got it you couldn't help
but think rather them than me!

[InflatableMouse]

Hehe... Is it just me or is there a striking similarity here?






 

[benn600]

I'm just curious if you would ever provide high resolution versions of your beautiful photos to individuals, such as myself, who would like to use them as desktop wallpaper?  Ideally, they would be at least 1600 pixels tall for my setup since my monitor is portrait.

You've done a fantastic job taking pictures!

[Mr ChriZ]

I'm just curious if you would ever provide high resolution versions of your beautiful photos to individuals, such as myself, who would like to use them as desktop wallpaper?  Ideally, they would be at least 1600 pixels tall for my setup since my monitor is portrait.

You've done a fantastic job taking pictures!

Thanks!  I was actually quite disappointed when I first got them back,
I made a few mistakes in my choice of films, and some of the later films
in particular have really trashed some pictures.  I looked at those first and
it just made me think they were all bad!  After a good look through them a second
time round I found there were some good ones after all!
In someways I'm glad I've spent a fair amount of time with Film however
rather than jumping straight to digital.. It does make you think more about
how you position yourself for each shot, rather than just taking hundreds
of shots and hoping theres a good one in there!

Just name which ones you want, and tell me where you want them sending!

[InflatableMouse]

Give yourself some credit. You have some good shots in there. IMO if you get a few good shots from a film you are a good photographer. I'm sure you already know this but you can't expect every shot to be a winner.

I guess if there is anything I could say to you to improve on it would be positioning, but then again I'm in not someone who should be lecturing you. Just to make sure you don't get any fancy ideas, I haven't shot any good pics with my 30D yet. I'm just starting taking this serious . Got a few nice ones with the 1000fn over the course of 5 years and with my dad's olympus OM 10 (the camera I learned on).

I always take a bunch of shots from different positions of something, I shoot RAW only and although it makes me feel like an idiot sometimes, I try shooting from a position people usually don't look at it.

Anyway, I just hope to make quality pics like yours when I'm in Africa (IF I ever get there) .

[Shelly]

You're way too hard on yourself.  I think your photos are incredible.  What's the background on the cheetah photo?  It's not everday that one gets to pet a cheetah.

[4BYE]

5D sure is nice.

I decommisioned my 1000fn recently and got 30D with a Canon 50mm 1.8 and a 70-200mm 1:4L. I still need something smaller, like the EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM.

My reasoning for getting the 30d wasn't it extra features over a 350D (although its speed sure is nice) but for me it was its bigger body and steel lense mount. Now that I got it I kinda regret spending so much for just that. A 350D would have given me the exact same quality and the optional grip would have helped overcome the smaller body. My point is its better spending all the money you have on glass than on a body, unless maybe when you are a photographer for a living.

Whatever you choose is your choice of course, but I would advise to think 10 times before getting anything that expensive if its just for leisure.

Ingemar.

I'm sure in the end you will appreciate the 30D over the cheaper made bodies. However for that kind of money they all could be better build. 

I'm sure you are thrilled with the 70-200 4.0.L: it's the best I've ever got. (The 2.8 won't give you better or sharper pictures.) And on the 20D/30D it's actually a 100-320. (Be aware that for wide-angle it multiplies also with 1.6 in case of your 16-35!)
The 5D won't have that problem but costs a lot of €€€ or $$$. When I say problem I mean on the wide-angle side, because I love my 20D for it's ability to shoot with 1,6. So my 400 mm is in fact a 5,6 640 mm.


Best regards,

Theo

[4BYE]

Great pictures Mr ChriZ!

I'm glad you could swim the way you did, I guess I wouldn't made it.
Going digital is a good idea, but watch out with dust on the inside of the body. You end up with a lot of photoshopping.

Cheers,

Theo

[Mr ChriZ]

Sorry I think I didn't explain myself to well.
When I said I was disapointed it was because I took around 1000 pictures.
It's the number of photos that didn't come out thats slightly frustrating (ie the ones that aren't uploaded)!

Still I reckon I'm gonna have more than enough to make up a decent photo
album in the end, thanks for all the complements everyone!