This image was captured on the plains of the Masai Mara in Kenya. We’ve all had a great situation ruined by a terrible background. The sky in the zebra image was rendered as solid white and featureless. A cloudy sky with lots of detail was dropped in, adding lots of interest. The key is to use a more detailed/interesting sky, but one matching the overcast condition of the zebra image. A little layer masking, a blend mode on [...]
This shot is all about being in the right place at the right time. We first encountered this hunting cheetah early one morning. Our guide spotted two small ears sticking up above the tall grass. He instantly knew there was a cheetah in the grass stalking a group of Thomson’s gazelles. We parked our vehicle, with the sun at our backs about 50 yards away. Waiting nearly two hours she finally started crawling ever so slowly and suddenly [...]
This fantastic moment was photographed as Burchell’s Zebras shared a drink in the Mara River. The Masai Mara is world famous for incredible wildlife: often only a few feet from our vehicle. In this case, we could not position our photo vehicle closer to the zebras. The solution: attach a 2x teleconverter between the camera body and 500mm lens for an effective focal length of 1000mm, thus ensuring a frame filling composition. In this case, I closed the lens [...]
