Tag Archives: africa

Snarl by MarselvanOosten

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Well, not really. Quite often when you see a photograph of a yawning lion, the photographer will try to make you believe that it was snarling. When a lion starts yawning, the first part of the yawn will clearly look like a yawn, but at the very end of it, the expression on the face of the lion will indeed look like a growl or a snarl.

To make people believe that a lion is snarling when it is actually yawning, will spread the wrong idea about these cats, and will unnecessarily portray them as monsters. Humans like to monsterize predators, and that’s why we get Predator Week, Shark Week, The Deadliest This and The Deadliest That on television. It’s a shame, because these beautiful animals are so much more than just killing machines.

This lioness looks pretty vicious, but you guessed it – she’s yawning. Lions spend most of the day sleeping. A male may sleep from 18 to 20 hours a day. However following a large meal, these male cats may actually sleep an entire 24 hours of a day. Female lions are not far behind their male counterparts. They will easily sleep 15 to 18 hours a day. They spend more time caring for the pride and hunting.

In just a few months, I will lead two photo tours in Botswana where we will focus our attention on lions, and especially on lions hunting buffalo.

One of the places we will visit is Duba Plains, an island in the Okavango Delta of Botswana. The island has a herd of about 2,000 Cape buffalo, and a large pride of lions. Both buffalo and lion got there over a decade ago in a year when crossing the channels was possible. Since then both have pretty much been trapped on the island. For reasons nobody fully understands, the Duba lions mainly hunt during daylight – the reverse of the situation in most parts of Africa. This is obviously perfect for photography and our chances to see some lion action are much bigger here than anywhere else in Africa.

If you’ve never been to Botswana, then you absolutely should. It’s wildlife photography heaven. Our first tour is fully booked, but we have three openings on the 25 April – 4 May trip.

If you’re interested, then please check out our website for more information on this trip:
Buffalo, Lions & Wild Dogs

Hope to see you there!

Marsel

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©2016 Marsel van Oosten, All Rights Reserved. This image is not available for use on websites, blogs or other media without the explicit written permission of the photographer.

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The Sun Sets in Mara by mariomoreno

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This image was captured during a Maasai Mara Photo Safari I led last year. An iconic sunset image with a silhouette of a lonely bull Elephant walking on the open plains of Maasai Mara.

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Travel Photographer Of The Year 2015 – VII by MarselvanOosten

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Last month I won the overall title Travel Photographer Of The Year 2015 (www.tpoty.com) with two black and white portfolios – a landscape portfolio and a wildlife portfolio. Here’s the third image from the wildlife portfolio. Don’t worry, there’s only one image left after this one 🙂

All four images in this portfolio were shot on our Namibia Untamed tour earlier this year. Two years ago we decided to add a surprise boat cruise off the coast of Walvis Bay. This is a great opportunity to photograph thousands of seals, dolphins and pelicans. My personal highlight of this boat cruise is the pelicans – amazing creatures and very photogenic. This year we had a couple that landed on our boat and I was able to get very close with my wide angle lens. I’ve got plenty of pelicans in flight shots, so I was interested in creating something different. I decided to turn my pelican shoot into a study of shape and light, creating very graphic images.

After a while, the pelicans got so used to my presence, that I was able to move in closer and closer. So close actually, that depth of field was turning into a problem – I had to stop down quite a bit to keep everything in focus, especially with some of the other shots in this series that I will show later.

The processing was pretty straightforward, apart from the conversion to black and white. Black and white is so much more difficult than colour photography, because you don’t have those pretty colors that people like so much, and colors are helpful to separate shapes. Without colour, certain shapes that were separated from each other in the colour version, will suddenly merge in a black and white version. Good black and white images are therefore often created on location – that’s when you can already see what is needed for a good bw image.

If you would like to join us to Namibia, then you’re out of luck for 2016 as we’re fully booked. Even our 2017 tour is already fully booked, but we opened a second tour for 2017 that is going to be led by amazing landscape photographer Ryan Dyar. It will take place from 17 June to 1 July 2017.

If you want to visit Namibia, look no further. There is no better organized Namibia tour out there. We were the first company to offer photo tours to Namibia, the first to do night photography in Deadvlei, and we are still the only one that offers microlight flights over the famous Namibian sand dunes – the best and most exciting way to do aerial photography.

If you’re interested in joining Ryan to Namibia, please check out our website for more information, images, video clips, and a very detailed tour PDF: http://www.squiver.com

Marsel

©2015 Marsel van Oosten, All Rights Reserved. This image is not available for use on websites, blogs or other media without the explicit written permission of the photographer.

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Travel Photographer Of The Year 2015 – VII by MarselvanOosten

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Last month I won the overall title Travel Photographer Of The Year 2015 (www.tpoty.com) with two black and white portfolios – a landscape portfolio and a wildlife portfolio. Here’s the third image from the wildlife portfolio. Don’t worry, there’s only one image left after this one 🙂

All four images in this portfolio were shot on our Namibia Untamed tour earlier this year. Two years ago we decided to add a surprise boat cruise off the coast of Walvis Bay. This is a great opportunity to photograph thousands of seals, dolphins and pelicans. My personal highlight of this boat cruise is the pelicans – amazing creatures and very photogenic. This year we had a couple that landed on our boat and I was able to get very close with my wide angle lens. I’ve got plenty of pelicans in flight shots, so I was interested in creating something different. I decided to turn my pelican shoot into a study of shape and light, creating very graphic images.

After a while, the pelicans got so used to my presence, that I was able to move in closer and closer. So close actually, that depth of field was turning into a problem – I had to stop down quite a bit to keep everything in focus, especially with some of the other shots in this series that I will show later.

The processing was pretty straightforward, apart from the conversion to black and white. Black and white is so much more difficult than colour photography, because you don’t have those pretty colors that people like so much, and colors are helpful to separate shapes. Without colour, certain shapes that were separated from each other in the colour version, will suddenly merge in a black and white version. Good black and white images are therefore often created on location – that’s when you can already see what is needed for a good bw image.

If you would like to join us to Namibia, then you’re out of luck for 2016 as we’re fully booked. Even our 2017 tour is already fully booked, but we opened a second tour for 2017 that is going to be led by amazing landscape photographer Ryan Dyar. It will take place from 17 June to 1 July 2017.

If you want to visit Namibia, look no further. There is no better organized Namibia tour out there. We were the first company to offer photo tours to Namibia, the first to do night photography in Deadvlei, and we are still the only one that offers microlight flights over the famous Namibian sand dunes – the best and most exciting way to do aerial photography.

If you’re interested in joining Ryan to Namibia, please check out our website for more information, images, video clips, and a very detailed tour PDF: http://www.squiver.com

Marsel

©2015 Marsel van Oosten, All Rights Reserved. This image is not available for use on websites, blogs or other media without the explicit written permission of the photographer.

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Savanna by KlepikovaDaria

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A savanna or savannah is a grassland ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to support an unbroken herbaceous layer consisting primarily of grasses

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