Travelling Light – Photographing Light
29 February 2020
The target species this afternoon and surely the easiest of all the Sri Lankan Elephant, the native sub-species of the Asian Elephant.
Elephants are now found only in the dry lowland areas of Sri Lanka and inevitably this does lead to conflict with the human population not least because it has been estimated that about 65% of their range is outside protected areas.
29 February 2020
A morning visit to Sigiriya, probably the most visted site in Sri Lanka.
28th February 2020
Following our 2 days in Wilpattu we had a transfer day over to our home for the next few days near Habarana. Habarana is the gateway town for the Minneriya National Park one of the best spots to see Asian Elephant on the island but more of that tomorrow.
27th February 2020
Large mammals are well represented in Wilpattu – we had good sightings of many species ranging from Ruddy Mongoose upto Sri Lanka’s apex predator and everyones number one target the Leopard.
27th February 2020
More birds – Willpattu really was heaving with life on our second day in the park.
Continue reading “Wilpattu National Park – Day 2 (Birds Part 2)”
27th February 2020
Today was a full day in the park i.e sunrise until sunset – 6.00am to 6.00pm, so an early start.
We arrived at the park entrance at about 5.45am and joined a few other “jeeps” waiting for the park to open. Had this been Yala Block 1 there would have been many dozens if not hundreds of “jeeps”, fortunately Wilpattu is somewhat off the main tourist route and therefore is much quieter than Yala and all the better for it. On reflextion we enjoyed Wilpattu far more than Yala and were really glad we included it in our itinerary, many do not.
Continue reading “Wilpattu National Park – Day 2 (Birds Part 1)”
26th February 2020
Wilpattu National Park is located in the Northwest coast lowland dry zone of Sri Lanka, it is the country’s largest national park. The unique feature of this park is the existence of “Willus” (Natural lakes) – Natural, sand-rimmed water basins or depressions that fill with rainwater.
As I mentioned in a previous post I had for some time wanted to visit Sri Lanka the combination of world class birding coupled with some iconic mammals makes this small Indian Ocean island a potentially excellent destination for a wildlife photographer furthermore the presence of a number of UNESCO world heritage sites coupled with the colonial history makes Sri Lanka a good all round destination.
Safari is a Swahili word that means journey. In the “bad old days” a Safari was all about big game hunting, fortunately to a large extent those days are past and now Safari has come to mean a vehilcle based wildlife watching/photography trip and whilst the concept of a Safari orginates in Africa, Safaris can now been indertaken in many parts of the world often in search of specfic species, for example Tiger Safaris have become huge business in India.
The Marina makes a good photographic location during the day – but makes a great location at night and probably the best location in Dubai – think lights, reflections and light trails.
and for those who prefer there architecturals lines straight here are a few shots from the Marina taken with the PanaLeica 8-18mm and fairly extensive use of the transform tool in Lightroom to correct for those converging verticals – the key with this type of shot is to shoot much wider than the intended final image in the knowledge that the transform tool will straighten the verticals but will also narrow in on the image quite significantly.
I am always on the lookout for somewhre to use my Fishy Fun Samyang 8mm fisheye lens, its fun to use and you never quite know what your are going to get.
Fisheyes like bold structures, foreground details and blue skies so the Marina development in southern Dubai looked like an ideal location to give it a spin.
Well not quite the top, in fact to be honest no where near the top, but about 2/3rds of the way up the Burj Khalifa – that said plenty high enough.
There is more to Dubai than just glass, steel and concrete. A glimpse of old Dubai and its people can still be seen along and around the Creek where wooden Dhows still ply their trade around the Gulf and Arabian ports. The gritty subjects make ideal candidates for some black & white photography where contrast and texture are key.
Whilst the Burj Khalifa makes a good subject during the day, at night it comes into its own as indeed does the Olympus OM-D EM1 mkII image stabilisation – all images here are handheld.
En route to Sri Lanka with Emirates we had the opportunity to have a few days in Dubai, as a part of the world we had not been to before we were keen to have a look and particularly interested to see the Burj Khalifa the worlds tallest (by some way) building.
For many years I had wanted to visit Sri Lanka – the alluring prospect of a mixture of birds and mammals (Elephants, Leopard & Sloth Bear) make this small island nation off the southeast coast of India a potentially ideal destination for a wildlife photographer and so during February off to Sri Lanka we went.
The Houbabra Bustard is found across North Africa and the Canary Islands, they are not easy to find in part because of their scarcity but also despite their size their plumage is increadibly cryptic and difficult to spot in their preferred desert habitat.
After an absolutely dreadful period of rain here in the UK I finally managed to galvanise myself to actually get out and take some photographs. On various facebook forums that I subscribe to there has been much much talk about the new MC20 2x tele-converter that Olympus have launched that works with the 40-150 f/2.8 and the 300mm f/4.0 pro lenses.
A week of trying to get a decent sunrise photograph of Glastonbury Tor and not alot of success largely due to rather inclement weather conditions coupled with a degree of lazyness on my part. These are the best I could manage.
