Tag: madikwe game reserve
Madikwe Game Reserve By Numbers
Remember to Check Your Settings
Text: Roel van Muiden
Images Copyright Roel van Muiden and RvM Wildlife Photography
Whilst out on Game Drive this morning my guests and I were treated to some special lion sightings. For the guests, the cubs playing and interacting was not only cute but informative into lion social behaviour. For myself, as an aspiring wildlife photographer, it allowed me to get off a few worthwhile shots. I was especially excited to have a look at the shots taken when all three lionesses and all nine cubs came down for a drink at the dam, facing our vehicle! What a boon!
When I arrived home from Game Drive I downloaded the files from this morning and yesterday’s drive. A few of the shots I had hoped would come out crisp and clear from the evening before were in-fact crisp and clear. I decided on a higher F-stop, meaning a smaller opening or Aperture, for a few particular shots to allow for a larger focal area and a more blurred background creating a greater sense of depth of field while still keeping the shot to a profile of the lioness. These shots would need very little processing in LightRoom.
The technical definition for Aperture – A device that controls the amount of light admitted through an opening. In photography and digital photography, aperture is the unit of measurement that defines the size of the opening in the lens that can be adjusted to control the amount of light reaching the film or digital sensor. The size of the aperture is measured in F-stop.(http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/A/aperture.html)
The F-stop used for the below images was upped manually to f/8.0 to allow for the larger focal depth as described previously. This high F-stop worked well for the light conditions, the focal length, and the story I was aiming to show via the subject and image.
*Images on Left are Pre-processed Raw Image and Images on Right are Post-processed jpeg
Image Settings for Image Set One and Two – Nikon D7000 with Nikkor 55 – 300mm lens: 1/125sec (1) and 1/160 (2), f/8.0, 270mm, ISO 400
Then as I continued on through the shots to this morning’s drive I started to get excited for the group shots of lionesses and cubs. Sadly, when I came to the shots they just did not look right. I was going to chalk it up to the overcast skies until I could take a nice long look at them and fully process, when my wife pointed out that she thought the shots looked soft. Oh no! I had forgotten to change my Aperture settings from the evening before and had not altered my ISO accordingly. Words cannot describe how sad it is knowing you had great subjects, great line-up and pre-thought of a shot, executed all of that, and then did not double check all your settings. Even though the image of the whole pride together had a lower F-stop due to my Aperture Priority setting, the camera was still holding other settings from the previous night in other areas, thus giving me soft and slightly ‘off’ shots.
An F-stop of 4.8 and 8.0, respectively, for the below images was too high for the light, the subjects, the focal length, as well as the story I wanted to portray. A much lower F-stop was needed for these particular shots in conjunction with a higher ISO. (My Shutter Speed for most of my shots is done via my camera as I tend to use Aperture Priority settings.) This lower F-stop, in combination with the rest, would have given me a clean and crisp shot as opposed to the fuzzy/soft images seen below in pre- and post-processing.
*Images on Left are Pre-processed Raw Image and Images on Right are Post-processed jpeg
Nikon D7000 with Nikkor 55 – 300mm lens: 1/100sec, f/4.8, 150mm, ISO 400 and 1/80sec, f/8.0, 130mm, ISO 800
Oh, well lesson RELEARNED, as this is a basic lesson for any photographer, but sometimes in the field things happen too quickly, or the rain comes and then goes and you are left with a great shot that must be taken quickly. Or maybe Murphy was just having some fun with me this morning. So take my advice past, present, and future guests of Madikwe Hills and the African Bush – 1) yes a decent camera is great to have on safari as the memories will last and last, 2) yes, at least a working knowledge of your gear is a good thing, (although most guides like myself either take images themselves or have a good knowledge of camera and can help you along your Safari with your image taking), 3) yes, I will have to say it again, CHECK YOUR SETTINGS. Even the hardened Bush Souls forget every now and then, much to the dismay of our portfolios 😉
For some more technical reading on Aperture please have a look at the following Blog by the amazing professionals at Wild Eye. I am self-taught and by no means an expert at any of this and the Blogs by the very experienced team at Wild Eye have helped me immensely with my Wildlife Photography.
http://photography.wild-eye.co.za/understanding-the-relationship-between-aperture-and-shutter-speed/
Wild Dogs of Madikwe
There are an estimated mere 3000 – 5500 Wild Dogs left in the wild on the entire continent of Africa. Only 500 of which occur in South Africa.These amazing hunters, Lycaon Pictus, have been persecuted for decades and this, combined with rapid habitat loss due to human population explosion, has dwindled their numbers rapidly. Madikwe Game Reserve is one of the few places where one can visit and stand a good chance of seeing these elusive creatures.
Wild Dog, African hunting Dog, Painted Wolf, are some of the names these amazing canines are referred as. They are not related to our domestic dog. They are in fact related to wolves but that relation lies three million years ago in an ancestor long since gone. They were originally categorised from a sample found in Mozambique and labelled Hyaena picta with the picta referring to their beautiful painted like coat patterns. Each coat pattern is unique to the individual. Their scientific name means, in fact, ‘painted wolf-like animal.’
They are highly social, extremely curious, and easily adaptable to circumstances. They are not ‘top dogs’, as it were, and can be killed by larger predators such as lions. Wild Dogs are an endangered species and highly conserved on the continent.
Persecution of the African Wild Dog occurred for many reasons, but one of the main ones, was that they were thought to be pests. These animals need large areas to traverse and when in contact with human habitation are known to predate cows, goats, and other livestock. They do not have claws like the felines, whereby when attacking their prey the claws get stuck-in, thus allowing easier take down. A Wild Dog’s claws are just like that of a domesticated dog and do not hold much traction except for running. Thus, the Wild Dog must either run their prey down to exhaustion of they disembowel the prey as it is trying to escape. This has lead humans to believe that they are quite savage and a ‘lowly’ predator. In my experience as a guide for many years, Wild Dog actually kill their prey more quickly than the cats as the disembowelment or running it to exhaustion and rapidly consuming the prey, means less agonising time being eaten while still alive as seen with lion and cheetah.
Madikwe Game Reserve has had one of the most successful relocations of Wild Dog in Southern Africa. The reserve was started just over twenty years ago after being cattle farm area for several decades. Before it was cattle farm, the reserve area was wild land with free-roaming wild game as in much of Africa. Wild Dog freely roamed this area along with lion, leopard, elephant, and many of the other species one can find on Game Drive while staying with us. Wild Dog at this point were seen in packs of fifty or more. Packs of this size do much better in the long run as they are communal hunters and all feed the pups of the alpha male and female. Wild Dog are susceptible to diseases such as Canine Distemper, Rabies, Mange, and Tuberculosis, so larger packs also do better as a few may pass due to these diseases but the pack as a whole will carry on. With Operation Phoenix coming into play as the largest relocation of game into a reserve in Southern Africa, the advent of Madikwe Game Reserve, our Wild Dog relocation was propped to do well. And so they did.
We have two packs on the reserve at the moment – The Northern Pack and The Southern Pack – with the total Wild Dog population numbering at thirty plus. We routinely have tremendous sightings of the pack interacting with other predators, hunting, killing, being fat and lazy, and patrolling. Although no sighting is guaranteed we are very fortunate to have such charismatic creatures to track and find whilst on Game Drive.