This Week At Angama #153

The Mara performs as it always does, life goes on the same as it always has, and it’s all a great reminder that beauty is all around us, all the time.

The Angama Pride spent some time lounging in a tree one evening, offering a great photographic opportunity. I tried to capture some photos that highlighted the scene as whole, as well as some that were more abstract.

But perhaps my favorite is the very first shot above, where two lionesses awkwardly merged as they tried to get around one another in the tree, creating a bit of an optical illusion of two lionesses with one head.

I am extremely lucky in having a fairly busy bird bath outside my living room window, and it is not uncommon for the resident pair of Ross’s Turacos to pop in for a drink. I wish they weren’t such fleeting visits – I could watch them all day.

Another great lion encounter was with Kibogoyo – one of my favorites because of his heterochromia (differently coloured eyes).

I found him at sunrise, and he very considerately positioned himself for a couple of lovely backlit photos.

On the main road from Serena to Purungat Bridge, there is a murram quarry that has since become a fairly productive pond. Hippos will often temporarily use this as a daytime resting spot when caught out after long nocturnal foraging trips from the Mara River (perhaps about 7km away). Because the quarry is just uphill of the road, it allows for some really great low angle opportunities when the hippos are present.

I spotted this lone bull elephant on the vast savannah horizon at about midday, so took the shot with the intention in mind to convert to a black and white photograph because of the harsh light.

What a strange and beautiful flower! Or is it. . .?

A jackal and I spotted each other at the same time as we came down two converging roads – the rising sun was behind the jackal and created a beautiful orange glow.

I thoroughly enjoy trying to capture birds in flight, which requires panning and quick thinking with the camera settings. Here are two fun examples – a quartet of Hadeda Ibis against some afternoon storm clouds, and a Grey Heron cruising the Mara River.

Buffalo, grumpy looking things that they are, make for wonderful subjects. I can happily sit for quite some time with a herd of buffalo or even just a few dagga boys, looking for different ways to photograph them. And how about those horns?!

In the constant search for the big and hairy, the clawed and toothy, it’s easy to overlook the seemingly more mundane plains game. I like to challenge myself to make compelling photographs of these animals, and I like how both these photos turned out, showing impala and a waterbuck in their environment and creating both a sense of place and capturing the essence of the animal.

This week a year ago, Jeff Thige had the good fortune of spending some time with the Border Brothers, and captured this lovely shot of a cheetah in the tall grass.

This week two years ago, Adam captured an uncannily similar shot to one from this week.