Archive for the ‘Misc Photos’ Category

One of our favourite creatures from our trip to Madagascar was the tiny Brookesia Chameleon. Brookesia is a genus of chameleons found only in Madagascar. Some of the species in this genus are considered to be the smallest chameleons in the world!

We photographed these tiny chameleons in Amber Mountain National Park in the North of Madagascar. The chameleons spend their lives in amongst the leaf litter, where they hunt minuscule insects. When they are disturbed they play dead and resemble a dried leaf… as a result they are also known as “Leaf-mimicking Chameleons”.

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Lemurs are primitive primates found only in Madagascar. The ancestor of all lemurs was probably carried to Madagascar on a raft of vegetation from mainland Africa around 62 to 65 million years ago. Since that time, lemurs have evolved into many different forms in order to take advantage of different habitats and ecological niches. Today there are nearly 100 species of lemur and, during our time in Madagascar, we photographed a variety of different species.

Lemurs living today can be split into five distinct families:

• Brown Lemurs & Allies – diurnal, stereotypical lemurs such as the ring-tailed lemurs.
• Sifakas, Indri & Wolly Lemurs – diurnal, the largest species of lemur belong to this family.
• Sportive Lemurs – nocturnal, during the day they can be found sleeping in tree hollows.
• Mouse Lemurs & Allies – nocturnal, this family includes the world’s smallest primates.
• Aye-ayes – nocturnal and very elusive.

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It never ceases to amaze me how often nature reveals something unexpected; no matter how much time I spend photographing wildlife, scarcely a day goes by in which I do not witness some surprising aspect of an animal’s behaviour or an unusual individual.

We have just returned from a trip to the Masai Mara in Kenya where we were photographing the annual wildebeest migration. After a rather uneventful morning, we stopped on the banks of the Mara River for a picnic breakfast. It was then that we came across a truly exceptional individual… just as we started to tuck into our breakfast, we looked up and gawked, open-mouthed, as a pink hippopotamus emerged from the river! Hippos are usually dark brown in colour, so this individual was very conspicuous! We dropped our breakfast and reached for our cameras.

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It has been a week since we posted the Adventures of BeetleCam article on this blog and since then we have been overwhelmed by the incredible response it has received. BeetleCam has already been featured in national newspapers and we have been interviewed for various TV and radio programmes around the world. It has been a crazy week for us!

One of the stories that has captured peoples’ attention is the mauling of our beloved Canon EOS 400D by a mischievous lioness. In this post we relive the encounter and release previously unseen images.

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On this day, 40 years ago, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human beings to set foot on the surface of the moon. To celebrate the anniversary of this incredible achievement, we have decided to post a few of our favourite lunar photographs.

Eiffel Tower

The moon can often add an additional dimension to an otherwise normal photograph. Recently I was visiting the Eiffel Tower in Paris when I noticed the moon rising above the city. I moved into a position where I could photograph the Eiffel Tower with the moon behind. I took a bracketed sequence of shots and then combined them as an HDR image so that I could balance out the illuminated tower with the moonlit clouds and the streetlights below.

Lunar Eclipse

On 3rd/4th March 2007, we were lucky to be in the right place at the right time; watching a total lunar eclipse under a clear night sky. We set up our 400mm f/2.8 lens and stacked a 1.4x and a 2x teleconverter to give us a focal length of 1,120mm! Camera shake was amplified at this huge focal length, so to minimise vibrations we used a shutter release cord and set the camera to “mirror lock-up” mode. Mirror lock-up raises the mirror in the camera early and therefore reduces vibrations when the shot is taken (putting your camera into “live view” mode would also achieve this). At this focal length the moon travelled surprisingly fast across the viewfinder so we need a shutter speed of at least 0.6s to get the moon sharp (note that serious astro-photographers would have used a tracking mount to move the camera at the same rate as the Earth’s rotation).

During the height of the eclipse, the moon goes red as the only light reaching it has to travel through the Earth’s atmosphere. The moon also becomes much dimmer so we had to push the camera all the way up to ISO 1600 to capture the phenomenon. You can see the full gallery showing the progression of the lunar eclipse here.

Moon Beam

This is an experimental photograph that we took last year in Botswana. There was a lot of dust in the air so the moon was not very bright. This allowed us to take a long exposure of the moon as it ascended without the shot completely blowing out. The resulting image looks like something out of Independence Day – a beam of light coming from an alien spacecraft!

Matthew and I took this photograph last year in the Pantanal, Brazil. It shows two Jabiru Storks sleeping in their nest while the stars rotate overhead. The camera was positioned so that the southern celestial pole was behind the nest and an exposure time of 40 minutes was used to capture the star trails. The tree was illuminated by a single lamp placed about 100m away.

The southern celestial pole can be located by identifying the Southern Cross constellation and following it down about four and a half cross-lengths. In the Northern Hemisphere, you can find the north celestial pole by pointing your camera at the North Star. You can find out more about locating the celestial poles here.

This is photograph is one of our all-time favourites – it looks fantastic when printed large. If you are interested in buying a print then please get in touch.

Wow… I woke up this morning to find London snowier than I have seen it in years. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to pop out during my lunch break and take a few photos.

I wasn’t expecting to be taking photos any time soon so the only camera gear I have up in London with me is my old 1D Mark II and a 45mm tilt-shift lens… an unusual choice of lens but it did the trick!

Here are just a few pictures to give you an idea of what London looks like at the moment.