Kruger National Park - Pictures!

Rightyo, here we go.

All pictures are now online. My mate Neil and I had a blast, driving around the park, and seeing beautiful animals in their natural habitat.

Highlights:
-Seeing a pride of seven male lions.. Extrememly unusual!
-Finding a pride of lions in beautiful morning light, and watching them play
-Seeing six! leopards! One of the rarest cats. One of them hunted what looked like two Steenbok, but missed it's meal.
-Seeing jackals! They are like small coyotes, and very beautiful.
-Hyena. After many days of near-misses, the last two days proved pretty fruitful to see these animals. They are the most unnerving predators, as they are the most curious and least fearful
-So many eagles! Wow. Huge birds of prey the likes of which you would NEVER see anywhere in Europe (except maybe here)
-And of course, Cheetah! Just as we were leaving the park, we got a tip that two Cheetah were sitting next to the side of the road not a few km up ahead. So lead-foot Lawler raced to the scene (of course, at no point breaking the speed limit)

The majority of my favourites are here in my Smugmug galleries and I urge those interested to have a look, because the files there are much higher quality than what you'll see here. Remember to click "slideshow" in the top right corner.

Here are a few of the best IMO:

Sunrise in the Kruger. There's an eagle in that tree if you look closely. It's eating a monitor lizard.. not that you can tell!

Our first lion encounter! I love the tongue of the little cub poking out there

One of my favourite shots from the trip. I'm going to work on this some more when I get access to my PC

Impala portrait

Just before a hunt!

Another favourite of mine - these buffalo are POWERful

Croc

Lazy. The image isn't too sharp; it was so hot and there is LOTS of haze in the picture

For you Sal!!

I tried for a motion shot on quite a few animals, and I'm glad it worked with this Hyena

A fairly common bird; some kind of hornbill

Croc vs Catfish

Cheetah. Beautiful hey?

Cheetah profile

This fella was the winner of a fight we'd just missed. The loser is in my gallery. Be sure to check it out

Leopard, the most beautiful cat. All that white fluff around the edges are unfortunately branches, but thank God for shallow depth of field!

Kingfisher. No idea what type. Neil will know as he's the birder!

So what's next for Adam? Well the year isn't over, and I have a few other travel ideas for before Christmas. I had planned to head to Florida for November, to watch the next Shuttle Launch, but alas, for reasons to do with employment, that has had to pass (for now).

I also hope to update the blog software here. Hopefully I will be able to orient this site towards my photography a bit more, and the first thing that needs doing is to "pimp it up" a bit. So look forward to that later this year.

Anyway, hopefully all are well. Thanks for following my journeys so far, and keep your eyes peeled, because I ain't finished yet!

Adam

Back in London

Rightyo!

I'm now back from South Africa.. what a trip! My mate Neil and I hired a car and self-drove around Kruger National Park. Unless you're on the Serengeti or similar, self-drive is the way to go. We saw so many cool things and weren't limited by someone else's schedule.

Anyway, I'll keep this short. I'm updating pics now, but it will take me a while to finish. Unlike South America, I did not shoot Raw + jpeg, or any kind of jpeg. I shot Raw the whole time which means I have to go in and edit the pics I'll upload.
The next blog post should be back to the big text stuff but also, lots of pics :)

I'll give you one teaser though.. On our last hour in the park, we stumbled across the one animal most people do NOT see, even those that live near the park and go monthly or yearly. And we saw TWO of them together! Beautiful cats.

The world's fastest land animal


Later

Adam

Where In The World, Is Adam Lawler?

.. London for now!

Well it's been just under three weeks since I've been back. And to be honest, it's only now that I'm feeling the come-down. Thinking back on the trip is a bit depressing at the moment.. I miss travelling and being on the road, and not knowing where we're going next.

BUT, as you can see from the new title of this blog, I'm not sitting still here. In fact, tomorrow I leave on another (shorter!) trip to the Kruger National Park in South Africa.
Fran is staying in Blighty and I'm going with a mate of mine who is also mad about wildlife photography. I reckon Fran would probably have gotten fed up with us after 2 hours, when the conversation turned to the precense of diffraction on APS-C sensors with a pixel density equal to or greater than the 50D..

..exactly

Anyway, I guess the answer to the come-down after travelling... is to keep travelling :D
And that is something I can definitely live with!

Bye for now - I will try an update this blog with pictures along the way, if I have a chance.

Adam

EDIT: Just to clarify (not big on image theft), the above banner picture is not mine. I took it from here:
http://www.fotocommunity.de/pc/pc/channel/3/extra/new/display/14305957
I'll remove it as soon as I get my own sunset pic!