TAZM PICTURES

Had the opportunity to do some filming of cheetahs and leopards (well, actually just one leopard) recently.  They make excellent photo and video subjects!  The first was an amazing opportunity at Okonjima & Africats, (about 2 hours north of Windhoek, Namibia) – I blogged about it once before – when we found 3 cheetahs lounging in the late afternoon sun, and the full moon rose behind them.  This is the video of the experience of tracking and discovering them.  They are collared, but this is a rehabilitation facility and these particular cheetahs are learning to hunt and survive, something they never had the opportunity to learn from their mother.

The second video is from Duesternbrook Safari Guest Farm – they have a few cheetahs and a leopard in captivity – also supposedly to try and eventually release them into the wild – and they take tourists in for the daily feedings.  The cheetahs behave, in my opinion, like dogs and appear quite tame, but the leopard is definitely still a wild animal, as he loses patience and starts to come at the (open) vehicle several times, and the driver uses the sound of the engine to scare him away.

These guys always make me chuckle.  The first time I encountered a grey go-away bird – which is very common all over southern Africa – I was working in the back yard and was startled by its sound, which at the time sounded like a child saying “heeyyyyy…” from about 10 feet away.  They will answer when you call back using their sound – “kweehhhh” (or “go-away”).  This is what a group sounds like:  kwehhh

Namibia really is an amazing place for photographers.  On this occasion, everything lined up, but as a photographer I was unfortunately not fully up to the task.  Still, some amazing photos.

The location: Okonjima / Africat, where two organizations collaborate on a 22,000 hectare plot of African bush to rehabilitate injured carnivores.  Africat has taken in nearly 1,000 large cats and released over 900 of them – to give you an idea of the scale.  Most of them go back where they came from, but some stay at Okonjima.  If I remember correctly, about 25 leopards, 4 cheetahs, 3 or 4 each spotted hyenas and wild dogs, and soon there will be lions.

Anyway, when you go to Okonjima, you can, for a very reasonable price, get welcomed in luxurious style and stay in a fantastic “view” room (which you’ll rarely see because there is so much to do!), and go on excursions to track the animals with your very own guide.  The cheetahs and a few of the leopards are collared (to monitor their rehabilitation), and the guides use radio tracking equipment to find them in the bush – and in the case of the cheetahs (the leopards are too shy), get pretty close to them on foot.

So this is what we were doing, and we happened upon the group of three cheetahs in the evening.  They were lying - as if posing - on top of a large mound of earth.  With the setting sun to our backs, this is indicative of some of the amazing photos we were able to shoot:

And then, something really special happened.  As the sun was setting in the west, giving us this great yellow light, the full moon rose in the east – directly behind the cheetahs!  To top things off, this was no ordinary moon - it was a “super moon” or perigee moon – about 14% nearer and 30% brighter than most full moons, due to the moon being nearer the earth than usual.  We had about 10 minutes to use the fading light to try and capture both the cheetahs and the moon with the right amount of exposure. While we did that, our guide took the opportunity to serve our “sundowner” drink.

These are only a few of the photos – WordPress and Namibian internet speeds don’t get along and the uploads kept timing out – but there are more photos at Photoshop.com.

I was pretty nervous about the new camera I recently ordered – the Sony NEX-VG20 is an interchangeable-lens camcorder that boasts a sensor the size of most still cameras (23.4 X 15.6mm) – which, in addition to the versatility offered by the changeable lenses, apparently offers many features you don’t often see in a $2,000 camera.  But still, it’s $2,000 so you want to be sure.  And there are a variety of reviews out there – at both ends of the spectrum.  Most of the negative ones use terminology I don’t fully understand, and you get the feeling after reading a few that there are a lot of people out there just nitpicking every camera to death.  Basically I just want a camera that allows me to take the kinds of video and photos that I want to take, and this Sony seemed like the one.  My previous Sony camcorders all had low-light issues – mainly noise – which they tried to fix with a “night mode” that turned everything greenish.  So yeah I was pretty nervous.

So here is my first night video test.  Granted, it’s taken of wildlife standing under a floodlight; but I was standing pretty much in complete darkness.  The cool thing about this camera is that it allowed me to see things I couldn’t see with the naked eye (too dark) – and the on-board microphone also brought in sound I couldn’t hear while I was filming.  For this video, however, I attached a Rode videomic that picks up even more sound – sometimes a bit too much.  But I wanted the sounds of the animals, rather than the sounds from behind me, which the on-board surround mic would have given me.  This is a “guest farm” – a 15,000 hectare farm in central Namibia (near Omaruru) where they have provided a watering hole with a floodlight.

I’m very pleased with the result.  The only downside is that the sensitivity setting of the sensor results in some blurriness when the animals move quickly.  I suspect I’m going to have to break down and actually read the owner’s manual.

Leopards make excellent photographic subjects, but they tend to stay hidden in the wild – when they’re not trying to EAT you.

Seriously, some subjects are best photographed in captivity or a controlled situation.  This particular leopard is in a pretty large pen, but he gets fed daily.  The experience can be unnerving -sitting in an open vehicle close enough to this animal that you can hear the sound of its feet hitting the ground when it jumps from a tree.  The caretaker throws small chunks of meat, which the leopard catches, until eventually it grows impatient and starts coming toward the caretaker.  Starting the engine makes him back off the first few times, but eventually the caretaker has to throw a ham-sized bone with meat, which the leopard takes back into the bush to enjoy in private.  Show’s over!

I love doing timelapses – especially of natural phenomena.  But I admit it can be a lot harder than it first appears – if you want to do it right.  But moving to Namibia and finding housing on a westward-facing hill – I knew that would be a great opportunity to hone my timelapse skills.

The first few months I lived here, I don’t think it rained once.  Not for like four months.  And hardly a cloud in the sky.  Still, the sunsets were pretty awesome.  But then, around December, as spring and the rainy season started to approach in Windhoek, it was like the evening sky had shifted into a whole different gear.  Every evening was amazing – in the afternoon it would start to cloud up, and then there would be a break near the horizon to let the sun peek through – the perfect setup for an amazing lightshow.  I told my friends and relatives back home we had pretty sunsets, and they were all, “oh, that’s nice, we have them too”.  And I said, “No, really – you don’t understand.”  And I thought to make it clear I would try and film as many consecutive sunsets as possible, to drive home the point, “No, really – every night here is an amazing sunset.”

So this is how this video came about – one of my most time-consuming projects, once you add everything up.  I used my iPad, which has an excellent timelapse app – and because it fits pretty much just one way in the railing, so that I got the same view every night.  Most of the missing nights in January, the sunsets were just as spectacular, but we were out.  In February the rains began in earnest, and the project really started to peter out.  I think you can see the clouds get thicker too – they are not as colorful at that point.  Then I thought it would be fun to see how I could combine multiple sunsets, and experimented a bit.  Here it is:

I think it turned out pretty good.  A few notes that may be of interest to other videographers.

• During the first section, where 21 sunsets all blend into each other, it’s important to make sure the shots are all aligned.  So if you have an object that shows up in every shot – like the trees in my case – they should be in exactly the same place.  I had a millimeter here and there of variation.  If you don’t line them up, you get “jump cut” effects.  Which isn’t noticeable if you let the sunset run all the way through to darkness – but I found that didn’t look as good in the video.
• To stretch the three sunsets across one screen, you have to uncheck the little box that maintains the ratio between width and height.  I don’t think all editing programs let you do that.
• When you run 4 or 9 or 16 screens simultaneously, you don’t want to eyeball the size and placement.  Go into your editing parameters and write down the x and y coordinates, and make them all the same percentage of the original.  Otherwise it takes forever to get it right.
• It takes a lot of processing power to run that many tracks simultaneously.  In the shot where there are 16 tracks running at the same time, every little edit took forever to make, while the computer churned away.
• Remember to put your settings on manual – white balance, shutter speed, focus – whatever your camera does automatically, make it manual.  With the iPad it’s not as big a deal – in some ways the auto exposure gives you a longer timelapse because it increases the number of good frames you can grab when the sky is at its lightest and darkest – but you get some flicker.  On a regular camera it is much worse.

Moving to southern Africa has led me to discover all sorts of strange and bizarre plants that don’t behave the way my grade-school teachers taught me the way they ought to.

First, I thought this tree was dying last spring (i.e. October in the southern hemisphere), when all its leaves started falling off.  Then it started sprouting bright red flowers.  It eventually lost all of its leaves by early summer:

To the right, you can see the tree in Autumn.  I know – lush, green leaves.  Turns out this is Brachychiton acerifolius, a tree native to Australia that is all mixed up.

Then these cactus-like succulents started sprouting these giant red pods (ok, about 2 inches long – but the plant is only 3 inches high) which eventually opened into these foul-smelling 5-pointed flower the color of dried blood:

This hairy plant made outdoor barbecues much more pleasant for the next 4-5 days.  Turns out this is the “Carrion Plant” (one of several known as such) which emits the smell of rotting meet to attract flies for pollination.

Now we have this Aloe (?), which has sat quite unnoticed at the bottom of our yard – though it is pretty large – since we’ve been here.  But recently, it sent up a 20-foot stalk (I don’t think it took more than 3-4 days to shoot up that high!) which is now flowering.  Southern Africa is known for its varieties of Aloe, but I think what we may be dealing with here is Agave Americana, the “Century Plant” which lives 10 to 30 years, and flowers once at the end of its life.  Maybe we will plant some Carrion Flowers in its place?

I’m not going to try and figure THIS one out.  It’s not in my yard, either though.

The “One Day on Earth” project, which collected video from all over the world on 11.11.11 (and also, by the way, on 10.10.10), has stitched all their footage together into a full-length film, which is to be screened at many venues worldwide on April 22 – Earth Day.  One of the benefits of contributing is that you also get access to everyone’s footage.

The organization just released their music video, in which sound and dancing clips from all over were woven into a musical creation – it’s worth a look, check it out:

One Day on Earth the music video – by Cut Chemist from One Day on Earth on Vimeo.

When you’re editing vacation videos, it’s always fun to come up with the best music – ideally one that conveys the right mood, maybe something that relates to the place you’re visiting.  But sometimes the best music to convey the mood is no music at all.  In this video, we managed to get awfully close to some giraffes, who appeared as interested in us as we were in them.  To convey the quiet, peaceful calm as these gentle giants foraged on acacia trees, all the while watching us with a wary eye, it seemed best to just use the sounds of surrounding nature.  I also let it run a bit long – there’s no major action.  Just hanging out with the giraffes.

[As a side note, it should be mentioned that giraffes, when cornered or startled, possess a kick powerful enough to kill a lion.  Lest you try and get even closer than we did.]