Month: March 2016

Where Angels Fear to Tread

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Read the article on Royal Chundu’s blog here. “Beyond the edge of the world there’s a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlap, where past and future form a continuous, endless loop. And, hovering about, there are signs no one has ever read, chords no one has ever heard.” ― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore I had to see what lay at the edge of the Victoria Falls, from the view of the Angel. I had visited with the Devil before, taken up his challenge and swum to the outer limits. I had felt fear, but more importantly a deep desire to trust. To believe the guides when they told me that I would be ok. The water would not take me with it as it cascaded over the edge, into the fiery gorge below. This time the same desire arose, as my guide’s hand led me along a plank (*pushes pirate ship references out of mind*) along the rocks of this shallow section of the Zambezi River, on Livingstone Island, into what is known as Angel’s Pool, a few …

Nightswimming With Elephants

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As published on Royal Chundu’s Blog. “I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.” – Vincent Van Gogh The starry night without doubt transfixed the painter who once uttered the words above, and it captivates us no less. But even more enthralling, we think, is that time before the sun goes down. The truly alive, truly colourful time called dusk. On the open Zambezi, dusk presents itself each night in the most beautiful of sunsets. Sunsets we never tire from photographing in their unique nightly manifestations. It is during this cooler time of day that you can sometimes glimpse the odd herd of elephant down at the riverbank, engaged in a spot of skinny-dipping. They might have hoped that the dim light would shield them from us, but our camera lenses pulled it off and captured the nightswimmers in action from the sturdiness of our sunset cruise boat. Before the sky completely turned from purple to black and left us with nothing but the moon to guide us home, we snapped these images …

The Real Mystery of Wildlife Photography

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Published here – Relais & Châteaux Africa Wildlife photographers are the impalas of the human world. They are everywhere. As you leave the airport, en route to the safari lodge, on the lawn at lunch, under the trees and across the plains on just about every game drive. Yes, many of these photographers are truly talented individuals with an impeccable eye, superb mastery of the machine, and, well, really good cameras. Many of us are guilty of using these connoisseurs of the camera as an excuse to not try our own hand at the art. If someone else can do it better, why bother? Perhaps you’ve never thought this. Perhaps you just don’t see the attraction of photographing wildlife. But like other art forms, photography is about so much more than the product. The whole process awakens us to the little wonders and idiosyncrasies of life – its quirks that often go amiss otherwise … Like the tight scrunch of a leopard’s nose. The twitch of a lion’s whiskers. The endless fly-eyes of the impala. The knees – or are they elbows – of the …