Rocco's New Photos
 

I am posting only my photos from Kasaka River Lodge to start out, and not even all of the ones worth posting. However, there are still 75 photos here to start.

I will try to post my photos from Chongwe River Camp and some more from my time at Kasaka River Lodge by tomorrow night.

By this weekend, I will have EVERYTHING posted, hopefully, as well as hopefully finishing my trip report.

Thanks for reading and your comments are appreciated. :)

Here is the link:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/BrowsePh...mp;rnd=8374801

Sorry I haven't had time to add title captions or edit to at least have some photos positioned correctly. I'll get to it as soon as possible.

If anyone has trouble accessing the photos, feel free to e-mail me and I will send you an invitiation.

Enjoy! :)

glad to hear you had such a good time! 4 weeks from today I leave on my Zambian adventure. Where's the link for the pics?
Dennis4

oh, thanks, there it is!! :)
Dennis

Rocco, photos look great. I only skimmed them, but will look in more detail later today. Thanks, Michael

GREAT pics! Love the lion with the elephant in the background!
Dennis

Well, I didn't wait -- I think my favorite is #35 (great buffalo photo). Great stuff -- looks like your camera worked very well.

Michael,

You chose the one photo that I did spend two minutes on in Photoshop. So, the other photos do have potential but I did want to get them up.

As I said, it will take me weeks, and probably months, to really go through all my photos in Photoshop to make them realize half of their potential.

Thanks for the feedback.

Rocco - this is great - but wow - relax, man! You just got back. No one expects you to have all your photos posted, let alone perfected! :-D

Sharon

Glad to know I have a "good eye" -- the lighting was terrific. I'm sure the other photos are great too and the lighting doesn't always come across on an Internet.

Hi Rocco,

The buffalo pics were brilliant -- but I also liked the shots of hippo on the river bank (a rare sight).

Cheers,
Julian

I love the hippos, too. And the elephant bathing.

But where is the photo of you crouching in The Vest with The Lens???

Thanks for posting these. Can't wait to see the rest.

The hippos have my vote also.

Thanks for sharing your photos. The swimming elephant was very interesting and I loved the hippos. The picture where an egret stands very close to the buffalo’s leg and there are other buffaloes behind it has the best “buffalo eyes”. The warthog trotting in the water is another favourite. And the movement of the two elephants walking up from the water. And the one with the little baby ele.

Great photos, Roccco! I really like #35 also and the one with the elephant climbing out of the river. The kudu sure did seem curious the way they were looking towards you. Thanks for sharing these so quickly!

(reporting from London Heathrow on a 4 hour layover)

Julian,

Actually, in each Lower Zambezi and South Luangwa, seeing hippos on the river banks is a very common sight.

About Photoshop, it may be difficult to perfect, but it is actually quite easy to make a significant improvement, as I did in the photo that Thit Cho commented about. Either way, once I do make the improvements to my favorite photos, I will post them separately.

Thanks for the commentary.

Some nice pics in there - thanks for sharing... look forward to seeing more.

Rocco:

Very nice photos! I notice almost all the elephant pictures were of very young animals. Did you see any big tuskers or are they all gone? I noticed today that South Africa is now planning on culling up to 10,000 elephants! What a tragedy that will be.

Did you have any problems adjusting to your new digital camera? I am considering updating my Canon EOS Rebel with their new digital one, but don't know if it would be too technical for me to handle. Would appreciate your opinion.

Jan

Rocco,

Just had a quick look at the photos - I rarely can get them on my computer or with my computer skills, so was really pleased that I could actually view them.

I loved #26,27 & 28 with the kudu bull with the great set of horns, I am also amazed at how he watched you for a reasonable amount of time, maybe I might get one shot, then it is usually the backside walking away! Also loved #30 with the baby ele so cute and once again lucky how the baby was between you and Mum, normally I will get the Mum inbetween me and the baby ele. Really liked #44 with the splash action of the female waterbuck in the water. Also loved the lioness with the ele #68 & 69 - like those mixed animals shots especially with one being a predator. I also liked the hippo on land.

You did seem to do really well with all your new camera equipment - I am wondering how you kept the camera so still just holding it - no bean bag or monopod? I am just entering the digital world, and my main problem is steadiness when on the full zoom - I am practising on a Panasonic DZ20, something like that, but will get the 30 when it reaches the shores of Australia which should be any day now!

Looked at the photos first, but will check out the report now.

Thanks and look forward to more photos! and game reports, of course!

Kaye

Rocco - Loved the photos. Favorites are the lion watching the ele, the hippos on land and the elephant swimming. Can't wait to see more!

Jan,

In Zambia we did not come across any especially big tuskers, but in the next few days I will be posting my photos taken at Simbambili in the Sabi Sand that is the single most impressive elephant I have ever seen. I saw a similar elephant at the L.A. Zoo, with this HUGE pair of tusks, but I never expected to see one in the wild.


AuntKaye,

I had trouble adjusting to my monopod and the only time I really used it was for a lion kill of an impala that my wife and I enjoyed for about 90 minutes. However, in that instance, I screwed up on the camera setting and probably should have turned off the flash, as it was about 4PM in the afternoon, and the lighting was perfect. Nothing I cannot fix on Photoshop, but the photos are a bit overexposed right now.

I did often have the camera on high shutter speeds to compensate for camera shake, but other times, I got away with speeds as low as about 1/60th of a second, and this with my zoom lens pretty extended.

It is worth mentioning that my hands REALLY hurt the first couple days of this trip, working with the Canon 20d and the 80-400mm lens. However, afterwards, I adjusted nicely to the weight of the lens.

I am attempting to upload about 30 photos right now, from my first game drive at Chongwe River Camp. This was when my wife and I spent about 90 minutes with a pride of four lions (3 adult lionesses and a 2 year old male cub) on a kill of an impala.

For some reason the upload is going very slow, so I don't know if they will all get up since I am just allowing my computer to run while I go to work.

I will continue adding to the Chongwe River Camp photo album tonight, as well as writing my review of Chongwe River Camp.

Thanks for the interest.

Looks like you had a great trip indeed. Some lovely light on buffalos and elephants. Have fun with your pics on Photoshop.

Photoshop? That's cheating! ;)

Rocco, instead of loading full size images to kodakgallery, I'd suggest making copies of the images first into a kodakgallery folder and then resizing them all to about 600 pixels on their longest side.

Quicker to upload, quicker for us to view and no strangers will order prints of your images without you ever knowing or receiving a penny for them... unless they WANT passport photo size prints of your photos!!!

Kavey,

Thanks for the advice.

Fortunately, my best photos are yet to come. :)

Kavey (or anyone else),

How do I do what you recommended? I don't know how to upload them to a Kodak Gallery folder and then resize to a smaller resolution.

Thanks.

Great photos and can't wait to see the rest. Wish I was heading to Zambia soon!

Resize them in Photoshop. Go to
Image
Duplicate (make a copy)
Image Size
Then change the size to maybe 650 x 400 pixels. That would still make a fairly large size print so you could go smaller.

IMPORTANT!!!: DO NOT CHANGE THE SIZE OF YOUR ORIGINAL. ONLY DO IT ON A COPY.

When you go to close the duplicate image (or the original for that matter) it will ask if you want to save the changes. If you made a duplicate image, you can make a new folder and file the duplicate pictures in that folder. (If you don't know how to make a new folder, do SAVE AS and it brings up a window and at the top it will have a file folder with a green arrow and another file folder with a sunburst looking thing. The sunburst one makes a new folder and you can name it anything.) Name it something like "kodakgallery Chongwe River" and you'll know all the pictures in that folder are duplicates (not originals) and that you uploaded them to kodakgallery.

Never make changes on your originals in Photoshop. Always make a copy and save the copy. If you save changes on the original, you can never get the original back. As you learn more in Photoshop you can go back to some of your originals and make them better.

Just posted about 70 new photos this morning. Last count is 176 photos and I will try to add more today.

Highlights include bike ride through Mfuwe, Luangwa River Lodge accomodations, plenty of elephants including those right in camp at Chongwe River Camp and more Tiger Fishing photos.

Enjoy! :)

Rocco, great additions. I don't remember reading about the buffalo rescue -- I would have thought the SLWC would have left the buffalo to perish in the mudhole, but I'm sure they have their reasons for interfering.

Also, great photos of elephants in camp, including some where you could see how close you are.

But, I really like the photos of the stuff that's tough to photograph, like the hare and the elephant shrew. I've seen lots of scrub hares on night drives but haven't been able to photo any of them, and I haven't seen an elephant shrew yet (closest was wild gerbils around Sossosvlei in Namibia).

Thanks for posting.

Michael

PS -- I'm about ready to dust off my camera equipment b/c I leave in a little less than one month (October 21) for Churchill, Manitoba to photograph polar bears (short trip, but should be interesting). I need to research filters to see what's best for arctic conditions.

Roccco

Excellent photos!

Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed report.

Can't wait for Simbambili!

Michael,

I have added some other interesting photos since you last visited:

Mongoose
Genet
Vulture
Snake Eagle
Right Whales (from Hermanus Whale Watching)

Somewhere hiding in my files is a decent photo of a Civet. This was VERY hard to get and while not the best shot is still a decent shot.


Safarinut,

I am currently downloading 130 more photos. This should get me up to about 500 photos total. Included in this download are a lot of photos from Simbambili, including a huge Tusker elephant, leopards, including a mother and her 7 month old cub on a duiker kill, and rhinos.

Hopefully I will be able to download the remainder of my photos in the next couple days.

It will take me weeks, however, to put my best images through Photoshop Elements. Once I do, I will make a new album of my favorites, hopefully narrowing it down to 100 or so photos.

Thanks for the interest.

Can't wait to view the latest additions - something to look forward to when I get home tonight...

:D

Rocco:

Love the new additions. Especially the rabbit, shrew and porcupine. DH is jealous of the fish eagle in flight photos--on our trip he was contantly trying to photograph birds in flight and never really got a good one. Also, the pod of hippos where just eyes and ears fill the shot is excellent!

Whew! You've really added a lot of photos...they look great from a glance but I'll have to really check them out tonight! Thanks for posting so quickly!!!

Sharon

Rocco, some real interesting photos -- needless to say, great leopard photos at Simbabilli, but also real nice owl, porcupine, genet, mongoose. The Big 5 are much easier to get great photos of that the small critters, and you've gotten some excellent photos of some less seen stuff.

Kavey,

Thanks for all of your comments within my photo album! :)

For those who have not yet done a slide show of my photo album, I believe the photos are bigger and nicer when viewed in the slide show instead of individually.

I realize there are still quite a few photos that need to be rotated, and I promise to do this by this weekend, as well as adding more photos! :)

topping for Banson

Rocco, your leopard photos are stunning. I'm very tempted to add a stay at Simbambili to my 2006 Horseback Safari, based on your photos! It was reassuring to read the backstory on the mother and cub, because it looks like she's going to kill the poor little thing in the photos. Thanks for sharing these remarkable pictures : )