I've just completed the second of the Thanda workshops for the year. I continue to be impressed with the setup at the African Impact/Thanda Private Game Reserve Project. Being in the bush though does mean that there are the occasional hiccups, as occured last week with a power outage that lasted almost 30 hours. This does make teaching digital photography a little more complicated, but a move down to the research center on the Thanda property actually opened up access to projectors and an air-conditioned conference room. Suddenly the learning experience for the photographers was improved as we were able to look at the images blown up beyond the size of the big Mac computer that we usually use.More after the jump...
The Thanda experience is an absolutely unique one in my mind. The photographers travel to this beautiful reserve and are hosted in the Inthabane Lodge for a full four weeks. From here they go on numerous game drives and a number of conservation projects each week. The first week is of course spent with me as we go into an in-depth and intensive digital photography workshop. The week was intensive and hot as the Kwazulu-Natal rain that has caused flooding across the province suddenly ceased - to be replaced by a seering heat. It was almost with relief that the loss of power meant being able to use the conference facilities (and aircon) of the Thanda Research Centre.
Of course one of the primary reasons for photographers to come on the Thanda Workshop is for the game viewing opportunites. With 4 weeks (3 still to come for the current photography group) of living in reserve, it's hard not to have amazing opportunities to photograph African wildlife. We were certainly not disappointed, what with fantastic photographic sightings of Black-backed Jackal and lion. I consider a photographic sighting one where good to exceptional and unique imagery can be created. This makes photographers some of the hardest guests to please for the poor guide and tracker. Pleased we all were though.
A big thanks to the wonderful group I had this February (Cindy, Yael, Donna, Katie, Merel and Robert).
Emil, I just went through all your posts from this year and I have only one thing to say: No matter what you think but after having seen all these different types of images I can only conclude you are a brilliant photographer! And you have a good way of writing too!
ReplyDeleteNow you just left me wondering why I spend a good number of weeks at Thanda too last year and didn't come with these kind of quality shots. Not that I would nearly rate myself at your level, but surely I could at least have made an attempt... My favourite is your Thanda landscape from January, the one that Sean also liked so much.
I just posted a few images on my blog http://safaristlucia.blogspot.com/ If you wish you can check them out. They are not all that great from a technical photographic point of view, but at least these are the type of images my guests like to see.
Chat soon, Nick