Weekly High Five #20

During the last few weeks two new photographers have signed up to showcase their work on Photo-Africa. The images have been rolling in and it is great to see how a small sideline idea I had a few months ago is starting to get closer to what I think it could be.

The quality and diversity of images that is being uploaded to the Photo-Africa Stock Library is amazing and I am proud to be associated to the guys who are out there capturing the beauty and magic of Africa in their images.

I have quite a lot of ideas and plans for the site but I needed to wait for it to grow and gain some momentum. With the way things are going I reckon I might be able to expand and put a few of the ideas into motion quite shortly. I still feel that Photo-Africa is truly unique in that it shows the true Africa through the images that gets uploaded and, more importantly, their are new images being uploaded on a very regular basis.

Adele and I will be heading up to Namibia on Tuesday for our wedding next Saturday and when we get back from the short trip afterwards I will start to focus a lot more on the site and the direction I would like to see it going. So many ideas and possibilities. As they say... "watch this space"!

For now however, back to the Weekly High Five.

For this week's choices I tried to see if it would be possible to actually not include lion images. Nothing against them as they do make the most amazing images, but Gavin and I were chatting and I thought it would be interesting to see what would come up if the King of the Jungle was not in the mix.

There were however, as always, a number of lion images that stood out so before we get to my High Five choices here are a few of these that caught my attention.

Lion Image 1 - Sereti Snarl by Gavin Tonkinson

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Lion Image 2 - Lion Spotlight by Matt Jones

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Lion Image 3 - Golden Grass by Gerry van der Walt

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Lion Image 4 - Wildlife Art: Electric Lion by Gavin Tonkinson

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A couple of interesting lion images so now that they are 'out of the way' here goes with my choices for this week's High Five.

Image 1 - Quintessential Africa by Matt Jones

Great silhouette of an African Icon. The sun and clouds give this image a great natural, moody feel. I am still not sure if I would have liked the sun and giraffe to have swapped sides in the image as then the animal would have had some space to move into but in this specific image it does not bother me too much. Very nice 'African' image.

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Image 2 - Hyena Stand Off by Matt Jones

Great capture of animal interaction. It is scenes like this that makes a visit to an game reserve in Africa worth it. This image shows the two scavengers walking side by side as they size each other up. Under normal circumstances the spotted hyena would have the upper hand as they travel in large clans. You can see how the Brown Hyena has 'fluffed' up his mane to look bigger in an attempt to intimidate his larger opponent. Great image!

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Image 3 - Zebra Art by Will Knight

The image on it's own would have been good but the treatment in PS truly makes this unique. The tones are beautiful and assists the way the zebra pops in the bottom corner. I like!

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Image 4 - Klipspringer Double by Gavin Tonkinson

I am still leaning towards this one as my pick of the week. Getting a quality image of a Klipspringer is quite unusual and this one is pretty much perfect. The second antelope in the background that is also looking back at the photograph makes it work even better. An amazing image of a seldom seen antelope. Brilliant!

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Image 5 - Nesting Roller by Gavin Tonkinson

This Lilac Breasted Roller has been nesting at an old Leadwood tree at Tuningi. We have tried on numerous occasions to photograph the beautiful bird and I reckon Gavin hit this one on the head. The rollers keep on coming back to the nest to feed the youngsters and this image shows him coming out of the nest. The image is simple with great texture and just a touch of colour. Very tough call between this and Image 4 but I am going with this as my pick of the week.

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Great diversity! When you have a chance go and check out the New Image on the Photo-Africa Stock Library and browse through some amazing African Wildlife and Nature images.

I will be in Johannesburg until Tuesday and will be posting a few more images, videos and updates before I go. I will also try and get a few posts written and have them automatically posted each day so will try and do a High Five next Friday of the images that get uploaded during the next few days.

Time now to go and pick up the champagne for the wedding and run a few other errands. Coming from the peach and tranquility of the African bush in Madikwe I am not quite excited about heading to a shopping mall on a Saturday morning! will have to do a few coffee shop stops to make it all worth while!

As always I look forward to hearing from you!

Until next time.

Gerry