MY FAVOURITE PHOTOS (3)

I like to believe these photos encapsulate an important thought: whatever happens in future, this is how it was during the years I've travelled the Zambezi and Lake Kariba. I'd like to think that, in coming years and decades, someone may stumble across this digital archive and think: well, it still is like that. 

At least 30 of those years are spanned by these two photos. The one on the left - good old Canon FTb and Ektachrome again - was taken at Mana Pools in the very early 1980s and still appears as the header pic on UNESCO's description of the Mid-Zambezi World Heritage Site. The one on the right was taken in 2014 and - apart from the color cast! - it's encouraging to see how little has changed.

This photo, of nyala at Chine Pool, was also taken in the late 1970's or very early 1980's, while waiting for the black rhinos to come and drink. I think that's Salvinia on the water; otherwise - once again - little has changed. Although I haven't seen nyala at Chine itself recently, we frequently come across them in the jesse south of the pool, and in good numbers as well.

Sapi Pan and its beautiful ebonies is another Mana Pools feature that, to my eye, has remained virtually unchanged since I first visited it in 1979 (with, it has to be said, several well-armed rangers and Army personnel). For as comparative photo, however, I have to point you to the Parks office at Nyamepi where you will see several of my framed black and white photos dating from that era, including one of these self-same ebonies.

The detail of the river and its channels, on the other hand, is subject to a riot of change, especially in the past few years, when heavy rain, floods, and increased Kariba power generation have combined to cause rapid erosion of the Zimbabwean bank. Nowhere is this more evident than at places like BBC Camp, where a former two-metre channel has dried out altogether, while the Nyamepi frontage is littered with fallen mahoganies, Kigelias and albidas. 

A couple of slightly anomalous pics from the archive, but they are favourites of mine and I wanted to get them in somehow. I took the photo above at the Mcheni Gorge in Chizarira, in 2010, when a huge and devastating fire raged through the Park woodlands. We watched it approach from the east until it engulfed the gorge and hillsides, and there were a few moments, before we were enveloped in smoke and dust, when a mix of diminishing sunlight and approaching flame created this eerie, almost alien light on the hillside east of us.

Back in the early 1980s I was privileged to accompany the Batoka Gorge trip, on home-made rafts, organised by St George's College. I think the pic speaks for itself,  and you'll also note that I, as photographer, was stationed squarely on terra firma and very happy to be so!

Now up-to-date again and across to the Matusadona which, like Mana Pools, I have known and loved since 1979. I'm sure the skeletal trees must have thinned out significantly since then, but to my eye the view is reassuringly changeless - an amazing paradox, of course, since the lake itself is not only a massive ecological upheaval, but has only existed for a little over 50 years.

The giant kingfisher at left was photographed in the Bonde River from our sailboat, Giselle. The little bee-eater on the right, however, was snapped from a comfortable chair at the Spurwing Island lodge, where they - and several other species - have virtually become domesticated.

And the flock of openbills above was a happy convergence of birds, sky and sunset in the Kemurara River a few kilometres west of Fothergill Island.

Our travels often take us into the Chewore and, whenever practical, to Chewore Lodge at the confluence of the Zambezi and Chewore Rivers. This pic was taken shortly after sunrise, from the campsite.

And from Chewore we gravitate - time after time - to Mana Pools. This photo was also taken quite soon after sunrise.

Imagine if impala were endangered. We'd rave about their beauty, instead of merely taking them for granted, as one so often does. They are certainly among my very favourite photographic subjects - and a very much-loved species in general, as well. This is a lucky shot of a nursery group in thicket near the Nyamepi lodges, with some diffused sunlight picking out the foreground individual.

Quintessential Mana: an ele in one's campsite.

It's not often these little guys stick around for very long, but this one was so preoccupied that he gave us several minutes of his time before finishing up his lunch and moving off.

A bit of homespun philosophy: the true Zen of wilderness photography lies in not seeing everything, all the time, through the eye of the lens, real or metaphorically. It is to be at one with your surroundings; to absorb the all-round ambience, the sounds, the scents, without mentally confining them within a 3:2 or 16:9 box. Then - and only then - will you be truly conditioned to recognise the real moments when they come.

You do have to be quick, though, when necessary, and I find that single-point, back-button AF helps hugely with this. Here's Vee/Big Vic being subjected to indignities by one of his cohort of females. He is, of course, one of Mana's iconic elephant bulls.

Oliver, or Slot, was another of those iconic bulls. Here he is, playing in the Zambezi not long before he died. 

Enough. A couple of favourite sunsets, firstly at Mcheni -

- and then at Mana Mouth. Let's leave it there for now...except for The Message.....

Here we are again. These magnificent Mana woodlands that we return to, time after time. Isn't that just too beautiful?


Well, yes, OK, But really, it's just a woodland, isn't it. Now let's look at it again -

The difference is - of course! - the elephant. To me, the elephant is the animal which, above all others, symbolises the Zimbabwean wilderness. It brings the woodland suddenly and vibrantly alive. Mana Pools without rhinos is bad enough. Mana Pools without elephants would be - well, there's no word for it, really.*

Very distressingly, since 2001 elephant numbers in the Zambezi Valley (in which Mana pools lies) have plunged from 20 000 to 12 000; a 40% loss. During the same period, elephant numbers in the Sebungwe region (in which Matusadona is situated) have plummeted by a staggering 70%, from 11 000 to 3 000.

It is safe to say that the vast majority of these animals will have been killed for their ivory; and if this is allowed to go on, we may not have a single elephant left in these areas within a decade or so. When the black rhino faced a similar fate, we said it couldn't happen. Let's not make the same mistake twice.

Sport hunters aren't the problem. Nor are "live sales". These are mostly "animal rights" issues and whether you like these activities or not, they don't make any significant impact on elephant numbers. It is illegal hunting, aka "poaching" for ivory, that's killing Africa's elephants wholesale.

Sometimes it's difficult to see how an individual can make a difference. The one thing we can all do, though, is to lend our moral and financial support to the various anti-poaching initiatives that have arisen in response to these threats. They are far from being a perfect answer; they can be accused of tackling symptoms and not causes; but they are essential to "hold the fort" in order to save what we have, pending more all-embracing solutions.

 Take your pick from the Victoria Falls Anti-Poaching Unit (VFAPU); Bumi Hills Anti-Poaching Unit (BHAPU); Matusadona Anti-Poaching Project (MAPP); Gache Gache Wildlife Environment Protection Unit (WEPU); Kariba Animal Welfare Fund Trust (KAWFT); and support/advocacy organisations such as The Zambezi Society, which devotes all its efforts to the conservation of  these areas. All are deserving of your support.

For the past 37 years elephants have been an essential and inseparable part of my life. I cannot imagine an existence - or a Zambezi wilderness - without them. As I said at the beginning,  I'd like to think that in another 37 years, someone may stumble across this digital archive and think: well, it still is like that.

* Yes, there is some Photoshop manipulation for effect, but very little; the removal of half an impala to emphasise the emptiness. Otherwise, these are two separate images, one taken at 08.03am; the other at 08.14am, when the ele obligingly wandered into the composition.  And talking of composition: rules - like the 1/3rd rule - are indeed made to be broken!

MY FAVOURITE PHOTOS (2)

A reminder: the photos I'm posting on this blog come from a personal archive that goes back to 1979. Technically they are often flawed, but they just happen to be the ones I like best. Here's a second selection. All photos copyright Dick Pitman.

OK, here we go again...a nostalgia-trip to 1981, when black rhino were common at Mana Pools. I'd see five or six individual animals coming to drink in an afternoon at Chine Pool, where I took this photo. A print still hangs in the Parks office at Marongora. I accidentally spooked this rhino - shutters were a good deal noisier than they are today - and he took off, luckily not in my direction.  

This was "my" rhino. I used to seek him out whenever I went to Mana, usually finding him somewhere near what is now Mcheni 1. He'd browse in the scrub & thicket; drink from the river; and then sleep in the mahogany woodlands  west of today's campsite. Both these photos were taken with Canon FTb and Ektachrome 200. 

This is a black-and-white rendering from a transparency also taken at Chine Pool back in the early 1980's, mostly via the Photoshop "threshhold" control. I have some fairly strong views on black and white work - notably, that merely pressing the "greyscale" button on a likely-looking colour pic doesn't constitute competence - but one likes to play around sometimes!

In 1993, we began the relocation of 18 cheetah into the Matusadona National Park, in the first-ever "wild to wild" cheetah reintroduction ever carried out. Always loved this one, of a cheetah thoroughly enjoying a "back scratch"; and also - 

 - scent-marking a tree inside the very spacious boma we built on Fothergill Island, to house the captured cheetah before releasing them into the Matusadona. Their descendents still survive in the Park today. Around this time I experimented briefly with a Canon EOS, but found it very vulnerable to dust, heat and moisture, and soon went back to the Canon FTb's.

Lake Kariba was at very low levels during the 1980's and much of the '90's - hence our ability to build a large boma on the lake shore. Lake levels began to rise a few years later; however, this picture of the Nyamuni River (Palm Bay area) in flood in the early 2000's still shows a huge area of exposed lake shore. By now I was - very cautiously, and with some scepticism - dipping my toes into the alien world of digital photography, but not prepared to commit to anything more than a Canon Powershot S20 with - WOW!! - 3.7 megapixels!

Recently, the lake has more or less filled every year. But whether the lake is high or low, it has one overriding feature: the light. It cascades down from the sky; reflects back up from the water; and permeates every nook and cranny in the myriad creeks and skeletal trees. 

Don't dismiss the crushing midday sun; you can still capture striking images, if you keep your eyes open. This was taken at noon.

Later in the day, especially after sunset, the camera is likely to capture some amazing - and often unexpected - effects.

However, some things never change. Sunset with Darters, 1979, and...

...sunset with Openbills, 2011. 

A little bit of portraiture now: not a genre I often go in for, as I far prefer to depict my wildlife in habitat and context, and certainly not posing for the camera; but I am fond of these two - a deceptively absent-minded looking buffalo bull doing an Old Farmer Giles act, and a young lion learning how to exhibit flehmen. Also - 

- two studies of Vee, or Big Vic as some call him, who we had already known for a long time before we adopted him as our company logo, back in 2008. He's an iconic Mana bull, and - like most people - we've got hundreds of images of him; but these two, part of a quartet of similar studies, are among my personal favourites. 

I'm also fond of this photo of a young waterbuck, captured at Green Pool, in Mana Pools. 

One recent Facebook commenter said "Mana can be spooky". This sounded very strange to me, as I feel totally relaxed, totally at home, totally attuned to the Mana environment,  whether by night or day. But maybe they merely meant the equally extraordinary "enchanted woodlands" ambience that is, in my admittedly limited experience of the rest of the world, unique to Mana. 

But - I know I keep coming back to it - by October Mana's a dry, dusty desert. One longs for the rains to begin.  

The transformation is swift and almost unbelieveable, if you haven't seen it for yourself.

And although you may not see many "charismatic megamammals", the ones you do see will be in incredibly lovely settings.   

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MY FAVOURITE PHOTOS (1)

The photos I'll be posting here come from a personal archive that goes back to 1979.  Technically they aren't particularly outstanding - far from it, at times. They just happen to be the ones I like best. All photos copyright Dick Pitman.

Let's start where it all began, for me - in the Matusadona.

Ok, that was  a recent - and of course digital - photo, but way back in 1979, I'd pitched up on Fothergill to write "Wild Places of Zimbabwe" after spending six months travelling within the country's National Parks, and ended up staying on Fothergill with Rob and Sandy Fynn for almost three years. Back then I was using a Canon FTb loaded with Ektachrome 200, which was about all one could buy, and I took this pic after sunset, lying prone on the Fothergill runway. I later included this photo in an exhibition of 25 Cibachrome prints (remember those?). It was the only one that didn't sell, and the framed print has pride of place in our home today.

Here's another favourite - 1979 again, same place, different day.

Fast-forward to November 2011. Early rainstorms have cleared the dry-season haze, and no spectacular mammals are visible - intentionally - as I wanted to try and convey the sheer beauty of those Matusadona bays and their mountain backdrop, without other distractions. When I first visited Matusadona, in 1978, Lake Kariba had only existed for 18 years. By 2011, another 33 years had passed and the lake was over 50 years old. Anything could have happened to this "living laboratory" over that time and, biologically, a lot has. But the Matusadona's scenic loveliness is as fresh as it ever was.

And anyway, all I had to do was get into a small boat, equipped - most importantly - with a paddle, to get a classic shot of a majestic bull elephant feeding on submerged vegetation.

Going back to 1979: I'd already been to Mana a couple of times, while researching "Wild Places", but I hadn't got into bush photography by then, and all I had from those visits were a few very bad black and white pics. I returned in 1980, with the Canon FTb and more Ektachrome, and took another longstanding favourite -  these buffalo at Chine Pool.

I used to park off for the day near the eastern end of the pool and snap whatever came along. Quite a lot did, including nyala and black rhino, but I'll post those some other time. Instead, let's come up to date again and go digital with the shot everyone gets at Mana Pools, simply because it's so hauntingly beautiful; that grey-blue haze in the albida woodland, the sun already hot, the air filled with the scent of dust and dung and the constant calling of turtle doves. Taken in September 2013 during a visit with the ffrench-Constant family; Canon 30D, 90-300mm lens.

I think this is one of the most poignant photos I've ever taken. It's November 2007, right at the end of a long, harsh dry season. Momma is alive - she got up some time later - but she's exhausted from the strain of finding enough food to survive, in temperatures that rose to the mid-40's ; and her calf's concern and anxiety are plain to see.

That very night, the first rains fell at Mana Pools. We were in Mcheni 4 with Craig and Sharon Chittenden when a massive storm developed upstream. Shortly after I took this pic the wind rose to near gale force, bringing with it a sand- and dust-storm that persisted for several hours. Sally and Sharon took refuge in the cars, while Craig and I huddled in the lee of Craig's trailer, where it was possible - just - to light our ciggies. The wind finally dropped at about 9pm, and was followed by torrential rain. In the morning we got the hell outta there, for fear of being marooned by mud for the duration, and managed to reach Nyamepi and occupy a vacant Parks lodge.

Rain. It all depends on rain. And whether it's true or not, the bull on the right does look as if he's welcoming the storm clouds.... This was one of the very first shots I took with my Canon 30D, back in 2006, and it certainly shows. But as I said, these are pics I like, not technical masterpieces.

Of all the Mana seasons, I love the early summer most of all, and Sally and I make an annual pilgrimage to see Mana's incredible transformation from dry-season desert to brilliant emerald Eden.

Another summer pic - plenty of grazing for a lactating hippo and her calf, photographed with a longish lens across the "safety barrier" of the channel outside Hippo Lodge.

Two of Mana's aristocrats out for a stroll. Can't you just see it in the expressions, body language and inherent assumptions: some of us are just - well - superior, and the lower classes ahead will make way for us.

I particularly enjoy this Mana pic because of the way a a low sun picked out the two lions against a dark thicket background. I'd like to say it took a lot of careful positioning, on foot, but it didn't. Sal and I drove into Stretch Ferreira's campsite one December day, after he'd packed up for the season, and there they were. Stick the camera out of the car window, rattle off a couple of shots, and that was that!

And one for Matus - the pic everybody's got, but no less lovely for that. November 2012, and the lake still quite high. Strange: when the lake was low, during the tourism boom of the 1990's, only older guides could remember what it was like when it was high. Likewise today, younger guides can't imagine what it's like when it's very low. I'll show you, next time I add to this blog.