Giraffe and her daughter

On safari in the Serengeti, Tanzania This young giraffe will hang by her mother along with other females in a group. This is the identical pair that I photographed earlier. After this wild baby giraffe was finished ambling around the Serengeti she settled down under her mother for a moment. Already getting the zoomed out scenic shot under my belt ( http://wp.me/p1meFH-OA ) I had to photograph some detail shots now.

Photographic Details: My main focus was the baby giraffe, and given how good our minds are at putting things together I knew I didn’t have to have the whole mother and baby giraffe in the same shot. The point of the photo is to show the scale between the mother and the baby, in addition her position under her mother perfectly expresses how important of a shelter this mother is to her baby. The rest is up to the viewer, we’re good enough at guessing that the rest of the mother is beyond the frame to know she’s just not a headless four legged monster, keeping the focus squarely on the baby. I decided to crop this image square, it’s a nice shape and the extra background to the right I thought was unnecessary. With this image I used the exact same storytelling device I used with a baby elephant, clearly it’s a story that is seen in many animals all over africa http://wp.me/p1meFH-Ow

1/160s f/7.1 ISO100 400mm

[button size="large" link="http://kylefoto.smugmug.com/Animals/Africa/19644918_hpCKDK#!i=1749482326&k=vst3v7M" linkTarget="_blank" color="blue"]

Baby Giraffe springs across the Serengeti

Serengeti, Tanzania, Africa Looking across the Serengeti we sat quietly looking at a group of a dozen giraffes, our guide indicated that these were females who usually group together for safety.

Suddenly a large giraffe bursts from the trees behind us and begins to make her way towards the herd. Another much smaller gangly figure awkwardly stumbles out into the open; for a moment my subconscious thought it made more sense to tell my brain that my tripod had sprung to life and jumped out of the back of the safari vehicle and ran across the Serengeti. Then I realized this energetic stick figure was a baby giraffe running around her mother and all over the grass like there was a party going on in her head that only she could hear. I’m used to seeing these large animals move like they are a slow motion movie, to see one of these things dart around, buck and jump so quickly was both startling and delightful.

Final Image, click to see larger:

Photographic Details: I wanted to capture a bit of motion with these animals moving faster than usual, I slowed my shutter speed down to 1/160th of a second in hopes of getting a little motion blur on their legs and tails without getting too much blur on the bodies. I actually have some much more artistic versions of these images that I will be sharing in the coming weeks but I liked the energy of this one as it really shows how much spunk the baby has, which made us all giggle in the safari vehicle as we watched this unfold in front of us.

This also happened so fast that I forgot to lower my aperture to let more light in, I ended up underexposing. However with the magic of shooting in RAW mode I have a little wiggle room, I was able to correct my mistake and get the detail back by changing the exposure after the fact in Lightroom, we all make mistakes but with the right settings we can compensate for them, See the original image to compare!

Canon EOS 7D: 1/160s f/9.0 ISO100 150mm (35mm eq:240mm)

Original Image before exposure adjustment

[button size="large" link="http://kylefoto.smugmug.com/Animals/Africa/19644918_hpCKDK#!i=1724953165&k=cHqJggp" linkTarget="_blank" color="blue"]Order Print through Smugmug[/button]