I was up at 7:00 a.m. and thank God
the sun was finally up too. The weather looked promising and I was excited
about the day. I packed my bags and joined the team for breakfast during which
I kept coming at Jason with questions inquiring about his career and technical
expertise. He told me about his encounters with some world-known photographers,
such as James Nachtwey, Steve McCurry and many others. It’s a good thing I kept
my notebook at close reach.
We loaded the 150 kilos of equipment
into the minivan (interesting side note: Jason’s 80 kilos of gear alone weigh
more than my actual body weight!) We had a long 5-6 hour drive ahead of us to
the Entabeni Game Reserve. During the ride, Guts shared with us some facts about
the history of South Africa and some of the landmarks that Pretoria had to
offer. It was such a beautiful and upscale city that I wasn’t surprised to find
out it was a second home for some celebrities such as Madonna and Michael
Jackson whose high luxury villas are mostly lined up in Watergloove 101 street.
We then made it atop a hill offering
a wide viewpoint of Pretoria and stopped to take some photos. Dan was filming
Jason as he was explaining some photography tips while shooting a flower,
approaching it from different angles and changing the background. I could see
from the resulting images how each composed frame would change the mood of the
flower. He also shared with me his personal preference of shooting with manual
focus all the time. I practiced this recommendation while micro shooting a
locust and I was surprised by how much better control I had and how much
sharper my photos became. We also drove through Pretoria’s central district
where we chalked off some street photography.
On our way, we stopped at a remote
village down a dirt track where we took permission from the person in charge to
take photos and document the lives of the residents in their harsh living
conditions. With so little hope and in a country where they can’t be hired
because of their age or skin color, they hope they can get at least the
equivalent of USD 3,000 so they can start their own workshop that would provide
work for the whole community. They still have rents to pay and fines to evade,
yet all their income comes mostly from church donations.
After 3 more hours of driving, we
finally made it to the park. We quickly checked in and took our first evening
game drive. I was very excited and pleased at the sight of animals grazing in
the wild, not encaged behind bars at zoos; we could spot at a close distance
impalas, giraffes, zebras, kudus, waterbucks, wildebeests, warthogs and various
types of birds. We spent the next 4 hours driving around the park, taking
photos and filming. I was struggling with my 70-300 mm F5.6 Sigma lens to
capture some sharp photos at night so Jason offered to let me use his spare
zoom lens the following day. Finally, we left the park and headed back to our
lodge for dinner. After dinner, Jason went through my photos and had some
comments on them with regards to clipping, equidistance and exposure.
