Tanzania and Kenya (20 pics)

kgarrett11

I just got back from a two week trip to Africa. This was an unbelievable trip that I will never forget. The animals, birds and scenery were fantastic. The only problem was that on the second day (and you Cannon people will love this) my D200 went bad on me so I had to use my D100 for the rest of the trip. I missed some good shots because the D100 is slower but still came up with a few good shots. Here are a few and you can go to kgarrett.smugmug.com to see some more. I took over 5200 shots but of course not all were keepers. Please let me know what you think (good or bad).

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ShepsMom

How lucky are you??? What a great assortment of a wildlife, absolutely beautiful!! This would be my dream trip. Thank you for sharing

kgarrett11

ShepsMom wrote:

How lucky are you??? What a great assortment of a wildlife, absolutely beautiful!! This would be my dream trip. Thank you for sharing

Thanks for your comments. I dreamt about this for decades. My oldest son told me that he remembers when he was a little kid that I used to talk about someday going to Africa and I finally made it.

marlof

As a die hard African wildlife fan, I'm delighted to see your images. They made me feel I was there again for a moment, for which I'd like to thank you.

kgarrett11

marlof wrote:

As a die hard African wildlife fan, I'm delighted to see your images. They made me feel I was there again for a moment, for which I'd like to thank you.

Yes, I loved it. It is almost too easy to take pictures. Just hold the camera out and push the button a bunch of times and you will get a picture of some kind of animal or bird. And if you don't then the landscape picture is pretty good too.

Skippy

kgarrett11 wrote:

I just got back from a two week trip to Africa. This was an unbelievable trip that I will never forget. The animals, birds and scenery were fantastic. The only problem was that on the second day (and you Cannon people will love this) my D200 went bad on me so I had to use my D100 for the rest of the trip. I missed some good shots because the D100 is slower but still came up with a few good shots. Here are a few and you can go to kgarrett.smugmug.com to see some more. I took over 5200 shots but of course not all were keepers. Please let me know what you think (good or bad).

Well Camera failure can happen with any Brand, it's not exclusive to Nikon glad you had a backup camera so you could keep shooting

Gosh I'd love to go on an African Safari, I bet you had just the best time.
Seeing all those Animals right there in the open how awesome would that be !

Glad you had a great time, thanks for sharing your African Shots
.... Skippy
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Maestro

Wonderful pictures. Just an amazing assortment of wildlife. I, too, would be in hog heaven there. I hope Africa's wildlife can survive amid all the turmoil there.

dbaker1221

excellent series!! great job!

kriyababaji

Great Shots!

The elephants and leopard is my favorite. Looks like you may have visited Lake Nakuru? Awesome place eh? Once a wildlife photographer visits Africa, it is all over....serious addiction! Keep posting more shots please.

Shane

dbaker1221 wrote:

excellent series!! great job!

Dante

Amazing pictures and what a fantastic trip to take!!

Thank you for sharing!

kgarrett11

kriyababaji wrote:

Great Shots!

The elephants and leopard is my favorite. Looks like you may have visited Lake Nakuru? Awesome place eh? Once a wildlife photographer visits Africa, it is all over....serious addiction! Keep posting more shots please.

Shane

I have always loved to go to zoos no matter where they are, but now I don't know if they will ever be the same. Like I said I took over 5200 shots and a lot of them were noisey but I bought Noise Ninja last night and played with it a little. It cleans some of my shots up a lot. There will be some more posts to come.
Yes it was Lake Nakuru. The guide said that there weren't as many flamingos there as there normally were but there were still thousands. It is beautiful at sunrise.

evoryware

Wow a group of cheetas and a leopard!
They say the cheetas don't usually group up.
I was lucky to get a cheetah, but never saw a leopard in my week safari. I love 2, 4 and 18! Would love to go back in about 15-20 years to see the changes. I love flying but 8 flights for one trip was too much for me.

Ric Grupe

2, 5, 6, 15, 16, 18 thumbthumbthumb

Too bad about the cam...I bet you were sick about it.:cry

kgarrett11

Ric Grupe wrote:

2, 5, 6, 15, 16, 18 thumbthumbthumb

Too bad about the cam...I bet you were sick about it.:cry

I was bummed for a day but decided that I couldn't do anything about it and I had used my D100 for a couple of years before I got the D200 and was a happy camper then. I missed a few shots because the D100 is slower and it was very very noticable when I was next to a Mark-III user and his machine gun was going off. But I lived with it and feel that I still came up with some good shots.

kgarrett11

evoryware wrote:

Wow a group of cheetas and a leopard!
They say the cheetas don't usually group up.
I was lucky to get a cheetah, but never saw a leopard in my week safari. I love 2, 4 and 18! Would love to go back in about 15-20 years to see the changes. I love flying but 8 flights for one trip was too much for me.

The cheetas were a family (a mother and her cubs). I didn't see a lot of them in Tanzania but they were all over the place in Kenya especially the Masai Mara.

Shasoc

Congrats on this great collection of shots.

ABCaptures

im seriously so jelous!!! that is amazing, you got some breathtaking pictures. i wouldve loved to be in your shoes for that trip. wow!

kgarrett11

ABCaptures wrote:

im seriously so jelous!!! that is amazing, you got some breathtaking pictures. i wouldve loved to be in your shoes for that trip. wow!

I had been dreaming about this for the last 30 years and finally bit the bullet and went. My anticipation was high and it was more than I thought it would be.

LCD

This is my dream trip!! Congrats on getting such nice shots. Thank goodness you had a backup camera with you. That would have been heartbreaking otherwise.

BigAl

Nice series, looks like you had a great time! It's somwhere I'd like to go sometime, but it's a bit of a long drive

One nit though, from the focal lengths on the pics your gallery it looks as though you were using a zoom lens. The crops on some of your pics are a bit distracting, for instance with the impala #8 and the lions #14 & #15 there is a bit too much body showing for the portraits you seemed to be after. Zooming in a bit more would have helped. In #1 zooming out a bit to include the baby would have helped composition.

For evoryware: I dunno who the "they" are that say cheetahs are solitary, but they are usually in groups of at least two, and as Ken's pic shows often more.

m8o

Thank you for sharing .... I'm leaving Wednesday for my trip there! If anything, it serves as my excuse for finally getting the D-SLR and lenses I always wanted!

kgarrett11

BigAl wrote:

Nice series, looks like you had a great time! It's somwhere I'd like to go sometime, but it's a bit of a long drive

One nit though, from the focal lengths on the pics your gallery it looks as though you were using a zoom lens. The crops on some of your pics are a bit distracting, for instance with the impala #8 and the lions #14 & #15 there is a bit too much body showing for the portraits you seemed to be after. Zooming in a bit more would have helped. In #1 zooming out a bit to include the baby would have helped composition.

For evoryware: I dunno who the "they" are that say cheetahs are solitary, but they are usually in groups of at least two, and as Ken's pic shows often more.

Thanks very very much for your comments. I won't be able to do this kind of trip again unless I hit the lotto but if I would I want to go to South Africa.

kgarrett11

m8o wrote:

Thank you for sharing .... I'm leaving Wednesday for my trip there! If anything, it serves as my excuse for finally getting the D-SLR and lenses I always wanted!

If you are going to Ngorngoro crater make sure that you take a jacket and long pants. We would always leave on a game drive at 6am before sunrise and I froze my little tush off. Also make sure that you have a backup camera with you. I did and it saved me a suicide attempt.

The Wild Eye

Great stuff!!! You must have had the time of your life!
You must have had the time of your life!

I dream of going some day!!!

Can you give me a link or something to the guide and or place you stayed....

Because it looks like they did a great job and finding you thing to shoot! Did you have a hard time seeing wildlife or was it every where?

And from the sound of it you were lucky you took a back up camera!!

What time of year did you go?

Cuong

Keith, excellent series. Paradise certainly exists on earth and I hope it'll be here for a long time for all to find it. I went to Kruger NP, South Africa, for a couple days this past July, but the pictures I got are nothing compared to yours.

Here's the thread where I posted some of my pics: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=67735

I really enjoy your gallery. Thanks for sharing and please post some more.

Cuong.

kgarrett11

The Wild Eye wrote:

You must have had the time of your life!

I dream of going some day!!!

Can you give me a link or something to the guide and or place you stayed....

Because it looks like they did a great job and finding you thing to shoot! Did you have a hard time seeing wildlife or was it every where?

And from the sound of it you were lucky you took a back up camera!!

What time of year did you go?

I just got back last Sunday. I went through Somak Safari's and Paul Renner was the leader. We flew to Tanzania and were picked up there. From there we would spend two nights at each lodge. There were 3 people per vehicle. Watch out because some of the tours that I saw would have from 5 to 7 people in a vehicle and with that many you can't get any good shots. Check out www.rennerimages.com there is a link there to look at the lodges where we stayed.

kgarrett11

yukio wrote:

Keith, excellent series. Paradise certainly exists on earth and I hope it'll be here for a long time for all to find it. I went to Kruger NP, South Africa, for a couple days this past July, but the pictures I got are nothing compared to yours.

Here's the thread where I posted some of my pics: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=67735

I really enjoy your gallery. Thanks for sharing and please post some more.

Cuong.

I had already looked at yours. I wish that I could have gotten a picture of the rhino facing me like you did. That is a beautiful shot.

Harryb

Marvelous Keith.

That's a trip I want to take myself. It always pays to have a second body for a trip like you had. I had to use my D100 as my second body when my D2X went in for service. I had forgotten what a good (slow but still good) camera it is.

kgarrett11

Harryb wrote:

Marvelous Keith.

That's a trip I want to take myself. It always pays to have a second body for a trip like you had. I had to use my D100 as my second body when my D2X went in for service. I had forgotten what a good (slow but still good) camera it is.

Thanks Harry. I was the same. What got me over it was thinking to myself that I had been happy with the D100 before I got the D200 so I figured that it would work out and it did.

JillG

Wonderful Series
That male lion feeding is amazing. And I love the Cheetas (but I'm partial to cats:D). Gawd, it seemed you were so close to the elephants, it must have been a little frightening. Congrats on finally making your dream trip and coming away from it with such good shots.

Jill

kgarrett11

JillG wrote:

That male lion feeding is amazing. And I love the Cheetas (but I'm partial to cats:D). Gawd, it seemed you were so close to the elephants, it must have been a little frightening. Congrats on finally making your dream trip and coming away from it with such good shots.

Jill

One of the elephants was so close and I was using my video camera. You can hear me on the sound asking the guide if we were safe. It came right up to the van and then turned away and walked into the bush. It was unbelievalble.