Essentials 3: Connect with the Light

There is plenty of photography advice available on the Internet including camera settings for several photography situations. Now people look up the settings and start photographing with it, wondering why only a few photographs are good and the rest is not. The answer is simple. The light determines the camera settings and the light is everywhere different and changing by the moment. One got to connect with the light and always keep communicating with it in order to get great images.

Imagine guests on photographic safaris, wildlife photography courses and team building photographic safaris would use settings they found on the internet, posted there by a photographer in new Jersey. The light in New Jersey is different from the light in the Masai Mara and it would just not work.

Happy connecting!

 

Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com

Essentials 2: Work with the Focus Points

One of the biggest disadvantages of photographing on automatic settings is, that the function “choice of focus point” is not available.

On wildlife photography courses, team building photographic safaris and photographic safaris working with the focus points is essential and practiced a lot. Imagine a lion lying in the grass. The automatic setting will focus on the grass and not on the face of the lion. To get it right you need to choose the focus point yourself and set it on the face of the lion. It needs also some practicing to get used to choose the focus points quickly, but once you got the routine, you will see your photography improving.

This applies of course to all photography.

Happy snapping!

 

Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com

Essentials 1: Photography is Physical

Taking photos on photographic safaris, team building photographic safaris, wildlife photography courses and any other occasions or trips require physical efforts of the photographer. Just standing there or even pressing a remote is not enough. Only by getting physically active really involves the photographer in the shoot. Move around to find the right position for the shoot or walk around the subject to find the right angle. Don’t be nailed to the ground, be flexible and active.

Happy snapping!

 

Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com

 

ePhoto Book: Where the Wind Blows

Amboseli National Park in Kenya is a very popular destination for wildlife photography courses, photographic safaris and team building photographic safaris. It is a huge open space with often strong winds on the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro and it is the home to incredible wildlife.

Enjoy the ephoto book here.

Happy snapping.

 

Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com

On Photo Safari: Game Drives

There is the wide spread idea that the people on the game drive vehicles during photographic safaris, wildlife photography courses and team building photographic safaris are doing nothing, just sitting there. And the guests themselves think the same and are completely surprised that they are so exhausted in the evening.

Physically one is not doing walking, running or climbing to really say being physically active. Yet a game drive vehicle drives on dirt roads and off road, shaking the people on it quite a bit. But this is not all. The vehicles are open and the people on them are exposed to the elements. On top of it come the intense impressions one get from watching wildlife and nature and in the evening one has really done a lot by only sitting on a car.

Unbelievable? Try it.

Happy shaking!

 

Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com

How to Win from Yourself

Sometimes we got this inner voice saying, lets do it next time, lets wait or not now. This voice pops up in several situations and also in photography. A standard situation for it to start talking is on game drives during photographic safaris, wildlife photography courses and team building photographic safaris.

Sitting on a game vehicle can feel like sitting on a rocking chair, not only for the rocking, but more for the feeling of dreaming away and getting to lazy to do something, even to take a photo. Everyone who had been on a game drive will know the situation that there was a wonderful photo and one was too “lazy” to make the driver stop to photograph it. It’s like being caught in a trance, with the result that the photo is gone. The photo opportunity will not come again.

The only way of doing something to get the photo is to be conscious about it and to practice. Just shout out loud when you see the photo and don’t think about what others might think. You saw it and it’s your photo. Take it.

It is actually the same when driving in a car on a motorway, with the only difference that it is often not possible to stop to take the picture. So, do it when you have the chance and definitely on safari.

Happy snapping!

 

Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com

Photographing Desert

Photographing the desert is the ultimate challenge to see where one can easily think there is nothing to see. Photographic safaris, wildlife photography courses and team building photographic safaris to these places are not surprisingly the most challenging and at the same time more exciting ones.

First of all get up early. Not only the light is the best, but also the temperature is still all right. During mid-day you only want to be at the pool or sit still in the shade or well, have a nap.

Bring a macro lens, if you have. The desert offer the opportunity to photograph interesting small animals, grass, flowers, stones and as in Namibia ancient rock drawings.

Use the dramatic dimensions of the desert to put animals like a gemsbok in perspective, walking into the depth of the image.

Do, if possible a hot air balloon ride. This will offer you beautiful views on the incredible landscape of the desert. Be careful when using a wide angle lens for your landscape photography, that the distortion works out nicely.

And last but not least keep looking, although you might think there is nothing. Photographing in the desert is the art of seeing.

Happy desert snapping!

 

Ute Sonnenberg for www.rohoyachui.com