C4 Photo Tour Antarctica - 2014 (Part 1)

 

Over the last few years C4 has begun taking its excellent reputation in leading photo tours into the Arctic regions. This was based on demand from our clients who wanted to travel to new destinations and wanted to do it with C4. The Arctic trips were so successful that we have now done 4 trips in our own chartered boat. In May we will do our 5th Arctic charter. But the demand did not stop there and Antarctica was the next polar region being demanded. Maintaining our goal of always delivering the best photo workshops and tours on offer, we negotiated to run a photo workshop to Antarctica with Art Wolfe and Frans Lanting to join C4’s Shem Compion and Iconic Images International’s Denis Glennon.

From the moment everyone stepped on board our vessel the spirit was one of highly charged anticipation having such wonderful photographers to help run our workshop in such a magnificent location.

The results were not disappointing as we had brilliant weather at all the major landing sites resulting in world class photography and sightings. 

The sheer numbers of wildlife on South Georgia and the vast ice scapes of the peninsular offered all our cameras a continuous buffet of photo options. Art and Frans helped immeasurably in the field with their experience, tutoring and deep knowledge of the locations we were visiting.

 

18 days moved very quickly and before we knew it we were back on land with bags and bags of images to work over. 

Antarctica and South Georgia are both places that make you realise the true potential beauty of our planet. Everyone on this C4 trip was touched many times by being in such close commune to a wilderness area and such close proximity to so many animals.

 

These images will give you an idea of just what Antarctica is all about.

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Mashatu - A Place of Opportunities, By Christine Lamberth

The tyres of the car drumming on the tarred road surface beat out a rhythmic song that entrances the traveller and keeps his eyes glued to the horizon and the anticipation of something new. The fever builds and new experiences wait ahead to fuel the desire to keep hurtling forward in the search for unique moments.
The photographer is fortunate in that these moments can be captured not only in memory boxes but in a physical format that can be shared. Photography greats such as Cartier-Bresson and David Goldblatt were supremos in the art of the moment and it is indeed from their great example that a photographer can learn that the most mundane can become the bewitchingly captivating.



On the great plains of Africa the opportunities abound. Promises of encounters with the huge, the magnificent, the fast and the dangerous overpower the real magic of what lies in every corner just waiting to be seen. It is true that it takes time to peel back the layers, to search ever deeper, to learn more in order to appreciate what it is that reveals itself every day and it is this search that keeps the tyres on the road and the campfires burning on these great Plains.



The secret to unlocking this magic wonderland lies in the eye of the beholder and how much that eye can really see. On a trip to Mashatu over Easter of 2011 the leopards, who are normally so very visible, were playing hide-and-seek and they were winning. The elephants appeared to have taken off on a migration away from the Reserve and the usually abundantly teeming bush was hauntingly empty. Until, that is, when you looked a little closer, concentrated a little bit more and grabbed at every opportunity that came along.



We spent longer times at sightings and there was very little incentive to be off to another, perhaps better sighting. We were able to observe animal behaviour that previously would have been ignored. A very frustrating fact for a serious photographer is that twenty minutes spent at a sighting is, quite honestly, ridiculously short and the commercial aspect of the guaranteed sightings that bring the droves of tourists through the Reserves is hopelessly inadequate to capture meaningful images.



We could bask in the moment waiting patiently for a bird to fly from its perch, a cheetah to yawn or a squirrel to dart off to play because there was no dramatic sighting in the offing. The unfortunate demise of a giraffe brought in a huge flock of vultures and being the only vehicle remotely interested in this rather odiferous event we were privileged to sit for a few hours and photograph the birds coming in to land, the mean spirited pecking and hissing presented a whole host of action shots rarely captured. The posturing that various individuals in these groups display in an effort to demonstrate their supremacy provides opportunities that the lens simply devours.



The desire to capture something special always remains a challenge and even though the shutter keeps up its steady rhythm there remains a constant yearning to capture that elusively tantalising moment.
The unassailable fact that the Safari can be prolonged for many weeks afterwards lies in the arduous task of editing. Each day that I spend with the images afterwards brings me back to each moment as it happened and the more images there are on the flashcard the longer I can prolong the moment. My Safari’s last for weeks and weeks and even though I spend little time travelling and being there I am, really there, almost every day.







Christine Lamberth's Blog


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Leopard and Porcupine Interaction Video

Wildlife sightings are what make a good photo workshop. This is the one reason why we use Mashatu as a venue for our workshops. It is a 32000ha wilderness that holds some excellent wildlife viewing in an open landscape- making photography that much easier, and the ultimate results better.

This proved the case over the last workshop held on the 30 April – 4 May.


A dead Leadwood tree lying in the Mojale River was the focus off attention in the late afternoon sunlight. For on top of it, perched in the most regal of poses, sat a young 2-year old leopard. This young male is as good looking as leopards come and as relaxed as you will find anywhere.
We were busy photographing this perfect set up, when behind us I noticed a porcupine walking in the riverbed. It too, caught the leopard’s attention…
I won’t say much more, because the video below, taken by one of our clients, Guy Larin, shows some incredible interaction between the leopard and the Porcupine. This video was taken with a Canon 5DmarkII attached to a 100-400mm lens and shows the excellent quality of theses new video features that are on the more recent cameras. So do have a look!

How did it end? Both went happily on their own way, just as we did, although I believe we were more excited than the animals.
It again proves the value of the photo workshops- using a dedicated photographic safari company like C4 Images and Safaris’; you get to the best venues with the best photographers to make the best images.

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Spreading Our Wings

Wildlife photography is something wonderful. It teaches you a specific discipline within a certain field, but it also opens up a whole new world to the photographer. C4 Images and Safaris have, until now, operated only within Africa and one of its islands, Madagascar. This is because our speciality is African wildlife and nature- all our guides are excellent and Professional Photographers, but also trained conservationists who have been active in the wildlife industry for a number of years.

Japan

This ensures that you, the client, receives the best Photography Tutoring as well as nature guiding- and as any Professional Nature Photographer will tell you, “A Nature Photographer is foremost a naturalist, and secondly a photographer”. You will see that most top Wildlife Photographers are trained in the biological sciences- Its not an absolute, but it’s definitely a common thread.

So we have become specialists in our fields here in Africa. But the photography industry is a vibrant and interesting group of individuals. With wildlife and photography being a common thread, photographers keenly discuss photography and wildlife “hotspots” around the world and soon exotic destinations like the Galapagos, the Antarctic, Madagascar and Japan become dream travel destinations for the photographer.
C4 Images and Safaris’ realise this as a common need, and so, in conjunction with good colleague and professional Japanese wildlife photographer, Go Yamagata, we have spread our wings into the northern hemisphere to the country of Japan.

This will be our first tour out of the continent of Africa and it proves to be a very exciting one!
Hokkaido, an island just north of Japan offers migrating birds, cranes, storks and swans a place of refuge from the harsh Russian winter. The images of them walking on the frozen lakes amongst rising mist always provide for stunning photography- as indicated by the fact that images from here almost always end up in top wildlife competitions. Then there are the Japanese Macaques, or snow monkeys that come from the forests to relax in the heated pools- the most endearing image of Japanese wildlife.

Zambia

We are also breaking in new tours to great destinations in Africa. Zambia’s south Luangwa valley and the tour to the Serengeti and Ngorongoro in the calving season are new tours that we are now running. These are both excellent wildlife areas with brilliant wildlife viewing. You can see more about the tours on the C4 Images and Safaris website.
We don’t rest on our laurels here at C4 Images and Safaris. We constantly strive to produce tours that provide the best Wildlife Photography in the most productive wildlife areas. If it means we have to go north to Japan, we will do so…!
Keep an ear out for more destinations. You might still here about the Antarctic from us!

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