Topi Sunrise : highly commended
The Wild Eye nature photography competition, based in South Africa, has awarded my Topi Sunrise image a high commendation. This competition features a lot of stunning photography. I am honoured to have one of my images chosen. I would highly recommend that you visit the Wild Eye competition page and have a look at the other winning images.
We had been in the Mara for three days. Each day we experienced pounding downpours of rain. One of my friends commented that it was more like driving through the Florida Everglades than an African savannah. River crossings entailed lifting all gear and our feet off the floor of the Land Rover so that the water could flow unimpeded in one door and out the other.
On the morning of our last day we slept in until 5:30 am since it was still pouring rain at 5:00. We headed out at 6:20 in complete darkness. A light drizzle was still falling. Within a few minutes we were encouraged to see a warm glimmer of light on the eastern horizon. As the anticipation of a stunning sunrise started to build we began scanning for a suitable foreground element. The plains right around us were pretty much devoid of anything interesting. There were however some animals moving on a ridge on the eastern horizon. Switching to long (400mm lenses) we worked on framing up an interesting composition. The the sky came to life we were thrilled with the scene that materialized in front of us.
The image required virtually no post production editing other than a slight crop to correct a tilting horizon and a minor boost to the contrast in the RAW file. The only difficult thing about this image was forcing ourselves to get out of our warm beds and head out in the dark and the rain.
