Photo of the Week

22nd April 2009

Those photographers, whether wildlife or landscape, that yearn for settled, sunny weather are often misguided. East Africa in late March is a case in point. This is a time during which many large operators discount their holidays like condemned meat, which shows that you read their mainstream drivel at your peril. This is the time of rich, verdant plains, dramatic skies with anvil, foreboding thunderheads and storms. Big storms. The fat lady does not finish her game drive song till the memory card is downloading in camp as this was taken an hour after sunset. Shots like this rely on a particular technique and that crucial mistress of fortune - luck. It has to be dark, there has to be a vestige of straight foreground and then the camera is put on a two second delay to avoid shake and then left open for about 10-20 seconds. It may sound precious but even the lightning has to be the right type, the sheet variety just looks like bright nimbus, the forked is the lightning of choice and however many bright tridents of it fork across the sky in that 10-20 seconds will be recorded. The silhouetted acacias and wildebeest are a bonus.

 The picture was taken on a Canon EOS40D  70-200 2.8 IS lens.