We had the opportunity to visit the Kruger National Park in South Africa. If you have the right camera lens with you, you will be in for a treat as the animals will perform the perfect balancing act of wild and domesticated. They will not run away from the car (they might actually run towards you and damage your car) and this gives the photographer the perfect opportunity to take some stunning photographs. I only have a 300mm zoom lens, those with 600mm will get better images as the animals can be quite far away from you. Bird photographers will have the time of their life as the beauty of the bushveld birds is unmatched. From small and colorful bee-eaters to magnificent African Crowned Eagle and African Fish-Eagle.

Here, I want to share with you some of the photographs I managed to take during our visit. Some of them I would have loved to have the 600mm lens, and others came out perfectly. I hope you enjoy them. At the end, my usual musings follow.

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Returning to Harmony

Postscriptum, or Running Home

Going home is never easy when you like the place you visit. We love the bushveld and camping; a second home from the home. It has its own beauty. It is not tropical lush or desert, but something in between. The bird life is really spectacular and every morning you wake up with the birds singing their song in your ears.

And this reminds me of how life could have been if we lived a little more in touch with nature. If we did not chop down all of the trees to plant foreign plants and lay patios. If we did not create these concrete jungles we might have had more bird species, more smaller animals. But I might have a utopian idea stuck in my head. Maybe this was never how life was, the constant fear of predators, the fear of bacteria, and unknown diseases. Who knows what could be hiding in the shadows?

There are not two ways about it, we are living in the most safe era in our history. We know so much, we can cure so many diseases and wildlife does not kill people on a regular basis, nor are there so many wars (besides our geopolitical stuff now). Our homes have become places of safety but also boredom. Constantly fed through the screen, information overload, doing useless jobs. We are living the best lives yet we give away our time to do, well, nothing. What an interesting turn of events.

In any case, I hope you enjoyed this post. At least the photographs part. For now, happy photographing and stay well.

All of the photographs are my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and 300mm Tamron zoom lens. The musings and writings are also my own.