The coming months

I have mostly been inactive over the last couple of months due to different things. My focus has been elsewhere and not on any object in front of my camera.

That is now going to change as I start to prepare for the upcoming safari trip to Mana Pools National Park, Zimbabwe, at the end of next month. It will be great fun to go back as I see a huge potential there.

Over the last months I have mainly gone through the material from last year, but also visited Nordens Ark twice as you can see by the pictures. I now know that I didn’t get all things right last year, and I probably won’t this time either, but I now have a good grasp of what to expect and I know what the place has in store for me. It is always good to visit a place more than once if you see a potential there.

I have decided that I will pack the camera bag in a different way this time as I will leave equipment at home to force me to work in another way. I hope that will give me a better creativity as I really don’t feel I have any pictures from last year that show what Mana Pools is all about. We sadly didn’t work as much with the light as I would have like and my best shots are mostly with hard light and that’s not a proper Mana shot. I still have good pictures, but not anything you’ll send to a photo competition. The moody shots mostly are slightly out of focus or just shows the habitat.

I would say that my aim with the trip is to give me a portfolio that I can use for presentations, lectures, for the coming years as I hope to help people on their way to discover Mana Pools National Park.

So what have I done the last months as I surely must have taken a couple of pictures? Well I have done a trip to Österlen in Scania. I will write a little about that later on, and I have also done two trips to Nordens Ark and the last one I did last weekend.

Nordens Ark is a great place to visit and I normally go there once or twice each year. It is not a zoo even if they have animals in enclosures. They mainly work with breeding of endangered animals like the different Leopards. It is a place where you can get pretty decent photos of some of the rarest cats we have. I must say that the addition of the Persian Leopard last year’s was great and that species of Leopard is truly handsome, especially the massive male.

Last weekend I had a mission and that was to kick start the preparations as I feel there is a huge difference taking photos of small birds and big mammals. Now I ended up with the smaller predators, as I usually do, and I had great fun at the Otter place. I hope to be able to work more with Otters the coming winter season if things work out the way I want.

I also spent time with the Wolverines and had the pleasure to get some photos with an autumn feeling in them. I really like the Wolverines as you probably already know and I am considering doing something with them in mind next year. That means going back to Finland as that is the place to be if you want Wolverine photos.

Please enjoy the gallery.