Posts in “Africa” Category

We had such a great time on the National Geographic Explorer as we sailed through the islands of the Indian Ocean. I had lots of fun with the people who worked on the ship. They were all great and two of my favorites were Mike Greenfelder and Dennis Cornejo, so that's who I wanted to interview. Mike was the Lindblad Photo Specialist on this trip and Dennis was the Undersea Specialist.
 
First, here's my interview with Mike Greenfelder:
 
Q: How old were you when you first started taking pictures?
A: I began in high school, but I didn't get really serious until I was 27.
 
Q: How did you get interested in photography?
A: I got really interested in underwater photography when I worked on Catalina Island and wanted to try to photograph the kelp forest there.
 
Q: What are you most interested in taking pictures of and why?
A: Wildlife in action interests me most since for me it's a challenge capturing something running, jumping, flying or swimming.
 
Q: Do you have any favorite photo tips?
A: You need to learn your camera and what all the buttons do and then practice, practice, practice. There are pictures to be taken anywhere, at home, at school, in your backyard.
 
Q: How did you get to be such a good photographer?
A: Practicing and being in great places and spending the time to take the photos.  For example, if you want to get great pictures of whales, you can't just take a one-day whale watch, you need to spend days and days with the whales.
 
Q: Did you go to school to become a photographer?
A: I didn't go to any special school for photography. I learned from my friends and from experimenting on my own.

We just spent two weeks on a Lindblad/National Geographic trip aboard the National Geographic Explorer. We were exploring "the fabled islands of the Indian Ocean." One of the things that made this trip so great was the staff. There were naturalists and specialists who knew everything about birds, plants, the ocean, and the islands we were visiting. There were also photo experts on the ship who helped us really learn how to use our cameras. There was even a National Geographic photographer on board, Michael Melford. Since I learned a lot from Michael and Guy Esparon, one of the naturalists who grew up in the Seychelles, I decided that for this blog I would interview them so that you could learn from them too.
 
So, here's my interview with Michael Melford, National Geographic Photographer:
 
Q: What is it like to work for National Geographic?
A: It's the best and worst job because I get to travel the world and share and photograph these wonderful things, but then the bad part is that I have children at home and I miss them.
 
Q: Is this your first time on a National Geographic boat?
A: No, I've also been to Baja, Galapagos, the Arctic, Antarctica, and Alaska.   
 
Q: What do you like most about photography?
A: My favorite part about photography is sharing all the beautiful things I see with millions of people.
 
Q: How long have you been a photographer?
A: 32 years
 
Q: What is the most fabulous place you've been?
A: I really can't answer that because every place is so different.
 
Q: What advice would you give to kids who want to be photographers?
A: My advice for everyone is to find what you love to do and find out how to do it.
 
Q: Do you have any photo tips for kids?
A: Yes, try and notice things with your eyes that you've never seen before and look at the world differently.

Hi everyone! Thank you for reading my blog and I hope you like it.
 
We were just on a Lindblad/National Geographic boat called the Explorer for two weeks. We got to go see lemurs and giant tortoises and even red colibus monkeys. We also got to go snorkeling and see lots of great fish.
 
The lemurs were so cool and this one small little island we went to called Mayotte, had so many of them. I got to feed the lemurs and get them to come on my shoulder. They are so funny because they have a face like a dog with a little wet nose and sharp teeth.
 
We also got to go see the giant tortoises. They are so BIG that you can ride on them, but I didn't do that. They eat a huge amount of food, like vegetables and leaves. I love giant tortoises because they are so cute and you can feed and pet them. They really liked it when you rubbed them on the back of their neck.
 
As you might already know, I love monkeys and on this trip we saw more of them.  We got to see the red colibus monkey in Zanzibar. They are called red colibus monkeys because of their fur color. Colibus monkeys don't have an opposable thumb, so they mostly do stuff with just four fingers.

Hello everybody, we are now in Dar-es-Salam, Tanzania, where we are about to board the Lindblad ship called the National Geographic Explorer. We are traveling in the Indian Ocean, where we will visit the fabled islands of Mozambique, Zanzibar, the Comoros, and the Seychelles.
 
One of the things we got to do a lot of on this trip was snorkeling. Some of the reefs here don't have the amazing colors like the coral in some other places around the world, like Australia, because a few years ago they had a lot of coral bleaching. This was caused by a combination of global warming (the sea temperature getting warmer) and the tsunami from four years ago. The fish are amazing though and they have some of the coolest colors I've ever seen. We saw tons of tropical fish.
 

Hi people! I'm in Egypt now - land of the pharaohs, tombs, temples and pyramids. Egypt is a really cool place and I learned so much while I was here.

We were on a National Geographic Expedition tour, cool huh? We had the best guide ever. His name is Aki and he knew everything there is to know about Egypt. He made learning so much fun and told us lots of stories about the pharaohs and ancient Egyptian gods.

One of the first things we did was go to the three great pyramids in Giza. We took lots of pictures and looked at how huge the boulders were that they used to build the pyramids. Each of the 3,000,000 rocks were bigger than me!

Hello everyone. For this post, we start out in the city of Cairo in Egypt. This is where we met up with a National Geographic Expedition and were introduced to our guide, Aki, who showed us around Egypt. He was great and taught me so much about ancient Egypt. My mom was happy about this because ancient Egypt is something the sixth graders at my school plan to study this year.

First, we traveled over to the city of Giza, where the great pyramids are found. This city is built right up to the edge of the desert. The second you enter the desert, it is just nothingness for miles, with the exception of the pyramids. The closer you get to them, the smaller you feel. The first pyramid we went to was built for the pharaoh Cheops and it was HUGE - the largest of all the pyramids. There are three big pyramids here and in order to get a really good view of all of them together, we went for a camel ride on the sand dunes.
 

Hello everyone. For this blog, we start out in Nairobi, where we met our guide, David, who was with us for the 10 days. For dinner on the first night, we went to meet the owner of Micato Safaris, the company we were going on safari with in Kenya. It was really nice to be invited to their house because we got to know the owner and we really liked having a home-cooked meal since we don't get too many of those these days.

The next morning, we woke up really early and took a prop plane to Amboseli National Park, where you could clearly see Mount Kilimanjaro. It felt really funny to be looking at a snow-covered peak while roasting in the African sun. One thing Amboseli is famous for is elephants because they walk right up to the jeeps. In Amboseli, they also have watering holes scattered around where we saw hippos, buffalos, and elephants wallowing in the water. One time, a family of elephants came out of the water right next to our jeep and there was a baby, just a week old, with them. David knew how old it was because it still had pink skin on its ears.

Hello, we were just in Kenya. When we got there, we met up with our guide David. David was going to spend more than a week with us and I was excited because from the minute we met him, he was really cool.

The first place David took us was Amboseli National Park. We flew there in the morning and we were able to see Mount Kimimanjaro, which is the biggest mountain in Africa. There was a big herd of elephants there and one of them was named Echo. Echo is a famous elephant because somebody has been researching her for a long, long time and even made a movie about her. Echo is easy to pick out because she has really big tusks and one of them is crooked. She's the leader of a big herd and we got to see her and her family pass right by our jeep.

On one of the game drives, we saw a whole bunch of hyenas relaxing on some rocks by the water, so we called it "hyena beach." Later that day, we saw a really newborn wildebeest! We were all excited to see the baby get up and walk, but because it was so windy, it had a hard time. It takes humans about a year to walk, but this baby wildebeest walked after only 15 minutes. It was super duper cool to see. The next day when we were walking around our lodge we met some of the workers who were taking care of an orphaned wildebeest baby they found. It was really cute and they allowed us to pet it.

Hello everyone.  In this blog I'm going to tell you all about our trip to the country of Tanzania, where we went on an 11-day camping safari with our friends, the Coxes.

We flew to Mount Kilimanjaro to meet up with our friends Kathy, Timmy, Brian and Jenny. Kilimanjaro is the tallest mountain in Africa and it was cool to see that it had snow on top of it while we were sitting in the hot African plains. Our guides, Raymond and Onesmo, met us at the hotel and then we set off for our first camping spot, in Tarangire National Park.

When we got to our campsite, it was a lot different then the places we had stayed on our previous safaris.  Here, we had our own crew from Wild Frontiers go ahead of us and set up camp, so when we got there, there were four tents set up for our two families. There was also a big dining tent and an area for the crew to do the cooking and sleep. It was cool to be right out in the middle of the bush with no fences around the camp, so animals could walk right through. One night there were eighty elephants around our camp while we were asleep. All of the adults where wide awake, but us four kids slept right through it.  So we didn't get to see the elephants, but our parents told us about it.  On our last night of camping, a hyena went over to Kathy's tent and decided to "mark its territory" on it!

The other thing different about this type of safari were the jeeps we rode in. They weren't open air like the ones we had in South Africa and Botswana. Instead, the roof could come off so you can stand up and stick your head out to look at the animals. There were two jeeps, so half of the time the parents would be in one jeep while the kids were in another, which was really fun.

Hi, I was just in Tanzania camping with our friends Brian and Jenny. We go camping with them every summer and each year it gets better, but nothing will beat this!   

This camping was the best kind because we were on safari. Our tents were right smack in the middle of the bush with lions, leopards, cheetahs, and other wild creatures. We weren't scared because we didn't actually see any of them at night, but we certainly heard them. Once we got into our tents for the night, we couldn't and wouldn't come out until morning because most of the animals hunt at night.

My favorite part of the trip was when we had a "kids only" jeep for the safaris.  It was really fun in the kids' jeep because we'd tell jokes and stories and play around when we weren't looking at animals.

Another thing we did in Tanzania was go visit some native tribes. One day we visited two different ones. With the first tribe, the Hazabe, we went hunting for animals and food. They didn't catch anything, but did get honey from a bee's nest, which they shared with us. It was the best honey you could ever get, fresh from the honeycomb. The tribe trades the honey for arrowheads and that afternoon we saw the tribe that makes them. They are called the Datoga tribe, and we played with their kids, giving them piggy-back rides and dancing with them. At the end of our visit, the people who were making the arrowheads let us make our own. We all decided that we're going to let the pros make the arrowheads because ours didn't exactly come out how we planned. Our friend Brian bought a bow and some arrows from the first tribe. And that's when we started trying to hunt birds at our camp. We didn't catch any, but it was really fun to try.