Ophrys Photography in Madagascar

We had a fantastic trip to Madagascar in the first half of October 2005 in search of lemurs and other animals. It was very tiring physically, as it is a long flight, we travelled around continually usually on poor roads and almost all of our party suffered stomach trouble throughout the trip.

Days were long as we were up early for birds and late to bed due to doing nightwalks in the forest as some species are strictly nocturnal.

Despite this we enjoyed ourselves immensely as the wildlife was spectacular and the people very friendly. We saw around 17 species of lemurs plus many rare endemic birds such as Pitta-likeground roller and Madagascar Pygmy Kingfisher.

Other animals of interest were the Madagascar civet (Fanaloka) the chamaeleons, which range in size from the huge Parsons (which can grow to two feet long) to some the size of a grasshopper.

For a slideshow of animal images including chamaeleons see : http://www.ophrysphotography.co.uk/slideshows/madagascaranimals/index.htm

The lemurs were just wonderful. The mournful calls of the Indri early in the morning were haunting and unforgettable, you can see why legends grew up about them being the souls of dead ancestors. We managed to track them down by there calls which can literally be heard for miles. They reminded me of clarinets being played out of tune!

Photography was really challenging as the rainforests are very dense, and it is difficult to get unobstructed views of the animals. The forest canopy makes for very low light levels, and I frequently had to make use of my flashgun for fill-in purposes, I fitted this with a Lastolite reflector to soften the light and reduce the chance of "red eye" - or "green eye" in the case of some lemurs!

The Diademed Sifakas were another favourite as they were so beautiful, we had two brief encounters with a troup of six leaping through the trees in late afternoon sunshine in the rainforests of Mantadia. I love the backlighting on this shot below. Taken on the Canon 1D mk II with 100-400 is lens.

The Verreaux's Sifakas at Berenty were really comical as they leap around in an upright posture when changing trees. They have been called "Dancing Sifakas" and you can see why - they look just like John Travolta posing in his Saturday Night fever white suit !

Photographically, getting shots like the mother and baby below, are quite a challenge. I used the Canon EOS 1D mk II camera on 8.5 fps motordrive set to AI servo - all 45 autofocus points selected and panned the camera with a shutter speed of 1/250 sec. I used a Canon 70-200mm IS lens set to an aperture of f5.6

The camera locks on pretty well after a second or so of following the subject, but it is still pretty frantic stuff trying to get a nice sharp image that still portrays some movement.

To see some of my favourite images of lemurs please visit the lemur showcase gallery on the main website at..
http://www.ophrysphotography.co.uk/pages/lemurshowcasegallery.htm

To see all of my lemur pictures and other general images of Madagascar please visit the Madagascar gallery on the main Ophrys Photography website at..
http://www.ophrysphotography.co.uk/pages/madagascar.htm

For more information on camera equipment please see:
http://www.ophrysphotography.co.uk/pages/equipment.htm