When I beat around the bush no animals dash out for me to shoot. So, I have learnt over the years, not to beat around it. Out of the bush and in the open, I have stated on various forums that I am ‘The worst wildlife photographer in South Africa’ and beyond. To emphasize this I have even attached a title behind my name. (WWPSA).

That’s why I am totally flabbergasted when I repeatedly get asked to speak at photographic clubs and societies. Pictorially, this is as big a debacle as the Basil van Rooyen incident. Just last year, I was invited to speak at the National Congress of the Photographic Society of South Africa. I mean, come-on —- as if there’s not enough around the country to drive me to Mampoer. Many prominent members of this national society have like honours and fancy titles behind their names. After one member’s surname were the titles, Hon MPSSA, FPSSA(Dux), MFIAP, ESFIAP. I mean, for me its hard enough living with the initials P.C.J in front of my surname. Twice in the past few years I have also been asked to speak at ‘Wild Shots’, a gathering of extremely talented wildlife photographers. The first time I sent them a garbled reply and a video link to the 1966 hit song by The Troggs, called ‘Wild Thing’. (“ Wild thing, you make my heart sing. You make everything groovy, wild thing”). Last week, I finally sobered up and bought myself a Country Life magazine. What a surprise to realize that I lived in a country with so many beautiful places, dorpies, trails, restaurants and farm stalls. What really got me was the incredible wildlife shot in the September 2016 issue by Sarah Moorcroft of a lion chasing a Warthog. A few years ago, working for the New York travel magazine Condé Nast Traveler, I found myself in a totally upmarket lodge in Sabie Sands Game Reserve. On a game drive with only a guide and myself, we came across this male lion that had passed out in the track after eating half a Buffalo. I asked the guide if I could kneel next to the lion and do this best selfie of all selfies. As the game warden said that I should get back in the vehicle, the lion opened one eye to look at me. Now you see why I am a WWPSA.

___________________________________________________________________

y9634 – Africa, South Africa, Londolozi. Male lion sleeping on a road after feeding on a buffalo.
– Afrika, Suedafrika, Londolozi. Schlafender Loewe auf einem Weg.
– 01.10 2001.
– 50 MB.
Copyright: Obie Oberholzer / Bilderberg

The Troggs. Wild Thing. 1966.

https://youtu.be/YlLspwQaKqQ

My eyes are floating around in the sky, circling like a hawk over a landscape that tingles me all over like a beautiful song. Every shimmer of light, every blade of grass, every stone on the road amplifies the majesty around me. I am a photographer, a great force grabs my sharpened awareness, yet, I always realise that the light my camera grabs, is a mere fraction of this grandiose vista. In country talk, I am the mere horseshoe in the haystack. Photographs are mere impressions of the real world. The cloudbank that covers those representations cannot be improved, even with the magic of Photoshop. All cameras, even the most expensive, have limitations. Those that have travelled on many roads and have crossed many horizons, will tell you that finding the essence of a scene starts in knowing the camera’s limitations. Pictures are only brief flickers of light, small instantaneous moments on the journey that we call life. Some pictorial enthusiasts perceive life through the viewfinder of a camera. Then, when that journey is over, they return home and view their snippets of life on a flat-screen projection, far from the reality of the moment. I stop my bakkie and climb up a bank. Maybe the hawk in the sky told me to. A Boeing passes overhead, streaking the sky with vapour trail. I squint my eyes into the bright; blinded by a passion to take this, save this, hold this forever. But I know, that this is a moment of the never-ever again time. ‘Take me home, country roads, to the place I belong.” This is the song of so many country roads. It’s the country hit of 1971 by Henry John Deutschendorf, known to all country roaders as John Denver. “Life is old there, older than the trees, younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze”. Then, as life’s luck would have it, a flock of sheared sheep come walking down the road. I take two frames, then dangle my camera away and just watch the light on their backs, the bleating of the mother ewes and the stones rolling under their feet. Then as they came, so they went and above, the Boeing too. Far below the Bell River glides quietly, reflecting the clouds drawn wide across the sky. I stand, holding onto a snippet of life that I just can’t understand, don’t want to understand —–a short moment that will forever pass. “Dark and dusty, painted in the sky, misty taste of moonshine, teardrop in my eye” (John Denver died whilst flying his own plane over Monterey Bay in 1997).

From most travellers’ perspectives, the word ‘distance’ often links or compliments ‘space’. The greater the distance between two points, the smaller the dot of ‘Self’ becomes and the greater the feeling of freedom. It is often said that a distance travelled is a celebration of one’s own journey of freedom. When one travels far, enormity in distance and the surrounds of space, bring about an enhanced feeling of tranquillity, where the mind can levitate outside of the physical self. Embracing the jubilation of freedom is not so much about getting to a destined point, but rather passing through the enthrallment of motion, of moving and travelling, be it driving, walking, running or cycling. I guess that it’s in the human psyche, a need to know what lies at infinity, what’s at a point far yonder, the ultimate point of purpose, somewhere over the horizon? It’s a quest for some of the mysteries to life itself. As a photographer I travel along a wayward road rather to sketch the journey that to search for the answer at the end. For indeed, the greatest treasures sometimes lie on the smallest roads.. So this is not a parting shot, it’s much more of a distance shot. I stop my bakkie, exactly here, on the Namibian road D1998— at 23°14’ 13.31” South and 15° 35’ 13.78” East, facing exactly north. A slow 180° spin around, encompasses hundreds of square kilometres as my eyes feed in information too grandiose for the mind to perceive. It is so wide and wondrous that I am lifted by the sky. My minuteness in space is a celebration of life and the rejuvenation of all my senses. This place is so quiet it is almost loud. It is so far away that all the hugeness around me cuddles me in closeness. I can touch the spiritual. I am just the diesel and the dust, a mere humbled observer on a dusty track through space. Heaven on earth is a long gravel road. Slowly, I turn the circle again, running my eyes along the horizon’s pale brown-blue lines. My continent’s dust lies in my pores; its diesel fuels my visual songs and somewhere over the horizon, tonight’s fire beneath a starry sky, is worth a thousand pictures.

The C14 Road aout 60 kilometers west of Walvis Bay in a direction to Kuiseb Point. Namib-Naukluft Park.