Into The Africa Bush With Panasonic's Lumix GH3

I've been working in Kenya for over fifteen years and I've seen many changes in the parks I've visited. Of all the reserves, Masa Mara has seen the most alterations. Over the years, human encroachment on the park periphery has driven the animals further inside the boundaries of the reserve. Valuable wildlife habitat has been turned over to local villagers for developing communities, schools and farms. It's been extremely hard to watch the changes through the passage of time. The photographs in this next section are all from Samburu National Reserve. Samburu is a very dry and desolate place but it harbors a tremendous variety of wild animals and beautiful landscapes.

Elephants are one of Samburu's most famous and prolific creatures. This particular herd has been featured in National Geographic, BBC and Discovery Channel. This year the river was full of water but just last year it was dry as powdery dust. Without water the elephants will die so this season they are doing well.

The images below were all shot within the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy which originally started off as a cattle ranch. It currently consists of 62,000 acres of prime African savannah that acts as a refuge for many animals in the area. Lewa breeds rhinos and has the largest population of the endangered black rhino in the world. Poaching of rhinos and elephants has escalated dramatically over the past several years due to increased demand for rhino horns and elephant tusks in the orient. 

The Masai Mara Game Reserve has an unequalled variety of animals including, lion, cheetah, leopard, many different antelope, hippopotamus and hundreds of bird species. 

A big part of the Masai Mara history revolves around the famous Masaai people who have lived here for thousands of years. These images are from a Masai village we visit during each trip to Kenya.

This year Natural Exposures Invitational Photo Tours raised $1000.00US from several of our photography guests that we used to purchase text books for a local Masai school. The images below are from our day of shopping, with a specific list from the local teacher, for the books the Masai children needed.