Into the Heart of AfricaAlexander Slanger captures the tribes and indigenous creatures of Kenya and Tanzania with the Tamron 70-300mm VC lens. |
Article By Jennifer Gidman Images by Alexander Slanger |
Alexander Slanger has traveled all over the world, including to Europe, Thailand, and Peru. A recent trip to Tanzania and Kenya, however, with his wife, Alexis, and two friends proved to be the trip of a lifetime for the California photographer. “It was an unreal experience,” he says. “I photographed everything from mating lions to portraits of Samburu and Maasai warriors. The highlight was our visit to the Hadzabe tribe, where I followed along as they went on a hunt and later posed for portraits.” |
The group spent a week in each location—and they picked the perfect time to go. “When we were in Kenya, we literally didn’t see another person,” Slanger says. “We just had a tracker and a guide with us in our Range Rover.” |
Slanger tried to travel light, but as he discovered, it wasn’t quite light enough. “I had my camera, a tripod, one light stand, one umbrella, some PocketWizards, a 50mm lens, and the Tamron 70-300mm lens,” he says. “However, once we got to the Nairobi airport to take a puddle-jumper to our next destination, we discovered we had to cut down on our overall weight. We had thought the weight requirements didn’t include checked luggage, but it did. I wasn’t going to leave any of my gear behind, so we all had to basically cough up most of our clothes.” |
The compact and lightweight Tamron SP 70-300mm VC USD lens proved to be the ideal imaging companion for Slanger’s African adventures, allowing him to take portraits of the friendly residents of the native tribes, as well as capture exotic animals in the distance thanks to the optimized magnification capabilities of the lens. “If I hadn’t had that lens, there’s no way I could have gotten most of the animal shots I did, unless they were standing directly next to me,” he says. |
Dealing with differing climates and weather conditions is par for the course in the African bush. “In Samburu, it was quite hot, probably in the 90s,” Slanger says. “You’re just exposed to all of the elements. Once you get into the Maasai area, however, you’re heading up into the mountains, so it’s much cooler, maybe in the 70s. We only had one day of rain the whole trip.” |
Keeping a versatile lens like the 70-300 on his camera helped Slanger keep the often-dusty environment at bay. “I tried to keep everything covered as much as I could and to keep my lens cap on when possible,” he says. “Having that lens, however, meant I didn’t have to keep switching back and forth. You always have to be on the ready: You may be driving along and suddenly see an animal you want to shoot.” |
Creatures on the African landscape included everything from lions, hippos, and elephants to wildebeests and gerenuks, a type of gazelle that stands on its hind legs to feed. “I was able to get some shots of that gazelle—it’s really shocking to see them standing up like that,” Slanger says. “It’s evolution at work: They realized, ‘Hey, if I stand up higher, I can get this vegetation way up here.’ They must be about 6 feet tall when they’re up on their legs.” |
To capture such compelling shots, it was necessary to put in full days on the plains—usually 10- to 12-hour expeditions. “We'd get up in the morning and either have breakfast at the lodge or pack a picnic, go on a game drive, and pull over to eat somewhere,” Slanger says. “The heat is often an issue in terms of when the animals want to hang out. The big cats are nocturnal, for the most part, so late afternoon and in the evening is when we would see them. Lions are comfortable around humans—they have no interest in us!” |
The animal encounters that Slanger and his group had were a combination of serendipity and synergy. “Some of the trackers knew each other and they had walkie-talkies, so suddenly our tracker would get a call that said, ‘There are lions over in such and such an area,’” Slanger recalls. “That’s how I got the shot of the lion cub. We got the call and went over to where there were four or five cubs; this one was just off by himself in the tree. I spotted him up there and got two or three frames of him before he came down and joined the rest of his family.” |
A wildebeest migration the group came across was more spontaneous. “There was a line of 10,000 wildebeest just running to cross the rivers,” says Slanger. “If you drove up and crossed their line, they’d freak out and run the other way, forming a new line. You could sit there for hours and watch wildebeest after wildebeest pass by, making their distinctive calls.” |
The 70-300 lens helped Slanger bring even the most precarious scenes come to life—from a safe distance. “Most of the animal shots I had the lens all the way at 300mm,” he says. “In Tanzania, we saw a leopard with a dead impala, freshly killed and dripping blood. I was able to get a cool shot with the impala in the foreground and the leopard in the back sleeping after his meal. I was grateful to have a long lens on my camera for that one!” |
As the sun lowered in the sky, Slanger would try to get close enough to do some portraits of the animals, sometimes strobing them with the sky going dark behind them. The 70-300’s Vibration Compensation feature and its ability to produce sharp images in low-light and handheld situations turned out to be invaluable during such spontaneous evening photo ops. |
“One night, we were driving back, all falling asleep in the car after a long day out in the heat,” Slanger says. “Suddenly we stopped and spotted two lions on a nearby trail. The sky was pitch black, though the moon was out bright that night. We zipped around following these two lions. I snuck a couple of shots with the moonlight shining down right on them. I had to crank up the ISO and could only focus when our tracker’s lamp was on them. Unless you were shooting at 6400 and wide open, you weren’t going to see anything. With those lighting conditions and my adrenaline shake, the Vibration Compensation of the lens was really useful.” |
Meeting the Locals |
Slanger admits it’s easy to get carried away photographing the animals of Africa (“when you see a creature for the first time, you shoot 100 pictures of it!”), but he says that the people were the main draw for him. “We got along so well with the Samburu people,” he says. “I love their traditional garb, the beautiful colors, their faces, the jewelry they wear.” |
To capture the attention of a group of Maasai shepherds, Slanger and his friends performed what they called “shenanigans,” which included such feats as jumping over termite mounds. “Naturally, they’d leave their herds of animals and come over to see what we were doing,” laughs Slanger. “Our guide speaks Swahili, and the Maasai can understand a little Swahili. The guide interpreted for us that the shepherds were basically saying, ‘What are these crazy people doing?!” |
Slanger took this opportunity to pull out his camera and take their portraits. “I would give them a little bit of money, so they were fine with it,” he says. “What they really liked, though, was my little Polaroid PoGo instant printer. It fit right in my pocket. I’d take the pictures, run the cable from my camera to the PoGo, and make up a little 2x3 print for them as a gift. After all, how often do they get photographs of themselves, if ever? That was really rewarding for me to be able to do that for them.” |
Slanger’s group also visited a small fishing village on the southeast tip of Lake Victoria. “We wanted to see the locals and how they lived,” he says. “It was a traditional village, with the houses made of mud and wood. We took a boat ride, and then we got a little history about the town from a kid who was about 6 years old. As we walked through the village, I took random shots of the kids who would follow us. A lot of times they’d ask to be photographed; they loved seeing themselves on the back of my camera.” |
One of his most animated photographs, however, was with his own Maasai guide, William. “William lived in town, but he still knew everything about the tribe,” says Slanger. “We met William for the first time on the airstrip, which is basically just a strip of dirt and a bathroom. He picked us up in the Range Rover and we warned him: ‘We like to take unusual photos.’” |
William delivered on their request when he pulled the car over on their drive to the lodge and started goofing around with a wildebeest skull, Slanger didn’t miss the shot. “You can tell it was really bright sunlight; his face was exposed,” he says. “I was strobing him with a flash off to the side of the camera with a cable.” |
Slanger is already vying to get back to the African countryside. “We’d love to go back and visit,” he says. “William is actually on Facebook, so he’ll occasionally post stuff he’s doing. One of our other guides at the lodge is also on Facebook, but he only checks it once a month when he comes from his village to the lodge. It’s just a whole different way of life there—simply fascinating.” |
For more information on Alexander Slanger’s work, go to http://www.slangerphotography.com/. |