I have some exciting news to share! Some of you will know that my husband, Heiko, and I are very passionate about wildlife and in an effort to raise awareness for wildlife conservation we set up a website: www.zoocrew.eu Please do stop by to check it out, you’ll find zoo news/reviews, conservation articles, forums and photo galleries. We also have a Facebook fan page and you can follow us on Twitter too :-) But before you go off exploring, let’s first get back to my exciting news, it starts with a short story…

In August 2008, Heiko and I visited the Painted Dog Conservation project in Zimbabwe. Their efforts to educate the local community and involve them in the protection of Africa’s Painted Dogs is just brilliant. We were impressed!

There are very few Painted Dogs (also known as Wild Dogs) remaining in the wild. Being nomadic, they travel great distances, only staying in the same location when they have pups. So when we came across a pack of 24 dogs during our trip to Tanzania in February 2009, it was incredible; we could not believe our eyes. It was one of the highlights of our trip! I’ve blogged about our sighting in a previous post and you can see some of my photos here.

In March 2009 after we returned home, we visited Beekse Bergen Safaripark to attend a talk given by Greg Rasmussen and Peter Blinston from the Painted Dog Conservation project and it was great to see how the project was progressing. We also learned that a lot of the support for the project comes from the Netherlands, there is a foundation here: Stichting Painted Dog Conservation.

We wrote an article about the talk on our website (here’s the link) and not long after, we received an email from the Chairman of Stichting PDC and our support of the Painted Dogs snowballed, as did their support of zoocrew.eu.

When it came time to design the Painted Dog Conservation 2010 Calendar, Stichting PDC asked if they could use the photos we had taken in Tanzania and we sent off several high resolution images to their designer/printer.

Last week I went to visit the Chairman to collect several of the calendars for our own distribution. We weren’t sure what to expect but we knew that one of our images had been selected. I assumed it would be a standard wall calendar with 12 images, one for each month. What I discovered was a 100x70cm poster-size wall calendar, with only one image: mine! And the image credit is for zoocrew.eu! So exciting!

I know some of you have been waiting to see what it looks like, and it’s so hard to give a sense of scale in a photo… but here you go, here’s a peek:

Yay, image credit for zoocrew.eu :-)

And here’s the whole poster:

Awesome! Thank you Stichting PDC!

If you see this poster in your local zoo, or anywhere – the distribution is big! Let me know, or send me a pic, I’d love to see! :-)

The last couple of days I’ve been wondering if I should also post wildlife photos on my blog… since I usually only post sneak peaks from my latest portrait sessions. And today, I decided: yes, I should!

So…… six months after our wedding and honeymoon in Tanzania, I finally started the lengthy process of viewing and selecting images from our trip. So far I’ve made it through 3 days worth of photos.. and the following images are my faves so far… I hope you enjoy them! :-)

Lake Manyara – this was taken on our first day of safaris, we watched this lioness for a long long time.. in 40C full sun… since we were totally oblivious to the time, Heiko and I got pretty badly sunburnt – and just days before our wedding too!

Baboons in Ngorongoro Crater – the babies are so cute, I loved watching them play and explore. They have such human expressions at times, it’s quite facinating!

These two (above and below) were taken in the Ngorongoro Crater. These two young lions were lazing by the side of the road with full bellies… you can tell they are young by the spots on their legs. I just love the reflection in the one above, and their interaction in the one below .

In the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, just a few hundred metres from Olduvai Camp (where we were married), we had the most AMAZING sighting of African Painted Dogs (aka Wild Dogs). There are less than 5000 in the wild, and since they are nomadic, sightings are incrediably rare. We had the pleasure of spending time watching a pack of 24 dogs, play, run, snooze, play some more… it was just incredible. A dream. We could hardly believe what we were seeing. It was magic!

Do you see the Painted Dogs above? There are a few resting in the shade of a tree. The landscape in this area was just beautiful. In the Ngorongoro Conservation Area we were allowed to drive off road since we were there during the wet season (the rains quickly cover vehicle tracks, although we are not allowed to double back on a track in order to prevent damage to the vegetation). But driving off road gave us the perfect opportunity to get closer to this pack of Painted Dogs, we would have missed them otherwise.

Watching them run and play was just amazing! :)

The next day, we were again very lucky with our sightings. Our driver (amazingly) spotted a leopard, far in the distance, but since we were allowed to drive off-road, we were able to get fairly close. He was pretty shy, so we still had to keep our distance. Just look at his sleek coat and bulging belly in the image below – he was certainly well fed. There were herds and herds of migrating wildebeest in this area and our driver commented “the supermarket is open” – certainly, this leopard was doing a lot of supermarket shopping! ;)

This next couple of photos, I love:

Here’s a short extract from my journal:

“We followed him [the leopard] for about 2-3 km. On one occasion he ran out from a tree to attack our vehicle, watching him do this through my large lens, close up, gave me two conflicting thoughts simultaneously
1) Sh*t, he’s going to charge, and
2) Excellent, great photo opportunity”

luckily only a mock charge.. and thankfully, got the photos too! ;)

This last one was taken just moments after his mock charge!

Hope you enjoyed this small selection… I promise there will be more to come! ;)