Category: Marcus’s Photography
Our Stories:
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Monkey Mischief
100mm, f/4.5, 1/400s, ISO250 I don’t lose my temper very often, but this was an exception. Baboons are intelligent, unafraid and — if not shown plenty of respect — potentially aggressive. The small group on the road between Kabale and Kisoro are often fed from passing cars, and so are even less scared than most…
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Who Is Marcus Westberg, the Star of Our Live Q&A?
In early 2012 the Gorilla Highlands team faced a photography crisis. We were making an interactive ebook and felt dismay browsing through our photo libraries. We just didn’t have enough decent material. That’s when Marcus Westberg emailed us. With his assistance the ebook ended up winning a global award but more significantly, Marcus kept returning. Almost a full decade later, Marcus…
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Walk-In Theatre
24mm, 30s, f/4, ISO2500 Back in early 2016 we spent a night camping with our Batwa friends at the outskirts of Echuya forest. The highlight was undoubtedly the cinema experience we put on during the evening, sharing a video made by the Gorilla Highlands team about the region and what it had to offer, including…
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Ancient Relic
500mm, 1/640s, f/5, ISO250 Believe it or not, this is one of the region’s stars – at least for avid bird-watchers. The shoebill (sometimes known as the whale-headed stork) is a particularly prehistoric-looking bird found in swamps and wetlands throughout central Africa, but because of habitat destruction and hunting there are only between 5000 and…
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Mountain Misery
24mm, f/5, 1/200s, ISO500 We’re used to seeing happy travel shots, but sometimes honesty can be refreshing. This image is from a Gorilla Highlands media trip in late 2015, from the third and highest peak of Mt Sabyinyo. We’d gotten the Uganda Wildlife Authority to agree to a special boon: camping on the volcano! That…
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Three-in-One
200mm, 1/400s, f/8, ISO250 What do I mean by that title? Well, to me, this image tells three different stories, which is always useful for a professional photographer like myself. The first is perhaps the most obvious: this is a tree-climbing lion, which is a relatively rare sight (though not in Ishasha, part of Queen…
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Fire, Death and Rebirth
50mm, 1.6s, f/4.5, ISO1600 We — humans, that is — seem to be irresistibly drawn to fire, as much for its beauty as for its destructive power. The sheer force of it can be mesmerising. The lava lake atop Mt Nyiragongo is one of my favourite places on Earth. I inevitably find myself enthralled by…
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Giraffe Gyrations
145mm, 1/250s, f/5, ISO400 Rwanda’s mountain gorillas understandably steal much of the country’s headlines as far as wildlife tourism goes. But Akagera National Park in the country’s east is a wonderful experience of the more “typical” kind with plenty of the usual suspects: giraffes, buffaloes, elephants, zebras, lions and rhinos (though the latter two can…
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Dawn at the Edge of the Region
26mm, 0.6s, f/8, ISO640 I may be colourblind, but I still love colourful photography. I have many close-ups from Mt Nyiragongo, and I’m sure I’ll share several of them with you, but this is probably my favourite photograph from the top. Taken just before dawn, it required a tripod, but I kept the shutter speed…
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