Liquid Reflections

Male lion on the move

Roger Horrocks — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 08:00:58 +0000

A clip from two hours earlier of one of the male lions walking west towards Dead Tree Island.

Lion roaring...

Roger Horrocks — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 06:24:17 +0000

We have just found the main pride, here one of the males roars..

The Moremi Lions New Media Experiment

Roger Horrocks — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:30:19 +0000

Have just spent the first day in Moremi with the Earth-Touch.com Botswana Crew, experimenting with ‘cross-media’ story telling. We are exploring new ways of engaging audiences using cellphones, email and websites, in conjunction with the traditional broadcast channels. Here is the the official desription of the project goals:

At Earth-Touch, we believe in the value of wildlife, and the imperative of reconnecting people with the natural environment and the myriad of creatures that share this fragile ecosystem with us. We also believe in the potential of new media technologies to create and nurture this bond, and to connect people around the world in a way never before possible.

This is the story of the Lions of Moremi, told through the eyes of an Earth-Touch film crew embedded deep in the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana. Using a variety of communication technologies, devices and platforms, we invite you to share in the creation of this story, and to follow it as you see fit – on your mobile, on your computer, on your TV screen, as intimately or as removed as you see fit. And we ask that through this experiment you help us to shape a new way of telling stories about the natural world.

We found the lions today late in the afternoon, and managed to get the BGAN system up and running. Tomorrow we will head out at 5.30 and look for the lions, and build on what we learnt today.

Diving with Nile crocodiles in the Okavango Delta

Roger Horrocks — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:36:00 +0000

Didier Noirot and I have just got back from a very intriguing trip to the Okavango Delta in Botswana, where we succeeded in diving with large Nile crocodiles and documenting these extraordinary lizards underwater. I am going to write up a full expedition report when I get the chance, but can report that initially it was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life - those iconic images of huge crocs lunging out the water and taking down huge animals are not easy to push to the back of one’s minds when you get into the water with your first big one. Below are some screen grabs from the video sequences we shot for potential ‘Behind The Scenes’ use - that’s Didier with his Sony 900 in the Subspace housing.

Why Predive checks and protocols are critical...

Roger Horrocks — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 03:15:11 +0000

We arrived onto the action almost immediately, and had no time to prepare beyond the obvious. The baitball action we were on was sporadic and scrambled, nothing tightly defined, but something. I had decided to try a different auto focus setting with a larger number of potential focus points, and immediately realised that this was not going to work for action as intense as that which you witness underwater on the sardine run. So in the midst of some precious moments of gannets diving and dolphins blasting past, I was fumbling with camera controls, BIG MISTAKE! Back at base, I downloaded my images to discover that my ISO setting had been left on 800 - what a school boy error. Images grainy. Sacked! Had that been the mother of all baitballs, I would have been devastated. Important school fees paid, will not repeat that error again. Lesson learnt - Define your predive checks and complete them, no matter what.

Gannets diving, shot at ISO 800 in error, beware the grain!

BBC Sardine Run Shoot 2008 Kicks Off

Roger Horrocks — Thu, 29 May 2008 20:06:05 +0000

Today was the first day of our allotted five weeks to capture the final imagery for the Earth’s Great Event feature on the Sardine Run off the east coast of South Africa. Last year the underwater team was plagued by bad visibility, as was the shoot in April recently in Plett, so this shoot really needs to deliver. Launching out through the harbour, we headed out into the deep and were greeted by very workable visibility which in the afternoon light became truly lyrical. Even later in the afternoon, on the edge of Didier’s working window we teamed up with the topside crew who had found a working pod of common dolphins, and were rewarded with what are probably our first magical underwater images on this shoot. In this image, Didier Noirot is captured filming a segment of the pod as they blast through the blue cavern of ocean in around 100m of water, 25km’s out to sea.

Baby Giant Petrel meets Didier Noirot

Roger Horrocks — Wed, 21 May 2008 09:52:41 +0000

While searching for sardine run action of Cape St Francis, we were treated to a vist by a fledgling giant petrel. Hugely inquisitive, the bird landed close to the boat and then proceeded to follow us around as we drifted during out tea break. Didier jumped into the water and filmed the bird on his Sony HD; I followed suit with my Nikon D200. According to Didier these birds are normally incredibly shy - this juvenile must have either been extremely bold or never had any form of contact with humans before.

BBC Earth's Great Event Shoot in Plettenberg Bay, South Africa

Roger Horrocks — Sat, 17 May 2008 08:12:49 +0000

During April the BBC Sardine Run team meet up in Plettenberg Bay to focus on capturing more footage for the Earth’s Great Event Series. Unlike last year, where I had been assisting Jusin Maguire topside, Hugh Person shifted me onto the underwater team to assist Didider Noirot, and to film underwater footage and stills for the making of section. We were plagued by bad visibility for much of this shoot - this image of a common dolphin and her baby shows just how bad - a function of upwellings and plankton blooms. In late May we kick off another five week shoot, our last chance to capture this compelling, dynamic yet elusive marine phenomenon.

Shark Angel Julie Andersen diving with Tiger Sharks on Aliwal Shoal

Roger Horrocks — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 09:35:50 +0000

In March, after a diving trip to explore the area around Cape Aghulas with Blue Wilderness, I headed up to Shark Park with Wolfgang Leander and Julie Andersen to dive with the tigers and blacktips. Julie Andersen is a shark conservationist from New York who runs a conservation organisation called Shark Savers - she is also one of the ‘Shark Angels’, a group of three woman from around the world who have teamed up to promote the conservation of sharks through what will hopefully become a documentary series, and is responsible for marketing the shark documentary ‘Shark Water’ in the USA. We have great visibility on the two days we were there, and despite being new to freediving, Julie excelled as an underwater freediving model, enabling us to capture these images from the shoot.

The most southern scuba dive site in Africa

Roger Horrocks — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 13:59:12 +0000

Yesterday I headed out with the Blue Wilderness crew to the Alphard Banks, 42 nautical miles SE of Struisbaai, Cape Aghulas, to what is arguably the most southern scuba…