Tanzania, Africa - Day 10 - Our last full day in Africa
Here we are, Day 10 of our trip to Tanzania, and it was our last full day in the country before making the long flight home. On this day, we drove from our resort into a nearby town to do some much needed shopping. Even though we had all purchased some gifts for family and friends along the way, we wanted to stop at a couple more places where we could do some serious shopping for those who were back home.
Our first stop was at a Masai Central market where there were many handmade crafts. The artwork was really great and the prices were very reasonable.
These paintings were some of my favorite. I really love the colors and was especially drawn to the pieces in the lower middle of this photo, with the Maasai tribe members standing in different colors.
I purchased one of these painted canvases for my wife, and we now have it framed at our house.
The Maasai do a lot of bead work, and although I did not buy much of this, I did think it would make a good photo.
At one of the stalls, there was a merchant selling these shoes made out of recycled automobile tires. I had seen some of the Maasai wearing these out in the fields, but was intrigued to see them and the man who was cutting the old rubber and making these.
This man was making rope. We asked him what material he was using and he told us that it was from a local cactus plant.
Here is a photo of one of the local fruit and vegetable vendors.
We had seen many vendors selling bananas, but this was the coolest scene, with all these bikes weighted down with large bunches of banana. It is still amazes me that these people can balance and ride these bikes with all that weight behind them.
I stood along the side of the road and waited for the banana bikes to come by. I set my Canon 5D Mark III (with 24-70mm lens) to ISO 320, f/7.1, 1/100 sec) to do some motion panning. Keeping my lens trained on the rider, I panned at the exact same speed as they were traveling and got this shot.
Here is another motion pan shot of a bike rider. Notice the blurring of the background and the motion in the spokes of the bikes. That is all caused by the slow shutter speed.
After doing our shopping, we walked around the area and into one of the nearby banana fields. I saw this nice shaded area and thought that it would be the perfect place for another group shot. Since I had my camera in back-button focus mode, I stepped over to where the photo would be taken, adjusted the settings, pre-focused the camera, zoomed the lens, and then handed the camera to one of our guides to take the photo. In case you are wondering, the settings were ISO 400 (since we were in the shade), f/4 (to make sure everyone was in focus), 1/500 sec (in case our picture taker did not have a steady hand).
Once we walked through the banana field and came to the other side, we came across these little kids. We could not resist the photo opportunity. These little guys really enjoyed being our subjects.
I love this shot of Joanne showing the kids their photo. Their expressions say it all!
I saw this woman walking by and asked her if I could take photo picture. It was not the best lighting, but I really wanted to get a shot of the woman carrying items on her head.
These little children were heading to school, and once again, everyone had a good time taking their portraits.
As we were getting ready to leave the area, I saw these two men playing checkers. I walked over to them and noticed that they were playing with bottle caps. I had to get a shot of that!
We got back to our resort in the afternoon. Upon our return, I walked out onto the balcony of the bar area and took in this scene. It was such a pretty afternoon, with blue skies, puffy white clouds and green plains.
Most of the others took a little rest for the afternoon, but Michelle and I decided to take a walk down the hill to get in a little exercise. The resort was nice enough to have one of their young helpers walk with us as a guide. We were not sure what we would see, and really had no expectations. But this ended up being one of the best parts of our trip.
We ended up walking all the way down to the gardens where the resort grew all of their produce. It was really fascinating to see all the crops and the way that they got water to the fields. But these best part of all was on our walk back.
As we were leaving the resort's gardens, we saw a group of children returning home from school. We ended up walking up the hill at the same time, with them very interested in Michelle and I. I took out my iPhone and captured this video.
We were able to communicate with the kids through our young guide and really enjoyed hearing about their lives. They walk many miles each way to school and have a very long day of class. But before school starts, they are all responsible for watering and tending to their own small crop.
This chance to mingle with the local kids was just awesome. A couple of them were curious and full of smiles, while one of them was shy and not sure what to make of us.
We returned from our long walk and had just enough time to get cleaned up for our last dinner in Africa. But not before doing one last photo class. At 6:30pm, we all met at the resort overlook and took sunset shots. Due to the overcast weather, this was one of the rare sunsets that we had to capture. I gave everyone my advise on photographing sunsets like this, and then once the light had escaped us, I took everyone to the back of the building to learn the best was to photograph the moon.
For those of you following along for each post of the African safari, I thank you for joining me on this journey. I hope that each of you got a sense of the beauty and serenity of this amazing country. I have one more blog coming, to sum up the trip and give advice for any of you that might be doing a safari in the near future.
Our first stop was at a Masai Central market where there were many handmade crafts. The artwork was really great and the prices were very reasonable.
These paintings were some of my favorite. I really love the colors and was especially drawn to the pieces in the lower middle of this photo, with the Maasai tribe members standing in different colors.
I purchased one of these painted canvases for my wife, and we now have it framed at our house.
The Maasai do a lot of bead work, and although I did not buy much of this, I did think it would make a good photo.
At one of the stalls, there was a merchant selling these shoes made out of recycled automobile tires. I had seen some of the Maasai wearing these out in the fields, but was intrigued to see them and the man who was cutting the old rubber and making these.
This man was making rope. We asked him what material he was using and he told us that it was from a local cactus plant.
Here is a photo of one of the local fruit and vegetable vendors.
We had seen many vendors selling bananas, but this was the coolest scene, with all these bikes weighted down with large bunches of banana. It is still amazes me that these people can balance and ride these bikes with all that weight behind them.
I stood along the side of the road and waited for the banana bikes to come by. I set my Canon 5D Mark III (with 24-70mm lens) to ISO 320, f/7.1, 1/100 sec) to do some motion panning. Keeping my lens trained on the rider, I panned at the exact same speed as they were traveling and got this shot.
Here is another motion pan shot of a bike rider. Notice the blurring of the background and the motion in the spokes of the bikes. That is all caused by the slow shutter speed.
After doing our shopping, we walked around the area and into one of the nearby banana fields. I saw this nice shaded area and thought that it would be the perfect place for another group shot. Since I had my camera in back-button focus mode, I stepped over to where the photo would be taken, adjusted the settings, pre-focused the camera, zoomed the lens, and then handed the camera to one of our guides to take the photo. In case you are wondering, the settings were ISO 400 (since we were in the shade), f/4 (to make sure everyone was in focus), 1/500 sec (in case our picture taker did not have a steady hand).
Once we walked through the banana field and came to the other side, we came across these little kids. We could not resist the photo opportunity. These little guys really enjoyed being our subjects.
I love this shot of Joanne showing the kids their photo. Their expressions say it all!
I saw this woman walking by and asked her if I could take photo picture. It was not the best lighting, but I really wanted to get a shot of the woman carrying items on her head.
These little children were heading to school, and once again, everyone had a good time taking their portraits.
As we were getting ready to leave the area, I saw these two men playing checkers. I walked over to them and noticed that they were playing with bottle caps. I had to get a shot of that!
We got back to our resort in the afternoon. Upon our return, I walked out onto the balcony of the bar area and took in this scene. It was such a pretty afternoon, with blue skies, puffy white clouds and green plains.
Most of the others took a little rest for the afternoon, but Michelle and I decided to take a walk down the hill to get in a little exercise. The resort was nice enough to have one of their young helpers walk with us as a guide. We were not sure what we would see, and really had no expectations. But this ended up being one of the best parts of our trip.
We ended up walking all the way down to the gardens where the resort grew all of their produce. It was really fascinating to see all the crops and the way that they got water to the fields. But these best part of all was on our walk back.
As we were leaving the resort's gardens, we saw a group of children returning home from school. We ended up walking up the hill at the same time, with them very interested in Michelle and I. I took out my iPhone and captured this video.
We were able to communicate with the kids through our young guide and really enjoyed hearing about their lives. They walk many miles each way to school and have a very long day of class. But before school starts, they are all responsible for watering and tending to their own small crop.
This chance to mingle with the local kids was just awesome. A couple of them were curious and full of smiles, while one of them was shy and not sure what to make of us.
We returned from our long walk and had just enough time to get cleaned up for our last dinner in Africa. But not before doing one last photo class. At 6:30pm, we all met at the resort overlook and took sunset shots. Due to the overcast weather, this was one of the rare sunsets that we had to capture. I gave everyone my advise on photographing sunsets like this, and then once the light had escaped us, I took everyone to the back of the building to learn the best was to photograph the moon.
For those of you following along for each post of the African safari, I thank you for joining me on this journey. I hope that each of you got a sense of the beauty and serenity of this amazing country. I have one more blog coming, to sum up the trip and give advice for any of you that might be doing a safari in the near future.
For those of you who missed this amazing opportunity, we are going to do this amazing safari again next year...check out the site HERE to sign up for the 2017 trip! We have a limit of 12 people.
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