Although I was quite happy with the nice pictures I brought back from South Africa last December, I very well knew how wide the gap remains between my little fiddlings and what seasoned virtuosos achieve. But today I took a look at Todd Gustafson’s take from Kenya in late September and it made me feel even smaller. These pictures are absolutely stunning : not just technically outstanding but also original and well chosen.

According to Bill on rec.travel.africa Todd Gustafson uses mostly a Canon EF 600/4 L IS with a Canon digital body and a Nikon 200-400/4 also on a digital body. There is also some fill flash with a Better Beamer flash extender. For the sake of both my wallet and my back I will not even dream about using the Canon EF 600/4 L IS…

But fill flash for pictures of animals is something I had not thought about and that I should have begun using long ago. Now that I have seen this picture of a backlit white faced monkey in a Costa Rica forest by Philip Greenspun I wonder if my own negatives of backlit chimpanzees from the Kibale forest are even worth scanning…