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When I put together the African Big 5 Safaris video, there were a few things left on the cutting room floor. This little story, about a rhino encounter we had on Day Two, was one of them.
It happened right after our first cheetah sighting, on our way back to camp. The gates close promptly at 5:30pm, so we were hustling to make it back in time. When this herd of rhinos blocked our path, our guide, Marcel, started to fret.
The gate was closed when we eventually drove up (at exactly 5:39pm!) Fortunately, we weren’t the only late ones, and we slipped in with the rest of the cars in line. Even so, we were prepared with an excellent excuse: My photos’ timestamps proved that we had spent exactly nine minutes behind those rhinos!
The main reason I left this segment out of the original video was because the edit was already running long. There were other, technical, hard-to-edit-around problems with this video, too. Oksana and I were both shooting, but we’d framed essentially the same shots with our cameras. Our exposures were wildly different, with hers over-compensating for the deepening twilight. You’ll see when I have to jump-cut between them. It’s like night and day; pretty jarring.
No worries, though. Quality issues like that may have kept it out of the first Safari video’s final cut, but I’m much more lenient with our Postcard Valet “Extras!”
Notes
African Big 5 Safaris
Wow. Excellent footage. I just found your site, and it looks like I’ll be checking it out regularly. Africa is one of those places I really want to go. I’ve spent the last several years chasing the big animals (sharks, mantas, dolphins, rays, more sharks) underwater, and now I think it’s time to pay a visit to the big animals on land.
Hi, Matt! Glad to have you aboard!
Well, if you’re looking at big wildlife, Africa is certainly the place to go. We didn’t quite know what to expect out of a safari, but we couldn’t have asked for more out of our Kruger experience. If you like taking photos of wildlife, it’s one of the best places we’ve been… (Along with the Galapagos Islands.)
Also, I see you’re a diver. One of the other things we did in South Africa (and have not gotten around to editing a video on our website yet) was doing a Great White Shark cage “dive.” Also a great experience! If you root around in the South Africa photos section, you should see some of those photos, as well…