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What Makes an Image Memorable?

by Leigh Pate -

A friend recently sent me a Washington Post Article about a study out where scientists test images for Memorability. Take a look at these four photographs I took in Africa last spring and rank them according to which photo you believe is most "Memorable".  As in, "The viewer likely to remember the image 100 seconds after they first saw the image.           Ready for the Results?  I was surprised ...   I love all of these photos.  But my favorite image of the entire travels to Africa - the Girl in Pink - ranked the lowest on memorability.  A mere 46.5% of you, the the viewers, will remember this photo for more than 100 seconds. The most memorable photo of this group is the Flamingo ... ranked high as very memorable with 81% memorability beyond 100 seconds.  BeeEater follows with 75% and Dunes of Namibia with 66%, a mediocre medium. Much of the basis of this study boils down to what graphic designers and professional photographers already know about photo composition and color of an image.  They earn their living choosing the images and designing the graphics that please the eye and successfully sell their wares ... they want you to remember their image from the advertisement you saw when you are out shopping for your next pair of shoes. Where the study falls short, though, is in measuring the intangible.  To me, a memorable image awakens emotions.  Or shows an unrecognized truth.  Or prompts re-living a memory.  Or peaks curiosity and a desire to learn more about a person or a place. To me, the little girl in her white dress and bright pink coat slowly sauntering barefoot along the boardwalk - lost in her own world and thoughts and framed by the mountains of South Africa's Southern Cape - evokes my curiosity and stirs my imagination more than a picture-perfect image of a beautifully posed and

Back on the Bike …

by Leigh Pate -

For a day, at least.  A sturdy yellow three-speed, with the saddle too low and chunky tires and a funky shifter that you had to stop peddling in order not to pop the chain.   I was joined by a couple from the Netherlands, and we were led by a waif-sized African woman with mismatched clothes, a jaunty straw hat, a lot of spunk and some very strong opinions which she let fly for the full four hours. This made for a very interesting and educational morning. She issued us effective yellow safety vests, marginally effective helmets, had us sign a lengthy liability waiver and then delivered a lecture about how - when we do this tour - we are not observing the animals in Etosha and staying in a vehicle aiming our cameras at the people.  Instead we are going to bike into the community and be part of the community.  (It is worth noting that we saw nobody else on a bike the entire four hours. And it is also why I was terrified to pull out my camera at all on this ride - her message was clearly received.) We are not going into the poorest areas with the shanties and no water or electricity and desperately poor people because there is nothing to be gained from gawking and it's not safe ... plus they might take the bikes.  Can't have that.  And we aren't going down the streets with all the shebeens (bars) because that's where all the fighting and dangerous people are and ... again ... they might take the bikes.  And we aren't going into the children's home or the hospitals or other places because she doesn't like tourism like that and this isn't a poverty or a save the children tour. Instead we will see the markets and

Namibia

by Leigh Pate -

Damaraland landscapeRed sand.  Endless flat white salt pans.  Moonscape mountains of red sandstone rocks randomly emerge from a soft silvery-green plain dotted with the occasional tree.  Rivers teeming with wildlife and birds.  A few miles later, arid dusty sand-coated trees where the leaves have withered and browned.  The desert here ends right at the pounding Atlantic Ocean, giving Namibia a seemingly endless beach stretching inland for miles.The scenery and landscape must be some of the most beautiful on earth - certainly some of the most beautiful I have ever seen in my travels. Etosha Salt pansNamibia is extreme.  Extremely beautiful.  Extremely harsh.  This is an amazing place to visit.  But I suspect it's incredibly difficult to live here.The temperatures in the desert fluctuate 50 degrees in a few short hours ... and most of this country is desert.  The sun is hot.  Mind-bendingly, hide under your scarf to get out of the sun hot.  The nights have us sleeping in fleece hats and multiple layers and bag liners for warmth.The population here is small, and most people live in small villages and earn their living subsistence farming - somehow scraping a living farming this dry, sandy ground or by herding goats and cattle.  One of many shipwrecks off the Skeleton coast, named by early mariners because the treacherous Antarctic current wrecked countless ships, and survivors of the wreck had no chance of surviving the desert and lack of food and water. And now there is a drought in the north of the country, and the crops have failed.  Which means food shortages for many people, when they already live on very little.  UNICEF is gearing up for substantial food assistance to help people survive till the next crop comes.There is high unemployment and few jobs ... most jobs are in the mines.

Etosha National Park – more amazing animal photos

by Leigh Pate -

There are many baby animals in the park of all species this time of year.  This very young baby elephant was napping under the shade of his mother.  It got up, had a stretch, and then started to nurse. This young male lion has just finished eating his share of a zebra, and is off looking for shade to digest his meal while the three female lions in the pride eat the remains of the kill. Even though the females hunt, the male eats first.  We watched him swat off the females until he had finished eating. Male lions mostly lie around all the day ... interesting to me that the females tolerate it.   This springbok nibbles the leaves of an acacia tree with 2 inch long thorns.  Springbok travel in large herds, and when they are frightened they bounce high in the air and run with huge high leaps off the ground, moving amazingly fast considering how high they jump with each stride.     Lone male Red Hartebeast.  Many of the antelope species have one dominant male in the herd.  He forces the other young male out of the herd, and you see them either wandering alone or in small groups of males, away from the breeding herds of females and young.     The birdlife in and around the park is also extraordinary.  This Lilac Breasted Roller is just one of the incredibly beautiful birds - many which adopt incredible nesting and survival techniques to survive in the desert.   Red Breasted Shrike - formerly the National bird of Namibia until they won independence in 1990.  They replaced the lovely shrike with the fiercer Fish Eagle.   This Bee Eater has caught a juicy dragonfly.  It takes a while to choke it down, but it eventually manages.

Etosha National Park, Namibia – Photos from the Waterhole

by Leigh Pate -

Etosha National Park in Namibia had an incredible concentration of wildlife.  We camped here three nights, and had one amazing wildlife encounter after another.  This park is enclosed by a huge electric fence, and the animals congregate around the waterholes, making them easy to spot and observe their behavior. Many animals share the waterhole at the same time - often making uneasy eyes at the others as they all try to drink.  The waterhole was like the Switzerland of bush ... a cautious truce is the unspoken rule as hyenas and jackals drank within meters of antelope and zebra.  The truce even seems to hold true for the lions ... we saw two male lions lounging back from the waterhole while their prey drank nearby.  If the females had been there, it may have been a different story.   At one waterhole we saw seven different species drinking at the same time.   The young animals have much less fear than the adults, and they interact and play with young animals from other species.  We watched a baby zebra running around kicking up its heels ... bucking in circles and trying to torment the grown up zebras.  When none of his own kind wanted to play, it ran up to a baby kudu, and started chasing it, and the two of them tore around in animal play scattering the impala in a game of interspecies tag. Spotted Hyena Many animals are extremely vulnerable to attack while drinking - especially the giraffe which is very slow to approach the water and usually posts a lookout to keep an eye out.   The oryx must either wade into the water or drop to their knees at the edge to get their heads low enough to reach the water. They are also easily attacked while drinking, and are very

Rhino Party at the Waterhole.

by Leigh Pate -

Reflection of Rhino Mom and calf, and giraffe mother and baby in the waterhole after sunsetThe campgrounds and lodges at Etosha National park have viewing areas of waterholes, and they even light them for a couple of hours at night.  Mom and I watched an incredible interaction unfold one night with the endangered black rhinos, and even though we were freezing we sat there and shivered for two hours because we did not want to miss anything.The Rhino Party started with a large single male black rhino sharing the waterhole with three giraffe.  Soon, a mother rhino and her calf wandered down to drink. Eventually eight rhino, including two mothers and calves were at the waterhole at the same time.  They apparently have a standing appointment between 8 and 10 pm every night. They live alone, and wander in alone and solitary.  But they are social animals, and they gather at the waterhole and interact together - coming together in groups with heads together snorting and huffing and touching horns.  This inevitably leads to one of them getting offended, where they will throw their heads up and stomp backwards, snorting in clouds of dusts.  They will face off and snort and stare each other down for a few minutes.  Then one will charge the other - the mothers are particularly defensive of their young and keep themselves between the male rhinos and the babies.  The calves stick right at Mom's side and mimic every move, except for the charging, when they linger safely behind.  Two mothers separately backed of this huge male, and at one point ganged up on him to send him back to the outer edges and safely away.One of the rhino calves looked older and we believe was the equivalent of a teenage boy - he was

Five Pula, Please

by Leigh Pate -

"I would really like you to taste my stew."  This from a heavy-set Botswanan woman who was sitting at a little table selling some homemade goods in front of the grocery store.  "It is made from waterlilies."I had just bought four soft-ball size balls of fried dough from her to do a little tasting of a homemade local dish and share among all of us in the truck as  we drove from the Okavango Delta north to the Caprivi strip near the Angolan Border.  I paid for these massive doughnuts with some money that was  sent to us by a dear friend of my mother who had visited this area over twenty years ago.  When I tried to give our Botswanan friend the 5 pula bill, she looked a little confused and asked "Where did you get this?"  Turns out this currency has been taken out of circulation years ago and is not used anymore.  But it did get passed around to everyone standing nearby who were quite amused to see it and generated a lively conversation.  And, apparently, the goodwill also bought us a taste of waterlily stew.  The stew itself did not look particularly appetizing.  The brown-grey stringy stuff in the pot looked like it might be a recipe for a dose of antibiotics and some quality time in the bathroom.But the prospect of a little gut distress rarely stops me when the alternative is offending someone offering a gift.  So I stuck my hand out and she carefully spooned a golfball sized glob in my hand.  I took a healthy pinch - delicious.  Mom is watching at my side.  She won't touch sushi and likes her meat well-done because she's so worried about food sickness.  I know what she's thinking when she sees me take it and

Don’t Camp Under the Sausage Tree – and other survival tips

by Leigh Pate -

Spending three days with our mokoro guides was an incredible way to learn about the local plants and how the local people live with the teeming life in the Okavongo Delta at their backdoor.  Many people were forced to leave the islands where  we camped and move to higher ground due to climate change causing more flooding, but they still fish and travel these waters daily.  They made wonderful teachers, and I learned enough to have a fighting chance should I ever be stranded on an island in the middle of the great Okavongo Delta. Demonstration on how to drink clean water through a waterlily stemDon't Camp Under the Sausage Tree.  Sandy, one of our mokoro pollers during our two days bush camping in the Okavango Delta is holding a footlong seed pod from the tree behind us, aptly called a sausage tree.  The "don't camp under this tree" seems obvious when we feel the solid weight of that pod - it would punch through any tent top.  The pod looks like an enormous narrow sweet potato.  The tree trunk is used to make a very good mokoro.  The inside of these pods are spongy and can be soaked and used for washing.  In traditional medicine, women who aren't producing enough milk will have their breasts cut and juice from the pod put into the cuts and blood from her breasts put into the pods.  This is the traditional remedy.  I think if nothing else the breast would weep for mercy.Sausage tree podsAvoid open water while in the mokoro if at all possibleAs I was getting slapped in the face by reeds and plants scooting along through the thick plants in our little Mokoro, I wondered why we were in the reeds instead of the perfectly open reed-free water nearby.  We learned after

Okavango Delta

by Leigh Pate -

I turned on my flashlight and poked my head out of the tent.  Peered left - all clear.  Peered right.  All clear.  So I stepped outside and cautiously turned the headlamp around the back-side of the tent.  Clear there, too.  Despite the snorty grunts all around us throughout the night, there is not a grazing hippo or wandering elephant in sight. The middle-of-the-night constitutional got a lot more interesting when we headed out for two nights of bush camping on the Okavango Delta in Botswana.We left the Kalahari and headed north - a long drive - for a fishing camp on the Okavango Delta panhandle.  The only real excitement was getting stuck in the deep white sand on the way into camp to the bemusement of a truck load of entertained Botswanans who turned up in a huge truck to pull us out.  Apparently, this happens all the time.The next morning we packed up and took a motorboat to meet our Mokoros and head into the reed-filled waters of the Okavango delta.  The Delta is a geological anomaly ... a huge wetland in northwest Botswana where the Okavango river flows down from Angola and ends spread across a large land-locked swath of arid land looking like a hand print slapped across the desert.  In the wet season the water is inches to several feet deep.  In the dry season the water recedes, and the islands that are scattered all though the northern panhandle of the delta grow larger. PapyrusThe glamorous wildlife watching of the Delta is to the east of us in Moremi game preserve - a dry area where wildlife is concentrated and tourists spend thousands of dollars a night for luxury safaris into exclusive lodges.  We are choosing to visit the Delta differently, and have come to the Panhandle and

Kalahari Transformed

by Leigh Pate -

Small trees and grasses and shrubs emerge from reddish-yellow sand for as far as you can see.  Occasionally we saw a Kudu, a red Hartebeest and other creatures as they crossed the road and ran into the bush.  We are in the fabled Kalahari Desert in Western Botswana.  Home to the infamously fierce black-maned lions of the Kalahari.  The huge expanse of dessert that encompasses most of Botswana, and it is mostly empty to our eyes with the exception of occasional livestock grazing free-range and one straight-line road heading East across the southern continent.  To me it looks beautiful as a large expanse, but monotonous as the miles roll on and on.We have just left Windhoek, Namibia on our two week camping safari.  We are in a comfortable vehicle with two other guests - a fun couple from Australia - and our Namibian guide Marcus and the camp assistant/cook Joseph.  Our first day was a long drive, and we rolled into our campsite a couple of hours before dark, set up tents, and settled in for a tasty supper.This camp is actually a game hunting camp that is owned by a South African and where people pay to come and hunt - ostrich, Kudu, springbok, etc.  We have passed many similar game farms on our drive - there are clearly a lot of people willing to pay well to hunt these animals to support all of these hunting venues.  This farm is managed by a local San headman, one of the well-documented Bushmen we have all seen so frequently featured on National Geographic.  He comes to our campfire to tells us stories of his people the night we arrive (see the post "A Bushman's Tale: The Lion and the Jackal".) He came back at 7 AM to take us on a

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