It’s summed up in the book I wrote when I retired as the Zambezi Society’s Director and was wondering what to do with my life: “The best thing I could do, I thought, was to get back in touch with the wilderness that had inspired me to become a conservationist in the first place….maybe I’ll try to convey some of its beauty to others, and hopefully inspire them to help look after it.”

However, it also raised an equally important question: how am I going to live on a niggardly UK pension? Writing books is all very well, but – barring best-sellers – is fine for the ego, but lousy for the bank balance. And it would also be pleasing, I felt, to make some contribution to the Society I’d founded over 40 years ago; which is why they will receive 15% of all sales made via this website.

One way to achieve these goals, I decided, might be to make some use of the thousands of photos I’ve accumulated over the years. My earliest photographs of the Zambezi Valley region date back to 1978, when I was a “gobbie guide” living and working on Fothergill Island.  So I felt it was very appropriate  to use one of these very early pics – taken lying flat on the Fothergill runway – as the running motif for this website.

It began life as a transparency, of course, in those pre-digital days, and although I was able to have a Cibachrome made, for an early exhibition in 1982, further tinkering had to await the seductive appearance of  Adobe Photoshop in 1987, whereupon almost any degree of manipulation  became possible, including the addition of crescent moons…

So yes, I do use Photoshop.  And I am not a “photographer of record”. I like to believe that I’m a creative “photographic artist”, concerned with aesthetic impact and devoted to the production of pleasing and attractive  pictures. However, very few  pics on the gallery pages are major Photoshop manipulations.  One is “Tow Start”, which required the removal of a superfluous half-elephant.  Conversely, “Matusadona View from the False Kanjedza”, as shot, looked a trifle bland without one. And I also added one to the footer of this page, for good measure. The remainder are confined to the “Manipulations” page. 

Otherwise, Photoshop has been confined to the usual changes in white balance, contrast, saturation and so on. Here’s another example, less brashly dramatic but more representative of day-to-day image enhancement. It’s gone  from a rather drab .CR2 slide conversion, then via Photoshop to reach what I think is an acceptable rendition of reality:

Actually getting the original is another story, of course, when something as grumpy and unpredictable as a wild black rhinoceros is involved. Luckily for me, rhinos  sleep the sleep of the just, secure in their belief in their invincibility. Luckily for him, the tool of my trade is a camera, not a large-calibre hunting rifle.

Also luckily for me, I have a superb “field assistant” – my wife, Sally, who is usually with me during my photographic excursions. She also has an excellent “nose” for trouble brewing, when my eye is glued to a viewfinder –

Well – he was merely taking a rather direct route to his favourite backscratching tree. But Sal’s warning was timely; it isn’t always easy to judge distance when you’re fixated on your viewing screen. So please be careful. Do not endanger yourself or others. Irresponsible behaviour also risks the loss of privileges such as walking in Mana Pools.

MEDIA & EQUIPMENT
Most early photos were taken with a Canon FTb, a great camera in its day. Many of the colour transparencies were taken on Kodak Ektachrome 200, which was one of the very few films available here at the time, but – a great advantage – could also be processed here. The subsequent digital photos were taken with a Canon 30D, with 17-85 f/4 and 90-300mm f/5.6 lenses. Shoulderpod, as in the photograph above. A tripod that lives back in camp, most of the time. An Asus desktop computer with Digital Photo P:rofessional, Photoshop, and a large external backup drive. That’s it.

COPYRIGHT
All photographs on this website except one are © Dick Pitman, aka Richard Pitman (by nobody except my parents). The exception is the one at the top of this page, which is Sally’s. Infringers will be dealt with via current legislation (by my lawyers, so it’d be a lot cheaper just to buy a print from me!)