Tribute to Africa

Today I’d like to share a special tribute to our incredible continent.

It’s by Meredith Hill, from the USA, and her sister-in-law, Sandy Salle, a born-and-bred Zimbabwean and now American citizen, who share an exceptional company called Hills of Africa Travel. Based in the USA, they bring clients on personalized trips to Africa.

Speaking from first-hand experience, they are the people to call if you ever consider coming here, and we highly recommend you do Dave & I joined them as the official photographers on their recent Soul Safari, which was an altogether stunning experience!!

In their own words, here’s what these two wonderful people have to say:

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International Day of Climate Action

I’m behind the game on this one, as we’ve been so busy processing images after our phenomenal Soul Safari with Hills of Africa Travel, but this is too significant to pass up:

Our group visited Table Mountain on Saturday, 24th October, which was ‘co-incidentally’ the International Day of Climate Action, organized by 350.org. Here’s a photo that Dave took from the cable car of a group of dedicated rock climbers doing their bit!

TABLE MOUNTAIN - Cape Town, South Africa

This follows on from my previous post on Blog Action Day 09 (15th October), with the theme of Climate Change. Robin Beck (Lead Organizer for Blog Action Day 2009) emailed all of us bloggers after that, saying the following:

“You just took part in something unprecedented–with a 500% increase in blog posts about climate change, last Thursday was the largest coordinated climate communication of all time…October 24th is shaping up to be the most widespread day of environmental action in the history of the planet. All events are designed to do one thing: show the support for the most important number in the world: 350…the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for parts per million carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. 350 is the number humanity needs to get below as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change…Most immediately, 350 is the number world leaders need to lead with as they prepare to meet in Copenhagen this December to draft a new global climate treaty.

Hats off to everyone who participated in these events & especially (from our point of view) to the Table Mountain climbers…it was stunning to stumble upon such a dramatic display of support for our planet – THANK YOU!!

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Spreading the word for endangered species…

Big thanks to Jenny at www.andnow.co.za for spreading the word about the EWT Saddle-billed Stork survey in the Kruger National Park, as well as for featuring some of Dave’s images! Have a look at her informative article, which gives great background to these beautiful, endangered birds: Saddle-billed Stork. While you’re there, she’s included an excellent post on another of our sub-continent’s struggling species: the African Wild Dog.

Here are two wild dog pics of Dave’s, in case you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting them

MUDDY WILD DOG - Rhino & Lion Nature Reserve, South Africa

WILD DOG ANTICS - Rhino & Lion Nature Reserve, South Africa

Jenny discovered my post, Saddle-billed Stork Survey, after browsing this blog courtesy of the www.sa-venues.com interview with Dave, so thanks again to them for featuring that!

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SA-Venues rocks!

Huge THANK YOU to Christine and SA-Venues for featuring a stunning article on Dave on the front page of their beautiful blog today!!! Here’s a link to check out the whole article: www.sa-venues.com. Please take a look

An added bonus of connecting with Christine (which has happened entirely thanks to blogging and twitter) is that she uploaded our very first bit of video for us onto YouTube…call us web-dinosaurs, but there you have it! And here it is, also included in the SA-Venues article, amongst other pretty cool stuff:

I shot this (with some trepidation, admittedly!) in the Waterberg mountains, not far from Johannesburg. Unfortunately the sound didn’t make the upload, but I’m sure you get the gist of it?

We have tons more unique footage from the African bushveld, so will do a little research and get up to speed on sharing it with you. Please let us know if there are any animals in particular that you fancy seeing

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Outdoor Video & Photographic

At last…Dave & I are thrilled to report that the official website for our company, Outdoor Video & Photographic, is finally up and running again! If you’re interested, please take a look here: www.ovandp.co.za It features a fair representation of Dave’s work, across the categories of wildlife, motorsport, architecture, aerial, surgical and commercial photography. Images may be ordered from the site, although please bear in mind that much more stock is available off-line.

This follows a lengthy upgrade process and some niggles are still pending, such as keywording of images which affects searches, but these are in progress. Our sincere thanks to the team at Africa Media Online (our web hosts) and Temple Creative (who did some of the design work)!

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Loerie Awards

It was awesome to discover that ‘Lucky’, the VW Golf 6 advertising campaign by Ogilvy Cape Town, won Gold (in the ‘TV & Cinema Commercials’ category) at the 31st Annual Loerie Awards held in Cape Town recently.

You may remember my previous blog post (Cheetah), which mentions the advert and ‘Lucky’, the phenomenal three-legged cheetah at its heart. CONGRATULATIONS to Ogilvy Cape Town on an outstanding job, as well as to all the other winners!!

Especially significant to us was that Draftfcb Johannesburg won a Silver Loerie Award in the Experiential category. This was for their internal marketing program, connectEd, which incorporates Twitter. Dave and I are particularly delighted about this because his son, Michael, was one of the illustrators on that campaign. WAY TO GO Mike & the rest of the team!!

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Welcome to the blogosphere, babe!

Just a quickie to welcome Dave to the world of blogging – awesome to have you on WordPress, my love, xxx

Please take a look everyone and perhaps support him with a comment at Dave’s Den. Thanks a ton

Looking forward to chatting online!

Remembering Patrick Swayze

We were saddened to hear earlier this week of the passing of Patrick Swayze, one of Hollywood’s Hottest Like countless fans around the world, our sincerest thoughts are with his wife, family and friends. For us, this is a reminder of my father’s battle with pancreatic cancer, which he fell prey to in 1998. In general too, it highlights how fleeting the vibrancy of youth is, and the consequent urge to live life to its fullest.

Although I haven’t done much training (beyond 5 years of childhood ballet), dancing has always been a big passion. Few movies stirred me quite as much as ‘Dirty Dancing’, and credit for that goes to Patrick Swayze. He was simply sensational, also in the unforgettable ‘Ghost’.

My thanks to www.All4Women.co.za for including a feature on this awesome actor in their online magazine, which I highly recommend for all that’s hot!

Quality Quotations

Just want to give a great big shout-out to three wonderful websites that share the world’s collective wisdom:

www.thinkexist.com

www.wisdomquotes.com

www.brainyquote.com

Your content is a source of continual inspiration. Thank you!

Traffic tip

Quick thank you to Blog Surfer for sending web traffic this way…much appreciated!

If you’re a blogger and haven’t connected with them, check out their site: www.blogsurfer.us. It’s worth a look