Derek Keats: Blog

Talking about things that interest me, and hopefully interest you too.

Nature photography

I have a passion for nature photography, and for using my camera to create a repository of images that are freely shared under a CC:BY license so that they may be used by anyone for any purpose. These photos should have at least species names in machine compatible tags embedded in the image.

Cheetah — This morning I was playing around in DarkTable, improving my skills at using its awesome capability. I used a photo of a Half-collared Kingfisher that was in deep shadow, and accidentally shot at ISO6400 because I had forgotten to change my settings from when i was taking eagles in flight in […]

Photographers – buy equipment not software

21st October 2017 in Free and open source software / Nature photography / Ubuntu tagged FOSS for photographers / photography / photography tips by Derek Keats

Lion cub — In April, I was lucky enough to be in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park for two weeks. It is a very special place, beautiful and wild. There are lots of animals, you do have to work for them though. The distances are long, and the road rough. Lions were seen almost every […]

Lions of Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park

22nd May 2017 in Nature photography tagged Kgalagadi / lions by Derek Keats

The passing of a caterpillar from male to female Diederik cuckoo — A few people have asked me how to take pictures of birds, and I often get asked by casual observers how I do bird photography. Most bird people know this already, so this is really just for the people who ask me so I can point them somewhere. I often […]

Bird photography tips – what you do

12th June 2016 in Birds and bird photography / Nature photography tagged photography tips by Derek Keats

Diederik cuckoo male passing food to female — Diederik cuckoo This blog post is about Diederik cuckoo, Chrysococcyx caprius, and is illustrated with photos taken at Rietvlei Nature Reserve last summer. I wrote it for two reasons: to talk a bit about bird photography, and to illustrate something about these birds biology – they are more than just […]

Diederik cuckoo, Chrysococcyx caprius – interesting birdwatching

10th October 2015 in Birds and bird photography / Nature photography / The natural world tagged birds / brood parasitism / nature / photography / sexual dimorphism by Derek Keats

I have been doing photography of some sort on and off since I was about 14 years old, which is a while ago now. At one time, I was a biologist with technology as a hobby, but I flipped them around: now I am a technologist with biology as a […]

Why I share my photos freely

13th September 2015 in All things free and open / Nature photography tagged freedom / nature / photography / sharing by Derek Keats

Marievale Bird Sanctuary is a protected area on the Blesbokspruit, located near the East Rand town of Nigel in Gauteng, South Africa. The Blesbokspruit is a major perennial river, which is flanked by extensive floodplains on either side that are just fantastic for water birds with around 300 bird species that can be […]

Photos: Marievale Bird Sanctuary

13th July 2015 in Nature photography / The natural world tagged birds by Derek Keats

Bataleur after editing — Background I belong to a number of photography sites and facebook groups, and a common question asked relates to Adobe software tools that are useful to photographers. A frequent lament goes “I would love to have Photoshop and LightRoom, but they are so expensive.” Even if you don’t find them […]

Free Software alternatives to Photoshop and Lightroom: GIMP and digiKam

4th July 2015 in Nature photography by Derek Keats

Serval cat — The title of this post, “Photography is passion, energy, thought and knowledge combined with light, colour, shape, texture and movement to create emotion”, tries to capture what photography means to me. This is a repost of something I posted to my old blog about three years ago. Anyone who knows […]

Photography is passion, energy, thought and knowledge combined with light, ...

27th June 2015 in Nature photography / Uncategorised tagged photography by Derek Keats