Walia Ibex, Simien Mountains, Ethiopia

very good nature shot

Thanks Mehmet.  The Walia Ibex are usually extremely rare and only seen from a distance.  I was very lucky that expedition as our armed scout Mohammed was great at spotting the animals.  I took this shot using a telephoto 300mm lens from about 40 or 50 feet.  We even had an old male with huge horns and billy-goat beard wander by us one foggy morning no more than 8 feet away.  Dirigen, my guide, motioned for me not to move to get out the camera as we were close enough to be attacked by it if we startled it.  Dirigen is the man with the AK-47 rifle in my profile picture.  It just wandered by in the fog and then we began the day's hike. 

I was informed by a unversity friend who had travelled through the Simien ranges only a year after me that the whole region is now brown and yellow with a drought that has killed off all the farmers' crops and wildlife.  It is a horrible disaster that struck Ethiopia just a few years after their economy was growing with the aid of tourism.  In the future, I will be loading more photos from the region, but my Gelada baboon photo in the 'Wildlife' section of my portfolio shows just how lush and green things were when I was there.

This picture was taken with a Canon EOS 3000 on Ektachrome E100 VS

slide film. I then converted it to black and white and worked on it a bit in

Lightroom 3. The big male Walia Ibexes are a pretty rare sight in the

Simiens, especially from this up-close. I would love some feedback on

this one as I have tried out some texturing and refining functions on the

hillside.