Albatrossity mentioned in this morning’s On the Road that he is the featured artist this week (June 15-19) at the Manhattan Arts Center – no, not that Manhattan, the other Manhattan, in Kansas. Where he lives.
I asked Albatrossity how he would feel about being featured in in the Celebrating Jackals series, and he graciously agreed to tell us a little bit about the arts center and the opportunity to be their featured artist this week.
But first, a bit of background in case you missed the first Celebrating Jackals a couple weeks ago:
Are things ever going to settle down? With everything that’s going on, that’s probably not in the cards for the near future. Which makes it even more important to celebrate our victories and our accomplishments.
I hope this can be a place where we can all be excited when one of us has something good going on. You don’t need to have published a book, to have received an award, or be featured in a gallery, but those work, too! Maybe you moved into your dream house, or you finished rebuilding your 57 Chevy, or you just got married or you’re retiring, or you had a kid, or you just passed your boards.
When you have something to celebrate, I hope you’ll be willing to write up a little something and share it with us. Send me an email if you’re interested. ~WaterGirl
And now, let’s hear from Albatrossity!
The Manhattan Arts Center (Manhattan KS) has a Facebook group devoted to local artists who are affiliated with the gallery. Each week a local artist is invited to share images of their artwork, discuss their art and their process, and answer questions from interested folks.
The first batch of photos went up today (Birds of Tanzania), and another batch (other topics and venues) will go up daily this week.
If you want to see some of those pics, of another glorious places: (requires facebook login)
link to the discussion on their FaceBook page
link to the images on their FaceBook page
Or you can go to either page and then click DISCUSSION or MEDIA to jump to the other one. From the MEDIA page, you can click on any of the images to make them larger.
I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have.
~Dave Rintoul (aka Albatrossity)
*****
The Manhattan Kansas Arts Center is relatively new, so if you go to their site to check out Albatrossity’s work, you will also be supporting the arts by letting them know there is interest in what they are doing.
satby
Congratulations! A well deserved honor.
Miss Bianca
Yay-ee! Congrats, Albatrossity!
TaMara (HFG)
A well-deserved honor! Clicking over now.
Baud
Sweet. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere….
WaterGirl
@Baud: You guys did read this part, right?
WaterGirl
I just changed the original link to the discussion and added a second link to the photos themselves. (up top)
It’s definitely worth clicking on the images (under MEDIA) to see them in a bigger size. The “green” birds take on a whole new look when they are bigger. Referring to the Bee Eaters.
WaterGirl
Dave, I would love to hear more about where you were when you took today’s images.
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl:
It’s a Kansas joke. You wouldn’t understand.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: I thought it was a New York joke!
So harsh! :-)
rikyrah
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
zhena gogolia
Congratulations, Albatrossity! Your photographs are amazing.
Miss Bianca
Huh, I’m getting a “Page not found” message when I click on the “Images” link.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Yes. Manhattan, Kansas. The Big
AppleCorn.zhena gogolia
@Miss Bianca:
Me too.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I just went and looked. That trip to Tanzania sound wonderful. I love that crow sized bird with the fluffy feathers.
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca: The media link is working for me, is anyone else having trouble?
What happens if you go to the discussion link and then click MEDIA from there? Same issue? Or does that work?
The site is PUBLIC in that you don’t have to be part of the group to see it, but it does require a Facebook login. :-(
Sab
I slept in until 10 am in spite if many robins shrieking their little heads off since about 4 a m. Good sleeping weather. Missed three urgent phone calls. Returned two. Other is now Oops, sorry, hope I can fix later.
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca: @zhena gogolia:
It looks like you have to be logged in to Facebook in order to see these.
Darn it!
JustRuss
Wonderful pics David. The giraffe at sunset is amazing.
WaterGirl
There is so much interesting information in the discussion on the facebook page; I’m hoping that maybe Dave/Albatrossity will consider copying a bit of it over from there for folks who don’t have facebook.
Albatrossity
@WaterGirl: I’ve added a map to the African Birds gallery on my portfolio page (https://drintoul.myportfolio.com/african-birds); it is the last image in that grid. It shows northern TZ, and the parks where we spent our time.
We flew into the airport at Arusha (flight from Wichita KS to Atlanta GA to Amsterdam and then finally to Arusha), then spent the night at a hotel there. Next morning we headed south to Tarangire National Park, spent the rest of the day there, and headed to our lodging near Lake Manyara.
Next day was a full day at Tarangire, which is famous for its elephant herds and its impressive baobab trees. After another night at the lodge, we headed north and visited Lake Manyara NP on the way to Ngorongoro. We arrive at that lodge, on the rim of the crater, at sunset.
The next day was spent exploring the crater and its wildlife. Highlights included lots of lions, lots of elephants, and a mama rhino with her calf. Also lots of birds! After another night at the lodge, we spent the morning back in the crater and then headed to the Serengeti with a stop at Olduvai Gorge.
In the Serengeti we stayed two nights at a tent lodge near Naabi Hill, and three nights at a tent lodge near Semetu. Those are temporary camps, moving with the wildlife. One night during a rainstorm a lion plopped down under the rain fly of the tent beside mine (occupied by others from our group) to get out of the rain… Days were spent on the Serengeti, looking for critters.
We then headed back to Arusha via a small plane, freshened up and repacked before heading to the airport. Arusha to Amsterdam to Atlanta to Wichita. And after that full day of traveling I would have been more than willing to get right back on the plane and do it again!
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl:
Oh, that’s it, I’m not on Facebook.
Albatrossity
@WaterGirl: Sorry for the hassles vis-a-vis Facebook; the Arts Center folks do have a website, but this featured artist stuff is not on those web pages. And there is no way to see a Facebook page, even if it is a “public” group, unless you have a FB account.
I’m not sure what parts of the discussion would be of interest to other jackals who are not on FB. Maybe I’ll wait until the end of the day today and see if there is enough discussion to copy/paste over here.
Haroldo
Albatrossity, congratulations!
The Flint Hills played a large role in my youth – my mother’s family was from Morris County, and I visited there often, particularly in summer. (One summer had me bailing hay – not something I’d recommend, particularly.) Thank you for the top-flight photos.
WaterGirl
@Albatrossity: What an adventure!
I am curious about who you travel with on these trips? Family? Colleagues?
Patricia Kayden
?? ?? ??
WaterGirl
@Albatrossity: I’m sure there are lots of folks here who may not be familiar with you from your On the Road submissions and would like to learn more.
I think copying over some interesting discussion would be great, whatever you think, whatever timing you think is best.
edit: Even though I have a facebook account for just this sort of situation – break glass in case of emergency – I don’t use facebook otherwise and didn’t understand that being “public” didn’t necessarily mean that anyone could see it, even without a login!
So I was the source of the confusion, not you!
Albatrossity
@WaterGirl: Our party consisted of three couples (including the organizer, Jim Griggs and his wife Cindy) and myself. Elizabeth would have liked to be there as well, but she was teaching a KSU Study Abroad class in Ecuador and the Galápagos at the same time. So we were both in the Southern Hemisphere, but on opposite sides of the world!
I knew Jim slightly before the trip, but none of the rest of them. Needless to say, we are all good friends now, after a couple of weeks photographing in one of the most amazing parts of the world.
Nicole
Congrats, Albatrossity! That’s wonderful news!
Manhattan, Kansas is forever burned into my brain because I had a friend who made it onto Jeopardy! and that was the question of an answer that he missed (I think it was a Daily Double).
Albatrossity
@WaterGirl: Here is some of the commentary from the first day that may be of interest to folks who are not on FB. And if they click on my name at the top of this comment, it will take them to a portfolio site where they can see all of these pictures, and a LOT more.
—-
Commenter: Dave, I think it would be interesting to know what it takes (equipment, time, knowledge) to get a photograph like this. (Obviously standing patiently in a thunderstorm is one aspect). What did you learn from Jim Griggs and did you have a guide, I know that reserves in Africa often provide game guides who are extremely adept at locating wildlife. Were you assigned a bird guide?
Me: Clive, I can say that the guides we had were simply the best at seeing and getting us close the the wildlife. And Jim was excellent as well. His focus, as well as that on the others on the tour, was the mammalian megafauna, but he knew the birds pretty well! There were some that we saw that he had not seen before, and it was fun to ID them with him, or better yet, before he could do that. And there were a couple of times when the guides misidentified some bird as we were photographing it, when looking at the pics right there told me it was not the right ID. I would never question them on a mammal ID, but we talked about several bird IDs and came to a consensus. There are a lot of birds in that part of the galaxy, and I would be very hesitant to do what I do here, which is ID a bird by shape or behavior or habitat long before I get a good look at it. They could do that, and I needed a picture!
Albatrossity
My intro to day 1:
I was fortunate enough to go to east Africa (Tanzania) in the spring of 2018, with a tour group led by Jim Griggs, an accomplished photographer who has been to Tanzania many times. This was a trip I had been wanting to do for as long as I could remember, so the anticipation was pretty intense. Nevertheless, the trip was even more rewarding than I had anticipated. Days on the plains of Africa, nights in (very luxurious) tent camps where we could sometimes hear lions and hyenas before we dropped off to sleep.
The wildlife of Africa has been photographed and written about innumerable times, and yet it continues to fascinate us. Part of that may be deep memory, since Africa is the mother of us all, and our species made its first appearance in this very place. In fact one of our stops in Tanzania was Olduvai Gorge, where the Leakeys worked and discovered many important fossils from our family tree. It was an indescribable feeling to look at those rocks and hills and think about how they might have appeared to our ancestors a few million years ago. For me, another tug was the wide-open spaces, reminiscent of those I am familiar with here in Kansas. Indeed, one of the common and most vocal birds of the region is the Rufous-naped Lark, whose song is reminiscent of one of our local prairie vocalists, the Eastern Meadowlark.
But there is no question that the birds were the major attraction for me. Wildlife tours of East Africa tend to focus on the mammals, the charismatic megafauna, and that is legitimate. But the bird diversity is even more amazing, so here are some of those birds. I hope you enjoy seeing them through my eyes, and I’d be happy to try to answer any questions about the trip, the camera equipment, the region, the unique challenges and rewards of bird photography, or the creatures in these images. Or anything else that comes to mind!
———–
Commenter: Dave Rintoul, I was born in Uganda and spent much of my growing up life in East and South Africa. When we moved to Kansas we also thought the Flint Hills reminded us of the Highveld in Gauteng Province in South Africa. But your post suddenly made me realize there are certain sounds that are also similar, such as the songs of the Rufous-naped Lark and the Eastern Meadowlark. I had not made the connection before. Thanks for identifying this little neural network.
Me: Yeah, some mornings in Ngorongoro Crater I would close my eyes and it sounded like I was on the Konza Prairie. When I opened them and saw an Ostrich or an Elephant or a Rhino, I did figure out I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. But it does make you wonder what the plains here were like when there were mastodons and giant ground sloths out there!
CaseyL
Congratulations on being a Featured Artist!
Wonderful pictures, and wonderful commentary to go with them. (Thanks for including a link to your portfolio, and putting some of the comments here, as I am not on FB.)
Mel
@WaterGirl: Thank you for this, WaterGirl. It’s a wonderful thing to see some good news and happy tidings.
And big congratulations to Albatrossity!!!!
Sab
Ah-ha! I guessed that Manhattan NY did not care about birds, except for their birders in Central Park. Manhatten KS.
We in Ohio do care about birds. Congratulations. I never thought I would be jealous of Kansas when I am here in Ohio, but you do have gorgeous birds I had never heard of, with a great photographer ( yourself).
J R in WV
Sorry to miss the Tanzania photos in the Arts Center, I know they would be stellar ;-) but I utterly reject Facebook and Zuck-man. As greedy as Trump. More dangerous.
ETA to add my congratulations, well deserved, too!!!
Albatrossity
@J R in WV: No need to miss the photos. They are all here, in the galleries for African birds and African animals.
Sab
@Albatrossity: I have a lovely print by a japanese artist ( B Ohno) of some sort of green finch eating seeds in front of some iris. When my sister married a Chinese guy I had hoped I could find out what my green finchy birds were called. He did know, but only in Mandarin.
MazeDancer
Congratulations, Albatrossity!
The owl picture is lovely.
Wish I could see more, but don’t do FB.
But your Twitter bird of the day adds so much, not feeling left out.
evodevo
Congrats to a fellow Kansan !!
Albatrossity
@MazeDancer: Thanks! The owl was not a cooperative subject, but it turned out to be a decent photo regardless!
To see all these pics, and more, without a FB account, just click on my name at the top of this comment.
WaterGirl
@Sab: If you send me a photo of the print by email, i can post it here and we can see if Albatrossity might be able to identify it.
WaterGirl
@MazeDancer: Check out Albatrossity at #36
OldDave
When I was a kid we used to drive through Manhattan on the way to my grandmother’s house in Clay Center. I don’t remember all the fantastic birds, but then I was a clueless kid redacted years ago.
Punchy
So this GOP jackass gets COVID, but cant even be bothered to call it COVID. Has to go full racist instead. With the rate and fury by which the GOP refuse to take this seriously, it’ll be a miracle if they dont kill off 10% of their base by November….
dnfree
@Albatrossity: Your photos are beautiful, and thank you for sharing.
I have a high school classmate (class of 1963) who goes often to Tanzania on volunteer work. He’s affiliated with the Lutheran church, a medical center there, and even a medevac venture. I’ve seen some beautiful photos from him but not of birds. Apparently there’s a safari lodge there.
He has a personal project of providing bells for the churches in Tanzania.
WaterGirl
@OldDave: I know what you mean! Even as an adult I would drive through Kansas on the way to Colorado and decided that Kansas was the most boring place in the world.
Apparently this is not the case!
OldDave
@WaterGirl: Compared to NE Arkansas Kansas was exotic and amazing, at least once you got to where you were going. The driving? Not so much. Rolling hills get old after a while.
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl:
It’s very beautiful when you give it a chance. But driving across it is not fun.
realbtl
William Least Heat-Moon’s Prairy-Erth is a seriously deep dive into Kansas county by county.
mrmoshpotato
???
Congrats, Albatrossity! And thank you for your On The Road submissions.
mrmoshpotato
@zhena gogolia: Sounds like Iowa – great to bike around but I-80 all the way across? Boooooring! (and I wasn’t driving)
MazeDancer
@WaterGirl: Wow! Thanks////1
Leto
Dave: congratulations!!! Your picture of the Lilac-breasted Roller is my favorite. Love the color and composition of it. Just amazing.
The last time I was in the Big Apple was back in 2007 when I was at Ft Riley for my pre-deployment training. You have some really nice local breweries there :)
WaterGirl
@OldDave: @zhena gogolia:
I remember Kansas being totally flat and going on forever. Am I completely wrong about the totally flat part?
Haroldo
@WaterGirl:
Eastern Kansas around Lawrence is not flat (tho’ certainly not mountainous!). Quite gorgeous, as are the Flint Hills in their austere beauty.
suezboo
Thank you for sharing these amazing shots, Albatrossity. I have never been that into birds, merely accepting them as part of the landscape background, but your photographic contributions here have given me a new appreciation of them. As an African, I find some of these birds to be very familiar and it sounds as if your trip was highly rewarding. For us, as well.
LivingInExile
@Albatrossity: Thank you, great stuff as always.
WaterGirl
As long as we are talking about photos, and there have been a couple of references to the On the Road series…
We have something new coming up – First Timers Week – though it’s actually 2 weeks.
Starting this coming Monday (in 6 days) we want to have 2 weeks of submissions from people who have never submitted anything to On the Road before.
I hope there are a gaggle of jackals who will go through their photos, or take some new ones, and submit a set to On the Road, using the form that’s in the sidebar. On mobile, the form is at or near the top of the Hamburger Menu.
You can submit up to 8 photos in a collection.
We need at least 7 more submissions to have enough for 2 weeks of newbies. My dad used to pay me a nickel for sleeping under a top sheet or a blanket – please don’t make me have to resort to paying some of you peeps to submit your photos!
WaterGirl
@Haroldo: Maybe the part that would be a straight shot from central Illinois to Colorado IS flat? Or perhaps my memories are faulty.
Either way, sorry, Kansas! The birds clearly know something that I did not!
Albatrossity
@WaterGirl: The east-west interstate was put on the most boring and flattest route, hence the impression that it is a boring flat state.
It ain’t. But you have to get off the interstate and hit some blue highways to see that.
Miss Bianca
@Albatrossity: Blue highways were how I finally found Lucas, KS, home of perhaps my favorite American tourist attraction, The Garden of Eden!
Mary G
Such a treat. Only for you would I go into Facebook! Love the lady lion on the rock.
OldDave
@WaterGirl: My impressions may have been colored by living in the land of flat (Florida) for the last 40+ years.
WaterGirl
@Mary G: This one? I loved her so much i bought a metal print of her from Albatrossity. It’s on my wall along with his coyote in the breeze and a baby cheetah.
suezboo
@Mary G: I hesitate to disagree but I think, on closer inspection, you will agree that that lady is in fact, a leopard.
WaterGirl
@suezboo: No, I think Mary G. means this one:
I’m the one who saw lady lion on the rock and immediately thought of my lady leopard. I hadn’t remembered that this girl, who is a lion, was on a rock, too.
Angela
@Baud: When I was at KSU in the early ‘80’s, it was nicknamed The Little Apple. I grew up in Salina, right where it starts to flatten out on the way to Colorado.
Albatrossity
@WaterGirl: Yeah, that mama leopard almost made the cut for the final four today. I do like her serenity and self-confidence.
She looks good on your wall!
Albatrossity
@Miss Bianca: The Garden of Eden has to be seen to be believed, for sure. Glad you found it, and even more glad that you have the quirky taste needed to appreciate it!
WaterGirl
@Albatrossity: That’s what I love about her, too! Plus the lazy way she’s got her leg draped over the rocks, the other paw that’s peeking up, and her tail that stretches all the way off the end of the photo. If I had to pick just one word, it might be languid.
WaterGirl
Albatrossity, thanks so much, for doing this! It was fun, nice to read some of the discussion of your work at the art center, and nice to see people discovering the photos at your personal link.
Hopefully we showed some love to the arts center with our facebook clicks, and if you want to copy any of the discussion from there, to here, I’m sure people will read it.
Albatrossity
@WaterGirl: Thanks for suggesting it, and working out the bugs throughout the day! I had a great time, and I hope the jackals who showed up here had a good time too.
One more comment thread from today.
Commenter: You mention the LandCruisers but do not mention that these are completely open-roofed so there is absolutely nothing between you and the game. I am sure that you were pretty close to all of these wild animals. I was always amazed at how unperturbed the animals were at the vehicle and the humans in them. I once had this explained to me by a game ranger at the Phinda Reserve in South Africa. Whenever wild animals (particularly predators) are introduced into the reserve they are initially kept in fenced in areas. LandCruisers are frequently taken to view these animals so that they can acclimatize to a profile that they learn is not threatening. This is reinforced when they are released into the reserve and observed by visitors. It is the reason that one of the cardinal rules in game drives that you are told to observe by the rangers is “do not stand up.” If you do you are breaking the profile and consequently presenting the possibility of threat.
Me: They are open-roofed, but we could shut them if it was raining, for example. And yes, we never stood on top of the vehicles, but we often would have our heads poked out to get a less obstructed view.
The animals basically ignored us for the most part. We did have one instance where we came upon a pair of younger male lions in the grass. One of them had his head down and was breathing very shallowly. The other had his head up, and watched us closely. When the vehicle got closer, he growled. That was enough; we left quickly. The guide hypothesized that they might be siblings, and that the supine one was ill or wounded or both. His brother was gonna protect him, even against the giant metal vehicle that encased us.
Interestingly, except at the airport and at a ranger station where the assignment was to guard the rhinos from poachers, I saw no firearms. The guys who patrolled our camp at night had spears…