Sometimes unexpected things happen. You do not plan the perfect wildlife shoot, it just happens. You cannot ask the animals to do certain things, you sit and wait for them to do whatever they want to do. If you are at the right place at the right time, you will be rewarded with something good and worthwhile. For example, this week, I walked by the owls that I posted last week and walked upon the cutest family of juvenile dassies or rock hyraxes. In one of the photographs below, the baby dassie bends over to eat some grass; it stuck its butt out to me and I got the cutest photo ever. Also, in one of the photographs, it looks like it is growling at me. All a stroke of luck. Without further ado, please enjoy the photographs and my usual musings below.
Juvenile Dassies
Postscriptum, or Family Life on the Coast
Below, you will see the small family of dassies that I photographed. It got me thinking, are we losing our family lives in our hyper-modern world? The usual saying in the west goes something like "By 18 years old, you need to live on your own and detach yourself from the family". And various studies have been done on how little time families spend time together. I have seen this in my own family. My brother is living in the UK, and we are living in South Africa. He sees us maybe once or twice a year. Is this really how families are supposed to work? Are we really supposed to say goodbye to the people that gave their lives for us so that we can start our own family and repeat the cycle? I know that cultures beyond the west does things differently. There, the children does not leave the parents' houses, they live as families and care for each other.
There is obvious reasons for and against all these options. I just feel that our modern world does not value families any longer. It is frowned upon if the children still live with their parents. And here I am not referring to children that do nothing the whole day and get everything for free. But rather families that live together, that help each other, that grow old together and that raise the kids together. We in the west have normalised individualism to such a degree that we have lost the need for family life unless tragedy strikes. Maybe it is time to rethink our desire for hyper-individualism.
I hope you enjoyed this post. The photographs are my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and Tamron zoom lens. The musings are also my own. Happy photographing, stay safe!