Joe Szurszewski Photography LLC

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Joe Szurszewski Photography LLC

Joe Szurszewski Photography specializes in photographing corporate, association, and non-profit even

Joe Szurszewski (sure-CHEF-ski) is an award-winning photographer and experienced photojournalist based in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis & St Paul, Minnesota. He captures memorable images for a diverse clientele of regional, national, and international organizations and publications. Joe specializes in producing authentic portraits that capture his subjects' unique personalities. He also excels at

creatively covering meetings & events and industrial & construction activity with a balance of artistry and technical skill. Whether on location, in the studio, or doing detailed post-processing, Joe is a lifelong learner with a passion for his craft and also for learning about your organization so he can deliver the best possible photographs for your needs.

01/31/2026

Today’s birds are:
- Red Throated Bee Eater, if you zoom in just above the bird’s head, you’ll see why this is one of my favorite photos from the African trip
- Helmeted guinea fowl, a bird that looks like an artistic child’s entry in a small-town newspaper’s annual Thanksgiving Turkey coloring contest, and a bird that the locals call the ‘Chobe Chicken’
- African Jacana, a bird that always looks like it’s late for an appointment
- Great Egret, very similar to the egrets we see around water here in the US
- Red-billed spur fowls, a bird with feathers that looks like an eye test
- Kori bustard, the national bird of Botswana, and the largest flying bird native to Africa
- Lilac-breasted roller, what happens when an impressionist artist designs a bird
- Yellow-billed kite, here’s a refreshing note - both the male and female of the species work together to build their nest
- Giant Kingfisher, a bird that looks like it’s half beak, a beak it uses with great effect to spear fish
- African Pied Wagtail, who I imagine is telling me to hurry back to Africa

I’m sad that this month-long look back at the animals I got to see during my four days in Chobe and Zambezi is over, but I’m pretty sure I will continue to dream of Africa and its vast array of incredible wildlife for a long time. Or at least I hope I do.

01/30/2026

I’ll finish my month-long look at the wildlife wonders of southern Africa with two lightning bird rounds today and tomorrow - hands on buzzers everyone! As I’ve put these posts together, I was amazed to think that I was able to see and photograph all of the incredible creatures that I’ve highlighted this month in just 4 days across Zambezi National Park in Zimbabwe and Chobe National Park in Botswana. If you ever get the opportunity to visit these magical places, I highly recommend it. And not just for the thrill you get in the moment, but also for the long-term adjustment such a trip brings in attitude to the natural world.

Today’s birds, in order, are:
- White Crowned Lapwing, with the very stylish yellow waddle
- African Fin Foot, a bird our guide kept telling us was very rare to see in the wild, even after the 3rd and 4th sighting
- Black Crowned Night Heron
- Glossy Ibis
- Crowned Cormorant
- Rock pratincole
- Black-headed Heron
- Water Thick-knee, a bird that unfortunately didn’t get the same consideration as the Slender Mongoose when they were handing out names

01/29/2026

If you were raised on David Attenborough nature documentaries, you might imagine that anywhere you happen to look in Africa’s wild places, there’s a predator stalking, killing and devouring its prey. In reality, the size of these places makes it unlikely that you’ll see such drama, and you’re much more likely to see play fighting between animals of the same species. Hippos, elephants, impala and baboons all spend a lot of time engaging in mock combat, which amounts to going through the motions, making contact, lots of loud trumpeting, bellowing or screeching, but stopping short of causing any real harm.

Since it is often juvenile males engaging in this behavior, it might seem to simply be a case of youthful high spirits or burning off excess energy. But there is also a more serious “survival of the species” reason for this kind of behavior that makes it more like self-defense training. All of the animals in today’s post have at least some predators to fear (or a LOT of predators to fear - looking at you impala), which means juveniles don’t have a lot of time to learn the many skills they will need if they are to survive to a ripe old age. Play fighting builds strength, agility and stamina, and also gets young animals used to responding to rapidly changing situations. And it gives young animals the opportunity to make mistakes without serious consequences, except for the possible loss of status amongst their peers - aka, playground taunting.

01/28/2026

As I near the end of the month, I’m struggling to fit all of the incredible animals I was privileged to see and photograph in to the few remaining daily recaps, so I’ll finish the month with some rollup posts that include multiple animals - my apologies to those whose favorites don’t get their own day!

Today sees the fearsome Cape Buffalo, the Chobe Bushbuck, some warthogs, a Steenbok, and the Kudu. As the first photo shows, the Cape Buffalo is a large and well-marbled herbivore with a nasty set of horns. It is also near-sighted with an unpredictable temper and a habit of charging and trampling anything that startles it. This probably explains its nickname “Black Death”, and the hundreds of human deaths a year it causes in Africa. But as the second photo shows, it is also not invulnerable to predators, especially lions.

The bushbuck is a type of antelope and is generally nocturnal and shy, so getting to see one was lucky. The warthog has the misfortune to be on the “Ugly Five” list of African animals that are thought to be particularly unattractive, although some visitors find the warthog to be plush toy cute - judge for yourself. The Steenbok is the smallest member of the antelope family, and is usually hard to spot since its primary defense against predators is lying low in brushy cover during the day. Finally, the Kudu is one of the largest subspecies of antelope and resembles a horse with flowing mane when at full gallop.

01/27/2026

It’s almost impossible to photograph the Chacma baboons in Chobe National Park for any time at all and not capture gestures and behaviors that just make you stare at the back of the camera and wonder at the incredibly human qualities of these highly intelligent and social beings.

Baboons spend a lot of time grooming each other, which might seem like a waste of time - after all, how often do you need the bugs picked out of your hair? But baboon grooming is about a lot more than hygiene. Grooming strengthens social bonding, which is important in baboon troops that can be as large as 200 individuals. Grooming is also a form of stress relief for both groomer and groomee, and grooming is used as a form of reconciliation after conflicts and disputes.

Babies clinging to or hitching a ride on their mothers, one baboon offering another a comforting pat on the shoulder, a baboon sitting on a rock with its front legs draped over its hind legs like a tired human resting, a baby playing with a stick, and a group hug - you cannot help but imagine yourself, your children and your family in similar scenes, and that is perhaps the point and why wild places like Chobe matter so much.

The last two photos have a story behind them. We see a mother with baby getting groomed as a storm approaches from Namibia across the Chobe River. Then, just seconds later, lightning strikes a tree less than 50 yards away with a deafening blast of thunder, causing the mother to frantically scoop up her baby with a terrified look of alarm towards the tree. The mother had no time to think, she just instinctively reacted to protect her baby, just like a human mother would have.

01/26/2026

If you have a thing about snakes, try this on for size - a snake with legs. That essentially describes the Nile Monitor Lizard, a large reptile we saw several times slinking along the Chobe River. It sniffs the air with its flickering forked tongue, it hisses when threatened, and though it doesn’t have fangs through which to inject venom, it does have poisonous toxins in its saliva to incapacitate its prey. Even worse, it is smarter than most snakes, and often works a double act, where one monitor will distract a nesting bird or crocodile while a second sneaks in and steals eggs from the nest.

The second photo shows a monitor with its nictitating membrane closed (essentially an inner eyelid used to clean and moisturize the eye), that doesn’t do anything to dispel its generally malevolent appearance, while the third photo shows a monitor making its rounds under the nervous watch of a Blacksmith Lapwing whose nest is nearby.

01/25/2026

The African Fish Eagle might look familiar to Americans, but it and the Bald Eagle are not that closely related, though they are both sea eagles. And though not related, the Fish Eagle has a haunting cry that would remind Minnesotans of our state bird, the common loon. Speaking of official birds, the African Fish Eagle is so beloved in sub-Saharan Africa that it is the national bird of Malawi, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, and appears on the flags or in the coats of arms of Zimbabwe, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia, and South Sudan.

True to their name, the Fish Eagles in the first photo are taking turns feeding on a barbel, otherwise known as an African catfish. Though this looks like much too large a fish for the eagle to kill, never mind carry out of the water, fish eagles are ambitious predators and known to occasionally prey on ducks, storks, herons, baby crocodiles, turtles, monkeys (!), and even monitor lizards, which as we’ll soon see, are a truly frightening creature.

01/24/2026

The Black-backed Jackal is the Swiss Army knife of African predators and in some ways the ultimate survivor. To start, its diet is incredibly diverse, including insects, lizards, snakes, birds, rodents, hares, smaller and more vulnerable antelopes, and even fruits, berries and grass when nothing else is available. They are also accomplished scavengers, feeding from kills made by larger predators like lions and leopards whenever the opportunity arises. As if this was’t adaptable enough, jackals can also hunt cooperatively to take down prey larger than any one jackal could manage. And they know that the good times don’t last, so they also bury excess meat to help them get through lean times.

Jackals are nocturnal, and often seen returning home in the early morning light (as a photographer, I say “Thanks jackals!”) In one of the photos, a jackal can be seen sizing up a couple of impala (he eventually left them alone, perhaps exhausted from a busy night). And in the last two photos, a jackal missing its left eye scratches itself and relaxes. This injury might have happened in a territorial dispute with another jackal, or as a result of a paw swipe from a lion who didn’t appreciate sharing its kill, or even from a feisty prey animal that wasn’t ready to be dinner. Despite this, it seemed well-fed and otherwise healthy, and its missing eye might just be another good survival story it can tell its friends.

01/23/2026

Some might look at the giraffe and see an animal with all the natural grace of a drunken teenager trying out stilts for the first time. But seeing this incredible animal in the wild, I thought it had a certain dignity, even elegance, that went beyond how incredibly well adapted it is to its environment. To be sure, the long neck (the popular internet factoid about how humans and giraffes have the same number of neck bones - seven cervical vertebrae each - is true, but misleading, since giraffe vertebrae are much larger) allows the herbivorous giraffe to access food in trees much higher above the ground than most other animals can get to. This neck also lets giraffes spot predators from farther away, a useful skill considering that giraffes are hunted by a variety of predators, including lions. All of which just proves that even something as seemingly random and out of place as the giraffe’s neck is actually the result of millions of years of adaptation.

But the giraffe also has a quiet nobility. It goes about its business, munching on leaves, moving slowly from tree to tree, displaying none of the nervous energy and constant alertness that other prey animals like the impala need just to stay alive. And as several of the photos show, it even tolerates our old friend the bloodthirsty Oxpecker with poise. If I could channel Dr Doolittle and talk to any one animal, it would be the giraffe.

01/22/2026

As one of today’s photos shows, impala have what looks like a black letter M on their rumps. Wildlife guides in Chobe joke that this stands for “McDonalds”, since the impala is preyed on by most of the park’s predators. Lions, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, wild dogs, crocodiles, jackals, and even birds of prey all have a taste for impala, with smaller predators like jackals and eagles contenting themselves with small fawns and weaker individuals (along with scavenging other animals’ kills), and the larger apex predators going after any impala unlucky enough to cross their path. Life as an impala then involves a lot of looking over your shoulder.

Impala are highly social, and form and reform different types of herds depending on where in the mating and birthing cycle they are. When small fawns are plentiful, females and their young can form herds of up to 200 individuals while the adult males form ‘bachelor herds’. During mating season, males try to form harem herds with as many females as they can attract, though the trick is protecting this harem against other males with similar ideas.

For an animal that is essentially the Quarter Pounder with Cheese of Africa’s wild spaces, they are, unexpectedly, incredibly cute. They can often be seen walking in lock step, cleaning themselves, running and jumping like kids on a playground, watching the sunrise, snuggling, and just hanging out with their friends. Today’s final photo though reminds me of the inescapable fact that despite their adorability, many African ecosystems revolve around the impala and their nutritional value.

01/21/2026

Bet you didn’t expect to see this, but say hello to the dung beetle, also known as the sacred scarab. Dung beetles are a critical part of the ecosystems of places like Chobe and Zambezi because their daily behavior results in soil aeration and nutrient recycling that is vital for the health of vegetation. This vegetation feeds all kinds of herbivores, and these herbivores in turn provide food for the various carnivores that roam the parks. It seems crazy to say, but just about every kind of organism in these amazing places teeming with life ultimately depends on the humble dung beetle for their existence.

As if that wasn’t enough, the dung beetle also has a mating ritual that rivals the weaver bird for its intricate uniqueness. The male will form a large ball of dung, often elephant dung because the elephantine digestive system is very inefficient and leaves about half of what the elephant eats undigested. The industrious beetle then rolls it around trying to attract a female with the dung ball’s size and with his prodigious strength at being able to manage a ball many times his size and weight. If she is suitably impressed, she will help him bury the ball, they will mate, and she will deposit her eggs in the buried dung so the future young beetles have a ready source of food when they hatch.

But wait, there’s more. Not all male dung beetles are accomplished dung ball rollers. Some simply wait and try to steal other beetles’ dung balls, which leads to dramatic fights, as shown in the last 3 photos. The beetles fought, the thieving beetle was flipped onto its back, and it was left helplessly flailing its legs in the air, likely to be eaten by a bird or mongoose. Nature red in tooth and mandible.

01/20/2026

Of the many ways to become a permanent resident of Chobe National Park, death by crocodile was the one that frightened me the most. And when a guide casually referred to my nightmare fuel as “the smiling assassin”, I didn’t imagine there was much hyperbole in that charming nickname. Indeed, the Nile Crocodiles that seemed to be all around us in the Chobe river are responsible for hundreds of human deaths every year across Africa. And yet. Somehow, gradually, I started to sympathize with, and even feel a little sorry for this prehistoric killing machine.

Because of the time of year, many of the crocs we saw were nesting mothers. And ‘Crocodile Mother’ is not only a thankless job, it’s ridiculously hard. For starters, an expectant mother has to stay very close to her nest at all times to prevent monitor lizards or baboons (both coming soon) from stealing her eggs. Even worse, female crocodiles will steal the eggs from another female’s nest to increase the survival odds for her babies. And in a final horrifying scenario, the father-to-be will sometimes eat his partner’s eggs - that’s right, the eggs that he himself fertilized.

All of which meant that even when we got nerve-wrackingly close to a nesting female croc, she might open an eye to check us out, realize we were no threat whatsoever, and go back to sleep. On one occasion, our guide beached our pontoon boat on the river bank mere feet from a nesting croc mama, and she didn’t so much as bat a nictitating membrane at us. In other words, fighting off so many real threats means resting every chance you get and ignoring the pretenders. This behavior left me slightly offended but mostly relieved when I realized that these murderous mothers were also being eminently practical in deciding that it usually wasn’t worth the energy or risk during nesting season to attack and eat the chewy pink and brown morsels that seemed so interested in their lives.

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