Photos from trips to Africa will be on display in Aiken

Photographs from Mike Stanley's two trips to South Africa's Kruger National Park will be exhibited at the University of South Carolina Aiken's Etherredge Center during January.

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"It's the best of both trips," said Stanley, the chief of ophthalmic photography at the Medical College of Georgia Hospital.

Stanley visited the park in June 2005 and June 2008.

After he and his wife, Henriette, were married in 2004, the Grovetown couple decided to take a trip to her South African homeland for him to meet her family.

While there, they visited the park.

At Kruger National Park, the rules are simple -- don't get out of your car and stay on the paved roads, he said.

Keeping him in his car was not a problem for Stanley, who had images from the 1962 John Wayne film Hatari flash through his mind.

Even following the rules, Stanley captured an array of images of animals.

"We had a lion walk by the car," he said.

In some photographs, the animals seem to stare at the camera as if they were posing.

"You just don't know. Something may cross in front of you," he said.

And at other times, the animals weren't as cooperative.

"Sometimes they were facing away. You just really don't know," he said. "A lot of it is just luck."

Not only will there be close-ups of animals in the exhibit, but some photographs will focus on the landscape of the park.

"My favorites show a little bit of land as well as the animals," he said.

"Kruger Park -- I find it a fascinating place."

The Aiken exhibit will be the first for Stanley outside the hospital in many years.

His works are often displayed as part of the hospital's healing arts program.

An ophthalmic photographer at MCG for nearly 23 years, Stanley has won numerous awards for his work through the Ophthalmic Photographers Society.

Theiken exhibit will run until Jan. 30.