Safari Photography
By Robert Sand
23 January 2008
Somewhere in the darkness and seemingly just outside your tent a lion is roaring. You pull the blanket over your head and the ground trembles faintly as elephants shuffle silently past. You go back to sleep knowing that at sunrise you will wake to Botswana's Okavango Delta, a photographer's paradise. Don't waste the opportunity.
TIP 1. Use a travel agency that specializes in safaris and knows which camps meet your needs and your budget. Wildlife, comfort and the number of other guests vary from camp to camp. A good camp means good guides. Good guides know what you need for a good photograph.
TIP 2. You may need a wide angle lens for landscape
photography. But most of the time you will want to fill the frame with a single animal and this means a camera with minimal shutter lag and a telephoto lens that reaches 300mm.
TIP 3. When lions, hyenas and other animals wander over to your open vehicle, remember your guide's warning: No talking and minimal movement. These are beautiful animals, but they are wild. Your guide knows how much personal space each animal requires, so don't ask him to drive a little closer to that lovable looking hippo. In fact, hippos are very territorial and are to be feared.
Tip 3. The eyes have it. Whether it's a shot of your pet cat or wild cat, the photograph is much more effective if the animals' eyes are looking at the lens. This means patience, timing and a telephoto lens that is stabilized or braced against the frame of the vehicle. A beanbag between the frame and the lens can help.
TIP 4. Photography is all about light and, as you probably know, early morning light is good and late afternoon light is great. African sunsets, although something of a cliche, are still awesome.
TIP 5. Motion is wonderful when captured, but in the bush there is rarely time to fiddle with shutter speed and aperture. A fast film setting and the attendant fast shutter speed are my usual default setting. Lions, leopards and cheetahs are often content to sit still for a portrait. But when they move, pan the camera so that the blurred background conveys a sense of motion. If your fingers are quick, you can slow the shutter speed so that the animal's blurred legs show the action.
TIP 6. It's easy to shoot hundreds and hundreds of pictures on safari. I used to shoot several rolls of film a day. Digital photography, even if you delete poor shots as you go, means packing extra memory cards, a spare battery and a charger. (Every camp I've been to accommodated my charger, but not my wife's hair dryer.)
TIP 7. Simplify your photo. It's hard to photograph a large herd or even a group of animals. There are too many bushes in the way. Not every animal is facing the right direction. The adorable baby elephant is usually protected by mothers and aunts.
The correct f/stop for the brilliant sky will lose all the grey details on the elephants and hippos, not to mention the sable antelope. Sure you should try to capture the herd, but the more effective picture may be the single animal or, better still, just an interesting segment of a single animal.
TIP 8. Wear layers of clothes. While it may be summertime where you live, it's wintertime in Africa.
Nighttime temperatures can get down toward freezing on safari. A hot cup of coffee at the campfire helps before setting out in the early morning. But a shirt, light sweater and polypropylene jacket help even more. Patagonia's catalogues are good for more than the photography.
TIP 9. Walking in the bush is a good way to be in direct touch with the environment, but rarely provides good photography. The animals seem to conclude that vehicles and their passive passengers are neither prey nor predator. As such, the vehicles can be safely ignored or investigated. On foot you may see wildlife off in the distance, but you will rarely get close enough for a good photo. Lest a predatory animal bet too close, an armed guide or two will accompany and guard walking parties.
TIP 10. The most wonderful photo I never took was
in a state park in southern India. A magnificent Bengal tiger walked silently out of the woods some thirty yards away and for a long ten seconds walked through the sunlit field before disappearing back into the woods. Sometimes it's best to just sit still and see, really see, what's out there and forget about the photography.
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