Mike White has travelled with me many times since 2017. It’s really a pleasure to spend time with someone who loves this area as much as I do and is willing to return again and again to reconnect with the wildlife. He’s very accomplished as a wildlife and landscape photographer in the UK, so it’s fun to help him transfer those skills to the bush. This time, he visited in April, towards the end of the rainy season; this was his first visit outside the dry season month of July and he was staggered to see the difference. So much greener, richer and full of bright colours; he has created a portfolio of great images below (using his Fuji XH2) which are a great record of a fun week of sightings. Mike, over to you:
This was my sixth trip with Ed, and for the first time early in the season (Mid-April) at the end of the rains, when everything was still beautifully verdant. I didn’t know what to expect at this time of year as I’ve always been in July in previous years, but I wasn’t disappointed and would recommend this time of year to anybody. I’m certainly thinking of another trip in 2024, maybe a bit later, in May when the rains will have completely stopped – yes, we had some epic rain, although only on the day I arrived and a couple of days later for an afternoon.
Last year I took my old mum with me, and that trip was more about making sure mum had an amazing time rather than just me taking photos for my own pleasure. This year normal service resumed and what made it more interesting was the new camera setup I had, the Fuji XH2 and the 150-600mm lens, effectively 225-900mm on a full frame. I have to say using this system was a huge improvement over my previous one, Nikon D500 and 80-400mm. The extra reach of the lens and the far better autofocus system made many more shots achievable and, in particular, made bird photography that much more accessible, as you will see from the number of bird shots in my report. The one drawback of the lens though is that it has a maximum aperture of only f8, which either meant you had to use a slow shutter speed, often not practical, or accept you had to shoot with a relatively high ISO – commonly 6,400 – which meant there was quite a bit of noise. Thankfully, since I’ve been back from my trip, the nice people from Lightroom have released version 12.3 which has a new an improved AI powered de-noise function. This has meant that some shots I wouldn’t normally have kept are now totally useable and in fact quite a few in this report were shot at ISO 6,400 and look great to me.
Thanks again for another memorable trip Ed and hope to see you again in 2024.
I wasn’t sure which images to choose, so I have displayed them all!
