Photographic Safaris in Africa | Africa Travel Newsletter

by Patrick Madden, 1 May 2006

Whether you're a snap-happy tourist or a professional travelling photographer, a camera is the one essential accessory for any holiday.

This is especially true of holidays in Africa, a continent whose landscapes, people, and wildlife have a profound and candid allure that recommends them particularly to film.

But because the eye is so much more adaptable to atmospheric conditions than the camera, natural scenes can look much better to the human gaze than they turn out on film. It's a tricky task to take good photographs, and all too easy to take bad ones, especially in the variable and often extreme conditions that prevail in Africa.

This article is a guide to the various kinds of pictures that you can take on your holiday in Africa: landscapes, sunsets, people and wildlife photographs - when to take them, how to take them, and where in Africa to look for them.

Wildlife

Whether wild or tame, animals make great photographic subjects. As products of evolution, their forms demonstrate the latest synthesis of modern functionality and design. Their unselfconsciousness evokes a sense of wonder in the human observer, and the unapologetic intent in their gaze is a powerful reminder of our own primal origins.

By some miracle of nature, all wild animals seem to enjoy equal potential as attractive photographic subjects - the lithe, streamlined cheetah and the portly, decadent hippo just the same. A notable exception to this rule is the hyena. All but the most ambitious photographers should studiously avoid using hyenas as subjects.

However beautiful, wild animals are notoriously uncooperative and, as an added inconvenience, live in the wild. One of the greatest challenges in wildlife photography lies in capturing the animal on film, and not the leaf in front of the animal. Accurate focus is crucial, as is a suitable angle on your subject. If you want excellent photographs, be innovative, energetic and patient in pursuing original angles and accurate focus.

A few technical points are worth considering. Unless they are sleeping (and photographs of sleeping animals are generally unimpressive) animals are always moving. The perfect shot of a sprinting cheetah may be overambitious, but a shot of a springbok in mid-pronk is doable. Still, to capture an excellent shot, in addition to sharp focus and a lucky angle, you'll also need quick reflexes and a camera with a rapid shutter-release.

The best place to take pictures of wildlife is Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, and the best place to stay there is Ngorongoro Crater Lodge. But for the big cats, you won't do better than the Lion Sands River Lodge in the Sabi Sand Private Game Reserve in South Africa.

Landscapes

Landscapes have a peculiar evocative power that arises from their stillness, but stillness on film can be majestic, or it can be boring. It's very hard to capture stillness in a way that is striking. Good landscape photography is supremely difficult.

The photographer's main tool in shooting good landscapes is composition. Objects in the foreground or the background can be used to arresting effect. The lush elegance of green, rolling hills can be contrasted with the steel austerity of an electricity pylon, for example. A unifying factor in all great landscape photography is aesthetically stimulating composition.

In all photography, and particularly in landscape photography, an important factor is lighting. At midday the sun's light is harsh and direct; shadows are small, contrast is low. The best times for capturing landscapes (and almost anything else) are the early morning and the late afternoon or evening.

You can compensate for unforgiving lighting by adjusting the exposure the shutter speed and the aperture of the lens and, in some digital cameras, the white-balance of the shot. If you've a digital camera, experiment with different settings to discover the effects of these adjustments. Check the brief technical summary at the end of this article to discover the lighting and focus effects of aperture, exposure, and film speed adjustments.

Just about any place in Africa will serve up excellent opportunities for landscape photography, but we can recommend some particularly good spots. For Sossusvlei in Namibia, try the Wolwedans Dunes Lodge. For the Okavango Delta in Botswana, the Chief's Camp can't be beaten. And for the Tanzanian Serengeti, the Grumeti River Camp is an excellent bet.

Sunsets

Sunset photography, a subset of landscape photography, is probably the easiest way to make beautiful pictures. The rich colours and symbolism of sunsets give them something approaching a mystical significance in the human psyche. The sun sets every day, but each sunset is markedly different, and they vary greatly between different places on Earth.

The ubiquity of the sunset photograph and the apparent ease with which they are created has caused this kind of picture to be regarded somewhat cynically by experienced photographers. Although almost all sunset pictures are pretty, very few are outstandingly gorgeous, and it is as difficult to create an excellent sunset photograph as it is to create any other.

The elements play a crucial role in determining the potential for an excellent sunset photo. If it's overcast, for example, chances are the sunset won't be worth pointing a lens at. And even when it's not, you have to choose your evening carefully. Unless your camera has an excellent zoom function, a large portion of the dusk sky needs to be interesting to allow an excellent sunset photo.

When conditions are right, as with all landscape photography you need to consider composition. Should the sun be dead centre, or to one side? Be decisive: a sun that's ever-so-slightly off centre is more likely to appear irritating than radically alternative. If the sun is setting over water, include as much of the water or the sky as makes the photo as interesting as possible.

A brief note on moon photography: as a photographic subject, the moon is the sun's neglected cousin, but moon photographs can be just as evocative as sunset shots. Remember to lengthen the exposure at night (you'll probably need to use a tripod) but not to longer than eight seconds. Any longer, and the motion of the moon will cause an elongated image, not a sphere.

The eastern shore of Lake Malawi is a Mecca for African sunset photographers, where the Kaya Mawa Lodge is a superb choice of accommodation. Alternatively, Cape Town is where it's at. Table Mountain at sunset is a notable and deserved classic, and the view from the city's Atlantic beaches at sunset is second to none. Stay at Bridge House, you won't be disappointed.

People

High on travellers' lists of their favourite things about any particular trip are their experiences of the people in the places they visit. Experiences of foreign cultures are novel and eye-opening events; they remind us that we are far from home.

But when we get home, we find it hard to communicate the fascination and wonder of our experiences to people who haven't shared them first-hand. One way to communicate the experience more directly, to give someone at least a small glimpse of what we have experienced, is through photography.

Good photographs of people in their natural environments convey something evocative about the person and their environment to anyone who looks at the picture. Anyone can take a snapshot of a situation, but to make a communicative photograph requires skill.

Among the most useful techniques is to identify closely with a scenario. Whether for a few minutes or a few days, try to immerse yourself in the cultures and the situations you encounter. This will lead you towards perspectives that communicate something about the environment and the people you experienced.

Considerations of colour are very important in photographing people and cultures. Some cultures are inseparable from their colours: the Maasai from their red cloth, for example, or the Himba from the brown of their skin and the desert sand.

In other scenarios the stark contrast and simplicity of black and white makes for more effective portrayals, and often also for striking social statements. Consider what aspect of a person, situation, or culture makes the greatest impression on you, and try to convey that in your photograph.

Good environments for photographing people and cultures abound in Africa, just step off the beaten track and there you'll be. One or two specific locations stand out, however. The beautiful Stone Town in Zanzibar is a melange of colours and spices, and gem of photographic opportunities. Stay at the Zanzibar Serena Inn. Alternatively, the culture of the Himba people in dry northern Namibia is a fascinating one.