Evening Game Drive

Each day, at 4:30 pm, the lodge has a game drive (safari?) for the guests, so it wasn't just our group in the jeep. You have a clear view left, right, and front, so it would be easy to spot any animals and photograph them. This was great in theory, but of course not so simple when everyone is adjusting their position to photograph a single group of animals. I missed a number of opportunities because of various heads, cameras, lenses, and vehicle metalwork jumping into view. I did say this wouldn't be easy.

The first stop was the typical tourist section: feeding ostriches pellets from your hand. Everyone was apprehensive, of course, believing the loss of fingers was imminent, but it was fine and although they pecked with some force, no fingers were lost.

The driver then went in search of animals, and just like in Jurassic Park when the children complain there are no dinosaurs, it seemed just like that now. After a while, we were rewarded with numerous views of a variety of animals' bottoms and the belief they had been trained to look in the other direction immediately upon spotting a camera. I have lots of rear-end photos on mine!

We did find animals, plenty of them, including springbok, kudu, wildebeest, giraffe, and rhinos. I was so busy trying to photograph them that I neglected to use my phone so I'll try and remember next time, as there are more game drives planned.

I definitely enjoyed this first forage into wildlife photography and felt it was a good practice session. I found it hard to impossible to frame shots from the moving vehicle and I was too slow taking some, so the driver moved off before I pressed the shutter. There's a learning curve here. I need to learn fast.Read more