A New Experience

Kenya, in January, was my first safari. My first encounter with wildlife photography. Talk about jumping in at the deep end.

Arrival was accompanied, if I’m honest, with a degree of culture shock — because this was a genuinely new part of the world to experience. Sure, trips to Morocco, Egypt and the Nile suggest a reasonable exposure to Africa, but there’s always something intriguing and tantalising about a truly new destination that excites me and makes me unashamedly quiet to start with. 

Africa is a big place — and it was immediately obvious that this was different to anywhere we had been in Africa. Added to this was a very real photographic anxiety and imposter syndrome — a genuine “all the gear and no idea” moment. What if I mucked it all up and came home with blurry photographs of half a lion, missed the racing cheetah completely or couldn’t focus on an elephant?

Was I about to undertake a very expensive mistake…

We had a very early start to catch the flight from Wilson Airport — fully awake and, I’ll admit, quietly nervous with anticipation. We climbed into the twelve-seater aircraft and flew to Amboseli, completely unaware of what was about to unfold.

The early morning view from the aircraft as we approached Amboseli

Best arrival ever - kindness and awe,,,
The landing was comfortable, and we were met by our guide, Albert — who had, with disarming thoughtfulness, set out an amazing linen draped welcome table: coffee, tea, water, home-made cookies, and our own personalised water bottles with name labels. In the bush. On a landing strip. I was charmed immediately by his kind greeting..

Without further ado, within our first few sentences, Albert came out straight and asked me what my photographic aims were for the four days, and assured me he would do his very best to assist. Talk about being made to feel at home...!

Albert and the best greeting ever!

As Albert was speaking, I was quietly taking in my surroundings — a zebra first, then almost immediately an elephant perhaps a hundred metres away, and behind it, stunningly, the unmistakable snow-capped silhouette of Mount Kilimanjaro - poking above the last vapes of the early morning mist that we had seen so glorious to behold from within our aircraft on our landing approach. I stopped mid-sentence.

... and this was just leaving the airfield...!

Albert’s tracking skills were — and I don’t use this lightly — incredible. Yet without any of them, we found ourselves driving along the road away from the landing strip with  a line of elephants next to the road, Kilimanjaro as backdrop, and the experiences came thick and fast thereafter. Awe and wonder overwhelming everything.

Imposter Syndrome

The imposter syndrome was truly hitting me now - and I found myself wondering if I could manage this new sort of photography.

And then the déjà-vu hit me as I mentioned in the last post.

I was suddenly transported back to a photography tour I’d taken with Colin Prior in Scotland almost ten years previously. Colin had championed the importance of determining the one “priority setting” for each image — is it shutter speed, aperture, or ISO? Which one matters most right now, for this subject, in this light? Dial it in and work around it.

I also heard certain people from my military past say (occasionally shout!) "KISS" - Keep It Simple Stupid.So that's what I did - I kept it simple.

After coming back from Kenya I read this quote and all of a sudden it made perfect sense......

"Jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down"

Ray Bradbury

Black-shouldered Kite - my first encounter with bird photography - I was building my wings....!

Suddenly, it all clicked — pun entirely deliberate — into place. It's a strange but wonderful feeling to know that you're falling off the cliff, but the wings on your back are getting bigger each time the shutter clicks.

My inner imposter, like Elvis, left the building. I knew what I was doing and I felt truly at home. At least roughly. And by the end of the safari, considerably more than roughly.

We’re not going to talk camera settings, let’s talk about the wildlife. Because that, truly, is the stunning part… If you want settings - drop me a DM.

Cheetahs — A Coalition in the long grass

Amboseli, it turns out, is elephant-rich safari land — you feel this the moment you land, quite honestly. But it wasn't the elephants that stole the early running for me. It was the cheetahs.

Over the four days we were lucky enough to see eleven cheetahs in total. Eleven! The collective noun for a group of cheetah is a coalition.

Mother Cheetah basking in late afternoon sunlight as her cubs feed from her latest kill

Our first coalition was a mother and her cubs, tucked into a patch of vegetation, working through a meal Mum had won and then dragged out of sight — deliberately, purposefully, out of view of the competition. In Amboseli that competition is mostly hyena rather than lion, since lion numbers here are comparatively low. But multiple hyena is reason enough to "eat fast and eat hidden". Mum used dust to cover bodily fluids from the kill - reducing the potential for smells to give away the coalition's position.

Subadult coalition - in between their play and folling about

Another coalition of five appeared out of nowhere a couple of days later - this time the four younger cubs were more "sub-adult" rather than cubs. They were obviously interested in the hunt - we saw a failed attempt - but they were still young enoiugh to be playful amongst themselves - a true joy to see.

An elephant called TJ — walking in a giant's shadow

Day two took us into one of Amboseli's restricted conservancies, in search of TJ — an enormous bull elephant with tusks already beginning to sweep the ground in that unmistakable "super tusker" way.

TJ - tide marks visible from a recent swim!

TJ's best mate was a bull called Craig — famed across Amboseli for his colossal, ground-brushing tusks and his extraordinary calm around people — but sadly he had died only three weeks before we arrived, on 3 January, at the grand old age of fifty-four. Natural causes, in the end, from what I can glean from reports at the time — his teeth had simply worn beyond use, as happens to the oldest elephants once they're through their final set of molars. A sad time - he was a genuinely great animal.

Craig's tusks, by the way, weighed around 45 kilograms each and stretched to roughly 2.1 metres — ground-sweeping in the most literal sense imaginable. Craig wasn't just locally loved either — he'd been a conservation icon across Kenya, and had fronted a beer brand since 2021. His story even made the BBC News.

With his death, only nine known super tuskers now remain in the whole of Amboseli — a sobering number when you say it out loud.

His loss left a real gap — and not just among the guides and researchers who'd tracked him for decades. There's good evidence elephants grieve. Watching TJ that day, and hearing how the humans around him spoke of Craig, it was hard not to feel that the mourning was not restricted to humans

Quick note on spelling before I go further, because I want to get this right: I'm using Maasai for the people, and Masai for the place — Masai Mara, specifically, where "Mara" translates to "spotted," describing how the savannah looks from a distance, dotted with short, bushy acacia trees. The people spell their own name Maasai; Masai is the older, colonial-era version that stuck to the maps. Small distinction, but it matters, so there it is.

The Hunt for TJ

Right — finding TJ. This was an adventure in its own right, and nothing at all like a trip to the zoo, where you simply walk to the enclosure and there's your animal, obligingly on display. TJ had to be found.

Albert had enrolled the help of another Maasai guide, who in turn had brought in at least two others — I suspect there were more names on that network than I ever learned. These guides had gone out on motorbikes before six in the morning, ie before we'd even had our early wake up coffee, scouting on our behalf. By the time we arrived two or three hours later, they had a rough idea of where TJ might be.

"Rough idea" turned out to be an accurate description. This was not an easy ride. We went properly through the bush — not along it, not around it, but through it — and the Land Cruiser earned every inch of its reputation as one of the toughest overland vehicles on the planet. I've a newfound respect for that machine.

And then — there he was. TJ, alongside a younger elephant, calmly chewing his way through a few unfortunate trees. What a spectacle. This, unmistakably, was a super tusker — and no photograph I'd seen beforehand had quite prepared me for the scale of him in person.

Then Albert, with the kind of skill that only comes from years of doing what he does, manoeuvred us into position — TJ in the foreground, Kilimanjaro rising behind him. I had said at our meeting athe airstrip that an elephant / Kilimanjaro combo picture was my dream for the whole safari. He listened and manoevred without any prompting. Testament to his attention to detail. My admiration for his skills soared - he himself was invested too - he was keen to encourage me to "get the picture" (his words at the very moment) - his enthusiasm was infectious.

This was it - THE image I hoped to get, expecting no chance of success and it happened on Day 2...!

Day two. Full first day in the area. And there it was.

Amboseli's Secrets — and a Moment of Flow
Amboseli kept revealing its secrets to us — and by the end of our four day stay - it was hard to imagine we could possibly leave. At the same time we'd only managed to spot four lions in total, all at distance, and while everything else we'd seen had been genuinely incredible, the thought of lions and leopards up close was still beckoning, somewhere out there in the days ahead.

Hippo and cubs after a dip in the lake

The photography itself, though, was becoming increasingly fun — increasingly instinctive, too.
One of the most exhilarating images I took was entirely unexpected and the subject was completely unpredicted and not really on my pre-planned image list.

It was on our first full day. We'd spent most of the day searching — for TJ, for cheetah, with plenty in between — when we came across a troop of monkeys. A mum and suckling baby caught my eye first, it was a sweet image yet unremarkable. Then, to their left, another mum and baby — this pair separated as we watched, the baby scrambling onto a thorny bush just alongside Mum. Uncomfortable with the thorns,  it was obvious the little one was about to jump back across.

So I stayed. Got my focus locked. Quietly — almost under my breath — willed the baby to jump.

My flying Vervet baby monkey...!

And when it did, and I caught the shot, I remember that precise feeling of being entirely in the zone, in flow, nothing else existing. Just the baby, the leap, and the shutter. It made me feel great that I had anticipated behaviour - something that I had read about pre-travel and yet never quite appreciating the way that anticipation could make the shot...... 

A Discovery — Sharing the Shot

This is where I stumbled onto something that ended up improving the whole safari experience, dramatically. The jumping monkey shot wasn't going to be National Geographic material, but I was proud of it — and seconds after taking it, I showed the image to Albert through the camera's viewfinder itself, rather than the LCD screen, which is next to useless in bright safari light.

The viewfinder let me crop the image well, so Albert could actually see the baby mid-leap, sharp and framed exactly as I'd caught it.

He laughed. He genuinely smiled.

And that's when it clicked — showing Albert the good captures might help him feel part of them. So I started doing it regularly, for the good shots, right there in the viewfinder, particularly those shots that weren’t anticipated.

It changed something. Albert had already been guiding brilliantly — but by showing him the results of his efforts, the product of his skill (and I mean skill: I'd sometimes guide him to the nearest six inches on where to stop the wagon, and he'd nail it every time), it seemed to spur him on further still.

The two of us became a team, rather than driver and passenger. He was invested in the shot taking, not just the guiding and sighting.

I still smile at this one - I knew I was starting to get the hang of it when I saw this in the viewfinder...

I kept the habit up when we moved on to the Masai Mara with our guide there, Isaac — who responded equally well to the visual reward. Something in it seemed universal: show a guide the fruits of his own expertise, and watch him lean in even harder.

One Last Thing About Albert — The Serval

Before I close out this post and move on to the Mara, one more Albert story — because it deserves its own moment, and amazingly, it happened before we'd even been in the Land Cruiser for an hour.

We'd just landed at the airstrip, and within minutes we'd already seen zebra, elephants, wildebeest — my eyes were calibrated to that scale, that range, that whole "expectation of vision" you naturally settle into on your first safari drive. Big animals, open plains, obvious sightings.

Then Albert quickly and quietly stopped the Land Cruiser. He pointed to a spot on the ground, three metres or so off, on the passenger side.

"Huh....???" I whispered.
"There," he whispered back - pointing carefully.
And then I saw it.
A serval — a small cat, tiny compared to everything we'd just been looking at, tucked into the vegetation almost invisibly.

Just incredible - how did he see this...?

Servals are rare enough that plenty of people safari for years and never glimpse one. Certainly not see one at such a close distance.

Now that's a guide. If there was ever a way to introduce yourself and your skill in one moment, that was it. The level of attention to tracking detail — spotting something that small, that camouflaged, that close, that disguised, whilst scanning the savannah from the wagon to the horizon travelling at 20km/h — was genuinely stunning. These guys know their stuff, and Albert had proven it before we'd even reached our first proper stop.

Top Tip: Share the Shot

Show your guide the good ones. Not on the LCD screen — useless in bright light — but through the viewfinder itself, zoomed right in. It takes ten seconds, and it changes everything. Your guide's skill got you into position; let them see what that skill produced. I did this with Albert from day two onwards, and later with Isaac in the Mara, and in both locations it turned a driver-and-passenger dynamic into a genuine team. Try it — the reaction alone is worth it.

Closing the Post

Amboseli had one more day yet to give, but for now, that's where I'll leave this chapter. Next time — the Masai Mara, and a whole new chapter of this Kenyan adventure.

Saying goodbye from Amboseli

Happy travelling and happy shooting! If any of this post has conjured up any questions in your mind from the point of view of geography, wildlife or technique, please get in touch.

Warm regards,

Colin