We just finished up with our first group on our Mara/Amboseli safari. It was a private adventure with the Marin Photography Club out of California. Several of the members have travelled with me before so it was a mix of old and new friends. I will miss them all as we really did have a lot of fun together.
For the Mara portion, I don’t even know where to start- we had so many great sightings. And I have to say it again, the Mara delivers, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist <wink> to figure that out!
On our first outing we had a male leopard climbing up a tree to its previously killed prey. There were several more leopard and cheetah sightings during the trip but the stars of the show this year were the small lion cubs. Everyone loved photographing them play and interact… such a treat!
One of my favorite photo opportunities included two lionesses from the Fig Tree pride with six small cubs crossing the river. I have never seen the little ones swim across the river. Some jumped right in, while others had to be coaxed by mama. Once across, they played on the sand and enjoyed a day at the beach, complete with cubs falling into hippo footprints and cozying up to each other. I felt so blessed to be able to watch them interact with each other. I do have a shot of a cub jumping into the water and making a big splash-I’ll share that one later.
In the Mara, we have switched to a new camp, but we are still using the same main drivers that we have had for 10 years, yes, it’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years of epic safaris. I have treasured each and every one of them.
Lion paws
This one had a haunting look straight out of camera that I liked so I thought I’d share it.
We had so much fun at a Jackal de in the early morning light. I especially liked this one with the adult’s arm around the pup.
After the Mara we headed to Amboseli. Our mission there was to photograph elephants and boy did we clean up. Straight away we found Michael (one of the big tuskers) eating by the road, we had a ringside seat for some great behavior shots. We also had the opportunity to visit with Craig (the oldest tusker); we watched as he walked to a small pond and drank from it— fabulous! I’ll share some of those images later, but I did want to share a creative edit (below)from our evening with Craig.
I replaced the sky but the rest is real. My sky was similar but without clouds and a blown out sun—it was a grab shot. “Craig at last light”
In addition to the big tuskers, we had lots of dry lake bed photography with herds of elephants coming right at us. It’s interesting to watch as the matriarchs lead the way for their group. The tiny babies would stop shortly for a quick gulp of milk as they made their way to the marshy areas.
Sunrise and sunset photos did not disappoint. Our last evening was spent photographing a giraffe on the horizon with tons of dust kissed by the sun’s last rays.
Our last evening on the dry lake bed.
We photographed the giraffe until the very last bit of ight.
During our time in Amboseli we even spotted two Honey badgers early one morning, which is a pretty rare sighting. The images were extremely noisy, I may share one after applying some heavy duty noise reduction to it.
Low-key Cheetah capture on grass that had been intentionally burned.
High-key Cheetah capture
High -key herd shot of Impalas
Female Common eland in soft light with birds.
I wanted to share this shot from Amboseli as we had almost zero Wildebeest in the Mara and so many in Amboseli. We usually se large herds in the Mara in September.
Topi in a white sun ball at sunset.
On our last morning we had a final game drive followed by fresh omelets to order. We said our goodbyes to our drivers/guides and boarded our charter flight back to Nairobi. I miss everyone already…big hugs to all.