A year of adventure

in the wilds of Africa…

Year in Zambia

In 2012, my wife Natalie and I moved to Zambia to embark on a year-long adventure that would change our lives. Nat is a doctor and would spend the year working in a rural hospital near the border of Mozambique and Malawi. You can read more about her experiences in her blog from the year. I bought a 4×4 vehicle so that I would have the freedom to explore and take photographs.

We were a four-hour drive from South Luangwa National Park, a place that would come to feel like my second home. I witnessed the incredible seasonal transformation that the Luangwa Valley underwent, from the parched dry season to the verdant “emerald” season and back again. I was stunned by how quickly the Valley changed from week to week – no two visits were the same.

Some areas flood completely in the wet season.

The prolonged time I was able to spend in the field, allowed me to work towards some long-term goals. Firstly, I wanted to use BeetleCam to capture an intimate perspective of leopards and African wild dogs – two species that the Luangwa Valley is rightly renowned for.

During the course of the year, I got to know one particular female leopard and her cubs very well. The cubs were about 9 months old when I first met them. One of the cubs was particularly bold and would often try to play with BeetleCam. The time I spent with those leopards, watching the cubs grow up over the course of the year, are some of my fondest memories from the period.

Leopards, South Luangwa, 2013

I had never photographed African wild dogs and so I was keen to track them down in South Luangwa. It took around 3 months of searching before I finally bumped into them. It was at the end of the dry season, and they were in a flat, open area, perfect for BeetleCam. I deployed the buggy and took one of my favourite images, capturing the dogs’ inquisitive personalities. Later in the year, I would also have the opportunity to photograph wild dogs in North Luangwa and down in Zimbabwe.

African Wild Dogs, South Luangwa, 2012

In addition to using BeetleCam, I also had the goal of getting to grips with DSLR camera trap photography once and for all. I had previously experimented with equipment that was available but found nothing that worked the way I wanted. I therefore started developing my own camera trap sensors, based on the Passive Infrared sensors used in security devices. After much tinkering and testing, I settled on a design that was effective and I started to capture my first decent camera trap photographs. It was the start of my journey into a field of wildlife photography that I am still exploring today.

Porcupine

Porcupine photographed with a camera trap.

In between trips to the Luangwa Valley, I also found time to explore other parts of Zambia, such as Victoria Falls, Lower Zambezi National Park and Busanga Plains in Kafue National Park.

Devil’s Cataract

Victoria Falls, 2013

I also visited Kasanka National Park to photograph the fruit bat migration and witnessed the awe-inspiring spectacle of 10 million bats descending on a tiny patch of forest. Apparently, it is the largest migration of mammals anywhere on the planet.

Kasanka Bats

Fruit Bat Migration, Kasanka National Park, 2012

I didn’t find time to visit Liuwa Plain National Park during the year, but was able to return to Zambia twice in 2015 to spend a total of around two months there.

Lion, Kafue National Park, 2013

The amount of time I was able to spend in the Zambia’s National Parks was only possible thanks to the generous support of the safari operators that I partnered with, in particular, The Bushcamp Company in South Luangwa and Norman Carr Safaris in South Luangwa, Lower Zambezi and Liuwa Plain.

More Photos

You can browse galleries of my favourite images from Zambia here:

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