Hunting for the iconic shot

September 10, 2017

We promised ourselves a safari experience. Four weeks into our stay here, I am delighted to say that Zambia has well and truly delivered. And as we also promised to deliver on the photography that inevitably accompanies it, here we go.

There are a certain set of connotations that I'm sure many people have with the word 'safari'. From the Arabic via Swahili, the term was used for any kind of journey, or travel. This encompassed trading and slavery expeditions, as well as hunting and exploration. The 20th century colonial style familiar from films and literature, involves much canvas, khaki and regaling each other with tales of derring-do around the fire after a day of brisk marching (with plenty of local people to carry all the luxuries of home for you).

I did, though, discover that khaki has a purpose. Firstly, elephants are rather blind, and an angry elephant chasing a person on foot can be fooled by a fairly camouflaged figure standing still (this was not from first hand experience, by the way). In addition, tsetse flies are not drawn to khaki in the same way that they are to greys and blues (which resemble the hide of their usual prey, beasts such as water buffalo and wildebeest). And even though they rarely transmit sleeping sickness to humans (it is largely a disease of cattle), they are still quite bitey so I did regret my spurning the cliche of khaki when packing for the trip.

Luxury photographic safaris for tourists were popularised in the 1970s in Kruger National Park, and have really become the expected standard. Our trip to South Luangwa National Park was no exception - we stayed in a beautiful thatched roof house with whitewashed walls and an expansive deck overlooking the retreating river (it is currently the dry season). Two pods of hippos lay equidistant from the deck, so we could sip gin and tonic in the evening and listen to a muddy chorus of rumbles and grunts as they departed for nocturnal grazing on land.

The daily routine: 5:30 wakeup and breakfast; game drive with tea stop at around 10am; return for early lunch at 11:30 and relaxing time; afternoon tea at 3:30pm before afternoon game drive with a stop for sundowners (standard: G&T), then spotlighting after sunset; return to house for excellent three course dinner.

We got lucky on our first morning, with sightings of the usual - impala, puku, zebra, warthogs - along with groups (journeys) of giraffes and a leopard in a tree with her cub and a fresh kill from the previous night. We later saw a hyena at the base of that tree vainly hoping for some scraps, and further along, a resting female lion. Elephants are (relatively) plentiful here and wander through the camp, sometimes delaying the staff on their way from one building to another.

On another drive we saw two male lions, comatose with full bellies and lying in the shade. Driving a large vehicle right up beside them bothered them not at all, and we even got used to the idea after a while, though we were careful not to make too many sudden or unpredictable noises (a tough call for Frankie). Later in the week we were lucky enough to cross paths with a small group of wild dogs, and we set off on a brisk run to drive around the river bed to where they would emerge and settle down for a session of play and resting in the shade for the day.

On one of our night-time drives, our guide, Jason, and spotter, Michael, managed to find a leopard twice as she ambled out on her evening hunt. They knew her territory, and that she had twin cubs to feed. We followed her along a gully for a time, and she was quite content to let us rumble along beside her. Apparently in the 1980s, you could almost be guaranteed of seeing a kill (and then lion or hyena coming in to snatch it), as the animals had become so habituated that they used the vehicle light and noise regularly to confuse the impala by covering their approach. The guides obviously encouraged it by their behaviour too, and a vicious cycle ensued until they started agreeing to back off and not help the leopard with their hunt (I'm not sure how many still do that). I was surprisingly excited about the prospect of seeing blood and gore (Frankie had fallen asleep by this point), but the park closing time of 8pm forced us to give up and cross the river back to camp.

The following morning we found her again, looking fat and happy with a half impala wedged in the fork of a sausage tree. Leopard: 1. Impala: 0.

Had to put down the G&T for this

Ex buffalo

Baobab with buffalo weaver nests

A trip, or a journey?

My photographic instincts were largely to fire off as many shots as possible, in the hope of pure luck delivering a good shot. Even as the week progressed, it was hard not to see an elephant and instantly reach for the shutter, rather than enjoy simply watching. My lens envy had already been activated by colleagues with much more impressive gear than mine, but having seen a local professional photographer with a lens that seemed to be close to half a metre in length (in the eye of this beholder at least), I decided that I could hardly compete. The photographs are just to consolidate the memories, I said.

But clearly my memories were also shaping my photos, as I found that I was unconsciously replicating animal portraiture of past documentaries and photographic displays. Yawning hippo: tick. Stately lion: tick. Still, I am not complaining. And maybe I'll just have to go back, to get that truly original shot that no-one has ever taken before.