Itchy Business

The waterbuck (Kobus ellipsiprymnus; Shona: dhumukwa; Ndebele: isidumuka) is one of Africa’s most distinctive antelope, and one of its least glamorous. That reputation is partly earned. Oily, waxy secretions coat the hide, giving the animal a dishevelled sheen and a pungent musk that most predators find deeply unappetising. Lions will take a waterbuck when hunger demands it, but rarely with enthusiasm. This female was not entirely alone. A grey heron watched from the background with the studied nonchalance of a creature that has seen everything and been impressed by nothing. The heron’s expression, if herons can have expressions, was precisely that of someone trying very hard not to stare. One of those absolutely fluke photographs considering the shutter speed.

(Canon EOS R5 Mark II / RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1 L IS USM; 1/30 sec; f/11; ISO 200; 500mm)

Picture ©2026 Andrew Field – Simply Wild Photography

Be sure to visit Andrew’s latest blog

---

Photography Quote
Dorothea Lange was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1895 and studied photography at Columbia University before moving to San Francisco, where she established a portrait studio. The Depression redirected her entirely: she abandoned the wealthy for the dispossessed, and her 1936 image Migrant Mother became one of the defining photographs of the twentieth century. Her work for the United States Farm Security Administration set the standard for documentary photography and humanised a crisis that statistics alone could not convey.

“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.” — Dorothea Lange

Stuck in darkest Africa, lost in the wild and loving it! Don’t let me out of here…

Too Close for Comfort

The wild dog (Lycaon pictus; Shona: mhumhi; Ndebele: inganyana) does not announce itself. One moment the pack is resting in the shade of a mopane thicket, and the next it is moving, purposeful and silent, towards the hunt. On this particular morning in Mana Pools, the photographer made a calculated decision. While others held position opposite the resting pack, the camera was moved some 100 metres up the track, back to a mopane trunk, waiting for the pack to pass on its way out. It was a good call. Too good, as it turned out. The dogs did not register a human presence. Elements of the pack came directly down the road, closing in without hesitation, and were at knee height before they seemed to notice. It was extraordinary. Two individuals paused in front of the lens, one holding eye contact, the lead dog framed tight against the dry grass and a sand road that had no business being in the shot. The road is there. The depth of field is imperfect, the second dog soft in the background. There was no time to adjust. Some encounters are faster than photography allows. The image is flawed. The memory is not.

(Canon EOS R5 Mark II / RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1 L IS USM; 1/2000 sec; f/5.6; ISO 200; 186mm)

Picture ©2026 Andrew Field – Simply Wild Photography

Be sure to visit Andrew’s latest blog

---

Digital Wildlife Photographic Tips
Close encounters with fast-moving wildlife can defeat even the best-prepared photographer. When a subject closes distance rapidly and unexpectedly, two problems emerge at once: the focal length becomes excessive for the working distance, and depth of field collapses at wide apertures. There is rarely time to zoom out or stop down. The lesson is pre-emptive. When positioning for a shot where animals may move toward you rather than away, set a shorter focal length than you think you need and choose a mid-range aperture, f/8 or tighter, to buy depth of field insurance. Accept that the telephoto end of your zoom is useless at two metres. The best wildlife encounters are often the most technically unforgiving. Prepare for the animal coming to you, not just for the animal going away.

Stuck in darkest Africa, lost in the wild and loving it! Don’t let me out of here…

Saddlebill at Home

The saddle-billed stork (Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis; Shona: shuramurove; Ndebele: inkonjane yomfula) is Africa’s tallest stork, and one of its most theatrical. Standing up to 150 centimetres at the shoulder, with a wingspan stretching nearly three metres, the saddlebill is built on a scale that commands attention. Pairs bond for life. Both adults build the nest together, a massive platform of sticks lodged high in the canopy of a tree near water, deep enough to cradle an incubating bird for the full 30 to 35-day egg watch. The structure in this image is substantial; years of additions, the accumulated effort of a committed pair. A white-downed chick is just visible in the nest bowl, the parent leaning in with characteristic deliberate care. Saddlebills are largely silent. They possess no syrinx — the avian vocal organ — communicating instead through bill-clattering at close quarters. The nest, then, is not a noisy place. Just a high platform of twigs, a patch of African sky, and something irreplaceable being tended.

(Canon EOS R5 Mark II / RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1 L IS USM; 1/500 sec; f/10; ISO 200; 500mm)

Picture ©2026 Andrew Field – Simply Wild Photography

Be sure to visit Andrew’s latest blog

---

Photography Quote
Nick Brandt (born 1966, England) began his photographic career in East Africa in 2001 after directing music videos and commercials in the United States. Working exclusively with medium-format film and black-and-white printing, he built an austere, elegiac body of work documenting Africa’s disappearing wildlife. His trilogy — On This Earth, A Shadow Falls, and Across the Ravaged Land — established him as one of the defining voices in large-format wildlife portraiture.

Very few photographers have ever really considered the photography of wildlife, as distinctly opposed to the genre of Wildlife Photography, as an art form. The emphasis has generally been on capturing the drama of wild animals in action, or capturing that dramatic single moment, as opposed to simply animals in the state of being. I’ve always thought this something of a wasted opportunity. — Nick Brandt

Stuck in darkest Africa, lost in the wild and loving it! Don’t let me out of here…

The Sentinel of the Sand

The white-crowned lapwing (Vanellus albiceps) is one of Africa’s most theatrical shorebirds; a bird that seems designed to be noticed. This bird belongs to the pans in Mana. It breeds on exposed sandbars and mudflats along large permanent waterways, the Zambezi, the Luangwa, the Kafue, laying two or three eggs in a barely-there ground scrape and defending them with a ferocity disproportionate to its size. Hippos, monitor lizards, humans; all receive the same treatment: a screeching, diving, unyielding assault. It does not bluff. Outside breeding season, white-crowned lapwings feed in small, companionable flocks, picking insects and invertebrates from the damp margins where water meets mud. The bird in this frame stands alone, mid-stride, bill slightly agape in the morning heat. The Zambezi floodplain stretches behind it. The wattles catch the light. A sentinel at ease — watchful, unhurried, entirely at home.

(Canon EOS R5 Mark II / RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1 L IS USM; 1/500 sec; f/10; ISO 200; 500mm)

Picture ©2026 Andrew Field – Simply Wild Photography

Be sure to visit Andrew’s latest blog

Digital Wildlife Photographic Tips
Waders and shorebirds on mudflats present a classic exposure challenge: the bright reflective mud and open sky conspire to fool your meter into underexposing the subject. When photographing birds like the white-crowned lapwing in harsh mid-morning light, dial in positive exposure compensation — typically +0.7 to +1.0 stops — to hold detail in grey plumage without blowing the white crown. Shoot from the lowest angle your position permits: getting down to eye level with a bird this size compresses the background, throws the mud into a pleasing blur, and transforms a record shot into a portrait. If the bird is calling or alert, lock focus and wait — a static bird at peak attention is almost always a better frame than one mid-stride.

Stuck in darkest Africa, lost in the wild and loving it! Don’t let me out of here…

The Sounder

The common warthog (Phacochoerus africanus; Shona: njiri; Ndebele: ingulungundu) gathers in a tightly bonded female society that naturalists call a sounder. A band this large is an uncommon sight, and it lays bare the architecture of warthog family life. At its heart sits a matriline: a sow, her grown daughters and their litters, the females staying together across generations while young boars peel away into bachelor bands. Cohesion runs deeper than habit. A sow that loses a litter will suckle another’s piglets, and orphans are readily adopted, a communal nursing called allosuckling recorded in over half of multi-female groups. Disused aardvark burrows serve as nurseries and boltholes, an adult reversing in so its tusks face the entrance. Family, here, is strategy carved into the savanna.

(Canon EOS R5 Mark II / RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1 L IS USM; 1/500 sec; f/10; ISO 200; 500mm)

Picture ©2026 Andrew Field: Simply Wild Photography

Be sure to visit Andrew’s latest blog

A-Z of Photography
Rolling Shutter describes how most mirrorless cameras read a sensor when using the silent electronic shutter: not all at once, but line by line from top to bottom, across a fraction of a second. Because each row is exposed a fraction later than the one above, anything moving quickly can be recorded at the wrong instant, producing tell-tale distortion. A sprinting warthog’s legs may lean, a bird’s beating wing can skew, and spinning blades bend into impossible curves. Flickering artificial light may also smear horizontal banding across the frame. The remedy is a faster sensor readout, as on stacked-sensor bodies, or simply switching back to the mechanical shutter for fast action. Reading top-to-bottom rather than in a single snap is what separates a clean frame from a warped one.

Stuck in darkest Africa, lost in the wild and loving it! Don’t let me out of here…

Quorum

Wild dog (Lycaon pictus; Shona: mhumhi; Ndebele: inganyana) on the move, mouth agape mid-stride, the decision to run already taken. And it was not the alpha pair’s to take alone. Before a pack commits to the hunt it gathers in an excited rally, a frenzy of circling, twittering and nuzzling. Research in the Okavango uncovered the curious mechanism that resolves it: the dogs sneeze. Each sharp exhalation counts as a vote, and once enough accumulate the pack departs. When a dominant dog initiates, a few sneezes suffice; when a subordinate rouses the group, the quorum climbs. It is egalitarian decision-making written in breath, rare among carnivores. Not merely fleet predators. A democracy on four legs, running.

Source: Walker, King, McNutt and Jordan, Proceedings of the Royal Society B (2017).

(Canon EOS R5 Mark II / RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1 L IS USM; 1/1600 sec; f/7.1; ISO 200; 500mm)

Picture ©2026 Andrew Field: Simply Wild Photography

Be sure to visit Andrew’s latest blog

Photography Quotes
Frans Lanting (born 1951 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands) earned a master’s degree in economics before moving to the United States to study environmental planning at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he turned to photography. Across three decades as a longtime National Geographic contributor he has documented wildlife from the Amazon to Antarctica, his work in Botswana’s Okavango Delta among his most celebrated. The BBC credits him with setting the standards for a whole generation of wildlife photographers.

What my eyes seek in these encounters is not just the beauty traditionally revered by wildlife photographers. The perfection I seek in my photographic composition is a means to show the strength and dignity of animals in nature.
— Frans Lanting

Stuck in darkest Africa, lost in the wild and loving it! Don’t let me out of here…

Green Repose

The hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius; Shona: mvuu; Ndebele: mvubu) hauls itself half clear of a pool carpeted in May’s floating green, and holds the pose. It is a portrait the photographer has earned many times over the years, always the same obliging lift of the head, as though the beast knows the lens has arrived. There is purpose beneath the theatre. A hippo spends its days submerged because its near hairless hide burns and cracks in open sun, and it answers the threat with chemistry of its own. The reddish secretion often mistaken for blood or sweat is neither; it is a pair of pigments, hipposudoric and norhipposudoric acid, that screen ultraviolet light and discourage infection in a body forever grazed and bitten. Weed clings to its crown like a careless garland. The most dangerous animal in Africa, wearing its salad, posing for the bush paparazzi.

(Canon EOS R5 Mark II / RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1 L IS USM; 1/500 sec; f/10; ISO 200; 500mm)

Picture ©2026 Andrew Field – Simply Wild Photography

Be sure to visit Andrew’s latest blog

Digital Wildlife Photographic Tips
A wet hippo in full sun is a deceptively hard subject. Dark, glossy hide throws back hard specular highlights while the shaded folds fall away into black, and a bright field of green floods the frame, fooling the meter into underexposing the animal. Spot meter on the lit flank, not the surrounding weed, and add a touch of positive compensation to hold detail in the skin. Watch your highlights on the histogram; once those wet sheens clip, they cannot be recovered. A faster shutter freezes the water that sheets off as the beast lifts and turns.

Stuck in darkest Africa, lost in the wild and loving it! Don’t let me out of here…

Far From Water

The black-headed heron (Ardea melanocephala; Shona: shorechena; Ndebele: itsheme) is the heron that forgot it was meant to fish. Where its cousins haunt the river margins, this one strides through dry grassland and open savanna, often far from any water. It hunts on foot, standing motionless or stalking with slow, deliberate patience before the strike. Its menu reflects the ground it chooses. Beetles, grasshoppers, scorpions and centipedes feature heavily, along with tiny mammals such as vlei rats and the occasional luckless dove. Freshly burnt veld draws it in numbers, the blackened stubble offering easy pickings among fleeing prey. By night it roosts communally, sometimes a hundred birds to a colony, then commutes considerable distances to feed by day. Perched here on a bleached snag, surveying open country rather than a pool, it makes the case plainly enough. Water, it turns out, is optional.

(Canon EOS R5 Mark II / RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1 L IS USM; 1/8000 sec; f/7.1; ISO 2500; 500mm)

Picture ©2026 Andrew Field – Simply Wild Photography

Be sure to visit Andrew’s latest blog

A-Z of Photography
Quantum Efficiency is the measure of how good a sensor is at turning light into signal. Strictly, it is the percentage of photons striking a photosite that are converted into captured electrons; a sensor with 80 per cent quantum efficiency records four of every five photons that reach it. The figure is wavelength dependent, peaking in the green around 550 nanometres, which is why manufacturers publish a curve rather than a single number. It also explains the steady march of sensor design. Early front-illuminated chips wasted light against a grid of surface wiring and managed perhaps 40 per cent. Microlenses and, later, back-illuminated layouts that moved the wiring out of the light path pushed modern sensors past 80 per cent. The practical upshot is the cleaner high-ISO files we now take for granted. This frame, made at ISO 2500, owes its usable detail to exactly that efficiency.

Stuck in darkest Africa, lost in the wild and loving it! Don’t let me out of here…

Gotcha! Breakfast is Served

The yellow-billed stork (Mycteria ibis) is a tall, unhurried wader of Africa’s shallows, its pale, pink-flushed plumage and long, gently downcurved yellow bill unmistakable along the margins of the Zambezi. Yet the bird in this photograph has just done something quietly remarkable: it has caught a fish without ever seeing it. Storks of this kind hunt by touch. They wade slowly with the bill held open and partly submerged, often stirring the mud with a paddling foot to panic hidden prey into the open. The instant a fish brushes those mandibles, the bill snaps shut — a reflex so fast it ranks among the quickest recorded in any vertebrate. Often they forage in loose company, as here, where a second stork works the same gilded water.

(Canon EOS R5 Mark II / RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1 L IS USM; 1/500 sec; f/7.1; ISO 2500; 472 mm)

Picture ©2026 Andrew Field – Simply Wild Photography

Digital Wildlife Photographic Tips
A picture like this one is won in the seconds before the catch, not after it. A foraging stork telegraphs its strike: the slow wade quickens, the neck draws back into a shallow kink, and the eye fixes on the water. Learn that body language and you can be ready. Pre-focus on the bird, set a fast shutter (1/2000 sec or quicker) to freeze the spray, and switch to continuous autofocus with a high-speed burst. Then keep shooting through the moment — the fish often shows for only a single frame. Patience, framed in advance, beats reflexes every time.

Stuck in darkest Africa, lost in the wild and loving it! Don’t let me out of here…