Safaris Into Africa with Clive Arnold: March 2018

I took a safari into the Amboseli National Park in October 2017. Just before we went out for our afternoon game drive we heard a terrible ruckus and as always we went to investigate. There were 3 male baboons fighting and competing to attain, and maintain, dominance. The fight went on for over 20 mins with dust and saliva flying everywhere (except onto us of course). Sadly they eventually disappeared into a river bed, unfortunately for us, we were unable to witness the completion of this behaviour. I was so disappointed we could not follow them. It is not often that we get to experience an aggressive attack like this.I was lucky I had my 500mm lens set at 1\2000 sec no tripod so there was a bit of camera shake, at this time I was about 80 mts away, but was happy with the pics.

This is one of the reasons why I love the Birthing Safari as I have off road permits for our vehicles which allows us to follow these animals and get some amazing shots respecting the ecosystem at all times of course. But in this instance we enjoyed the experience and felt satisfied that we were allowed to witness this at all.

I have always found photographing primates all over Africa fascinating, they are either fighting, playing, doing something out of the ordinary or making you laugh. One of my "must do's" is to set and check all cameras before one goes out to photograph. If I plan shooting wild life, fast moving subjects with the aim to freeze the animals or birds, I either set my camera on manual or use shutter-priority, giving you the ideal exposure mode to use when you're shooting subjects that require careful choice of shutter speed to control motion. In saying this if you want to get a little more creative with your images of moving subjects, try using a slower shutter speed to blur their movements, its also the ideal mode for panning. If you need experience at this, then what I suggest is to practice in a city or a town on moving vehicles, or motor bikes or people running.