On our last morning, we went for a short game drive before returning to 4 Rivers camp to pack for our flight home.
The young male leopard we had seen on a previous day, was lying out in the open on a termite mound, watching the passing giraffes, giving us ample photo opportunities, before disappearing into the trees
There was some smoke in the air from grass fires, resulting in a hazy photo of the Southern Ground Hornbill in flight.
Thus came to an end our amazing 10 days in the Okavango Delta, having achieved our main objective of seeing and photographing the Painted Wolves, but also so much more, truly an awe inspiring experience of God’s wonderful creation. It is so sad that so many of the wonderful animals we saw, are on the Vulnerable, Endangered or even Critically Endangered lists. As humans, we really should take our responsibility towards the world we live in more seriously and work harder towards protection and conservation of these wonderful animals that we are privileged to share the earth with.
Many thanks to Grant Atkinson for the invaluable input, both in the planning phase and during the trip itself. Without your input, many of the great photos and videos we got, would not have been possible.
Joanne at Biggestleaf Travel, who did our bookings, ensured that we had smooth sailing all the way with no drama and hitches.
Kwando Safaris camps where we stayed, Pom Pom, Splash and 4 Rivers, certainly lived up to their promise of delivering a “a high-quality wildlife experience”.
Our guides and trackers were awesome, going out of their way to get us the sightings and then patiently positioning and repositioning the vehicles to get us the best angles for our photos. I remain amazed at their ability to spot the animals at a distance, when often all I could see was bushes.
Finally, a few tips for those who may be planning a similar trip:
The Okavango is a magical place and absolutely worth a visit. If you just want to get the sightings and not really interested in photography, I am sure you will get as many sightings as we did, if not more, by simply booking a trip to these awesome destinations which we visited. However, if you want to get the photos, you really should book a dedicated photography safari with someone like Grant Atkinson who knows the area, animal behaviour and photographic technique and will assist you to get the best shots possible. This will also allow you to spend enough time with the animals in order to give you the best photo opportunities. Many times we saw other vehicles arrive at a sighting, stay 10-15 minutes and then depart, while we stayed for the photos.
In order to keep the trip somewhat affordable, we went in the “Low Season” but from a photographer’s perspective this might actually be preferable because the grass is shorter, there is less water, so certain areas which are not accessible in flood season, were accessible to us, there are fewer vehicles around to ruin your shots and the occasional clouds in the sky did assist with better light for photography.
On this trip I used two Sony A1 camera bodies with respectively a 600mm f/4 lens (44% of my shots) and a 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens (55%). I also had along a 24-105mm lens which I used for about 1%, mainly a few sunset photos.
For her video, Liana had two Sony A7IV camera bodies with Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 lens and Tamron 150-500mm f/5-6.7 as well as a GoPro Hero 11
For low angle shots we both used Insta360 selfie sticks for lowering the cameras from the vehicles and I used a Sony RMT-P1BT Wireless Remote Commander for remote shutter release, as recommended to us by Grant.
With the weight of the camera gear, we had to book a “freight seat” on all our internal flights in Botswana in small planes.
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To see the posts detailing the rest of our trip, please visit my Archives page and follow the links from there.
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Etienne's Camera 
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