Botswana Photo Tour - Lions and their cubs crossing a river

It was fairly early in the morning as we came across a family of lion who were hanging out along a rivers edge. We were all excited to see the cubs and started taking photos right away. Our guide pulled up nice and close so that we could get some nice shots of the mothers and cubs interacting, and we were treated to some great playful moments.

I was taking photos of the female with the one playing cub when the adult female turned around to check on one of her other cubs. It was great morning sunlight on their faces and I thought I had the best shot of the morning...

...but as I kept shooting with my Canon 1D X Mark II and Canon 100-400mm lens, mom decided to grab onto the tail of the oncoming cub, while the other cub looked with this great expression. This is one of my favorite photos from the Botswana trip.

We sat there photographing the cubs for a while, when all of a sudden, they all started moving towards the water.

I have seen many lions in Africa, but never seen them in the water. I watched as this cub prepared to jump across a small stream of water.

I waited for the jump and fired off a couple of shots.

The large female crossed the larger flowing river and waited to make sure that each of the cubs would successfully make their way from one side to the other.

You can see the one cub climbing up the rivers edge as mom watched on. Our guide told us that the adults were concerned about crocodiles in the water.

These little cubs were so cute.

I watched as this one cub walked towards the flowing river and reminded our guests to shoot wide and include the great reflection in the water.

Many of the other lions came over and joined the one cub, giving us an even better reflection shot. All of us were excited to photograph this scene.

We were driving back to our lodge when our guide spotted this owl in one of the nearby trees. We were happy to get a nice shot of the owl in really nice light.

At the end of the day, we had a sundowner at the edge of this water hole filled with hippos. It was fun to photograph the sunset with the camera in one hand and a cold gin and tonic in the other hand.

After our sundowner, we packed up the vehicles and made our way back towards our lodge. On the drive back, we saw a couple of male lions hanging out.

I reminded our group to increase the ISO of their cameras, since the sun had already set and we did not have a lot of light to work with. Even though we were shooting at ISOs of 6400 or more, the photos came out nicely.

As always, we waited to see if either of the males would yawn, giving us this type of shot. As if on command, this one male did just that. Another great ending to yet another amazing day in Botswana!

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If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, Europe, Asia, India and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.
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Botswana Photo Tour - Lots of elephants, wild dogs, lions cubs and a doors-off helicopter ride!

We woke up early (5:30am) on this particular morning in Botswana, ate some breakfast and then headed out to catch the first light of the morning. It was no more than 10 minutes after leaving the lodge that we drove up on a herd of elephant.

It was just before sunrise, which gave us enough light to get these photos. We set our cameras to ISO 1000 and started having our first fun of the day.

Not a bad way to start our day!

I started the day using the Canon 1D X Mark II camera with the Canon 100-400mm lens. I love this lens since it lets me shoot wide shots and tight shots like the one below.

This one female made sure to let us know that she was in charge.

We even got a little trunk curling to photograph.

I was shooting images and video of the elephants when I noticed the first rays of sunlight hitting them. I turned in the vehicle to see the sun rising to the elephant's left. I quickly reframed to see if I could get a cool sunrise silhouette shot.

This happened so fast that I barely had time to change camera settings. I kept the ISO at 1000 and aperture at f/5 and just changed the exposure compensation to -.7. I could have gone down lower on the exposure compensation, but it still worked just fine. This is one photo I have wanted for a long time, made especially nice with the baby elephant at the front.

When this big female elephant walked to my right, I got low in the vehicle to put the sun just rising over her back and got this photo. Another favorite of mine.

About a half hour after photographing the elephants, our guides spotted a small pack of wild dog. These are not easy to find in Africa, and this was my first time seeing these animals.

Just like me, this yawn shows that they were having trouble waking up at this early hour.

As we were driving around looking for more wildlife, our driver got a call from our other vehicle. They had spotted some female lions and cubs! We hurried over to their position to see this family. As we approached, this mother and cub stood up and looked out into the distance. So beautiful.

Mom laid back down while one of her cubs climbed up on her.

After photographing the lions sprawled out at the base of the tree, our guide pulled around so that we could get a head-on shot of the cats. At the same time, this cub climbed on top of this termite mound to get a better look at the surroundings.

We sat there for a while and had fun photographing the cubs as they played around.

Seeing these cute little cubs was the perfect ending to our morning of photography.

After capturing these images, we went back to the lodge for some lunch and prepared for our doors-off helicopter ride over the countryside.

As we were finishing our lunch, we could hear the sound of rotor blades in the distance. That meant that our ride was coming.

We took off from the grass area in front of our lodge and saw lots of wildlife below us. I decided to take this ride with just my Canon 5D Mark IV camera and Canon 24-105mm lens.

I have flown in helicopters with the doors off before, and love this so much! I had to get a shot with my feet dangling off the side of the chopper.

We looked down on these hippos in the water.

This is a water hole with a lot of red algae. We had driven past it many times prior to the flight, and it was fun to see it from the air.

Our flight lasted for a little over an hour, and as we returned to our lodge, I asked the pilot if he could fly over our places. You can easily see the hippo trails to the water hole near the lodge. We heard them each night as we went to sleep.

Even though we had a full day of photography, I saw the clouds and wanted to get a nice sunset shot. One of our tour guests joined me in photographing the sunset.Using the Canon 5D Mark IV and 24-105mm lens,  I showed him how we could get a starburst from the setting sun by changing our cameras to a small aperture (f/22). Not a bad way to end our day in Botswana!

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If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
__________________________________________________________________________
Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, Europe, Asia, India and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.
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Finally! I just finished my video of the super cute penguins in South Africa!

It took me a little bit of time to build this video, but I think you will enjoy it.

This is a video compilation of the the penguins in Cape Town, South Africa. As you all know, I am a still photographer and have never professed to being a videographer. But with the awesome video quality of the Canon 1D X Mark II, I just could not help myself. These penguins were just so darned cute that we actually made two trips to Boulders Beach to capture stills and videos of these little tuxedo clad adults and their youngsters.

And my daughter told me to add a note here to remind you all to wait till the end to see her favorite clip (the video is only 90 seconds anyways). :)

Click on the image above to launch the video. 

I hope you enjoy watching the video as much as I did creating it.

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Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!
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If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
__________________________________________________________________________
Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, Europe, Asia, India and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.
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Botswana Photo Tour - Our second day in this amazing country

It was our second day in Botswana and I had already fallen in love with this country. I have been to Tanzania numerous times over the last 3 years and had a special connection with that country, but now I had a second favorite place in Africa. The wildlife in Botswana is plentiful and I love the idea of floating along the river and seeing wildlife from the water side. The boat ride is smoother than any drive on this continent and we are able to cruise right up near the animals.

We were moving slowly along the river bank in the Okavango Delta area and saw a group of baboons up on tree branches above us. It was early in the morning and the sunlight was backlighting the animals. I instructed our guests to increase the exposure composition of their cameras to help the animal from becoming a complete silhouette.

Our guide saw this Fish Eagle resting on a branch and brought the boat as close as he could to this majestic bird. It wasn't long after we got close that the eagle took off from it's perch. I already had my Canon 100-400mm lens trained on the bird and fired off numerous shots with my Canon 1D X Mark II camera as it took flight.

Unlike Tanzania where we see hippos only in certain pools, these animals are plentiful in this region when the water is high.

We even got to see families of elephant along the shoreline. And yes, we all love the babies.

I saw this giraffe at the water's edge and was hoping that it would stop for a drink. Slowly, the giraffe splayed it's legs and got down low for water. Knowing that the sunlight was behind the animal, I suspected that we might be able to get the water trail as it lifted it's head. I had seen other photos like this and was hoping that we could capture this as well. And, as if on command, the giraffe lifted it's head quickly and created this perfect arc of water spray.

Botswana is home to the largest population of elephant in the world. We watched as this large female ate grass on a dry spot in the middle of the delta.

We saw this crocodile lounging on the edge of the shoreline. Once again, I got down low on the boat to get eye level with this beast. As I was taking the photos, I noticed the tooth sticking out of his snout. For the life of me, I can not figure out how this happened. Even our guide had no explanation for this.

In the afternoon, we switched from the boat to a 4-wheel drive land vehicle and did another game drive. For the first time ever, I photographed wild dogs. They are a rare sighting in Africa, as the populations have diminished over that last 100 years.

Before heading back to our lodge for some rest and dinner, we spotted this male lion hanging out in the grass.

As lions do most often, he just laid there and watched us as we photographed him. Based on this last photo, I think he was checking out the camera equipment or my ugly mug.

....and the best photos from Botswana are yet to come. Stay tuned for my favorite images of elephants at sunrise, lion cubs and so much more.

__________________________________________________________________________
Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!
__________________________________________________________________________
If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
__________________________________________________________________________
Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, Europe, Asia, India and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours.
__________________________________________________________________________