About Zimanga

Zimanga Private Game Reserve is located in KwaZulu Natal South Africa, it is situated about a three hour drive north of Durban. It provides photographic game drives and has a number of photographic hides two of which facilitate night photography. The whole operation is highly professional and attracts wildlife photographers from around the world.

This particular trip was organised by award winning wildlife photographer Tracey Lund who was an excellent host, I would not hesitate to travel with Tracey either back to Zimanga or even one of her other photographic destinations.

Expectations

Each time I travel to Africa on a photographic safari I always contemplate my possible success by researching into what is likely to be achievable at each location and then planning how I will make best use of this new opportunity. However, the result rarely meets with the expectation, frequently I return with a whole set of images completely different to my expectations but equally as good. Zimanga was no different.

On Arrival

Some weeks prior to arriving at Zimanga unseasonal storms had hit the area and when we arrived three weeks later, water was plentiful throughout the game reserve. We were advised that the consequence of this event would be the water at each each photographic hide was less important to wildlife and the outcome could be fewer wildlife visits to each hide. The effect of this situation at the night hides was significant and the main reason why two of my three visits to the night hides were virtually blank. However, there was some limited success.

Adapting

Things were not looking too good to start with, as I quickly realized the game drives were unlikely to produce the type of images I was looking for. My expectations nowadays would be to take images that are different. I have surpassed wanting to take “iconic” images of African wildlife and my aim is to produce images that are unusual, such images are rare and difficult to find. Fortunately there were different hides to visit during my stay and two in particular proved to be very successful, thus making up for the early disappointments. My photographic emphasis is biased towards mammals with bird life taking a back seat, to ensure success in Zimanga I needed to change tack and take on the challenges of bird photography, thats if I wanted to be successful.

Measuring My Success

My standard measurement for success for any African safari is to come back with a minimum of six images that would achieve a score of 19 or 20 at a photographic club competition and maybe two of those six would be of “Fellowship” standard. In addition to this I would expect plenty of images of a standard around 18/19, each very good but not quite the top standard. This measurement I have used effectively for many years to rate the success of each trip.

Outcome

So what did Zimanga Achieve? Well surprisingly enough I believe I exceeded my normal standard measurement significantly, producing many good images. I consider more than normal to be “fellowship” standard, plus a few that I believe to be “unusual”. So all in all a successful trip.

You can make up your own mind, the images displayed on this website I consider to be some of the best and those displayed in the audio visual gives a flavour of what was achieved.