Mashatu is in the Limpopo Valley, in the Tuli Block Game Reserve. That is on the eastern side of Botswana, like a big triangle jutting out into South Africa. It borders South Africa to its south-east and Zimbabwe to the north-east. We’ve been here before, little over a year ago. It was so absolutely fabulous that we had to come back, come back and share it with friends.

Our new South African photography friends

So we booked a photo workshop with C4 Images, hoping to learn a little more and improve our photography. And we did ! Plus we made some new friends, we had a great time and really enjoyed our stay at the Mashatu tented camp.

Our very cool tent at Mashatu Tented Camp

With an outdoor bathroom !

We met in the lounge before every game drive

For the link to the Mashatu webpage click here

We saw a lot of wildlife, the absolute highlight being a cheetah mother with 4 cubs.

Aren’t they just adorable

We had some bad luck though, the weather was terrible the first 2 days, cloudy, grey, no light, not so good for a photo workshop. But we learnt to see the positive side : nice and soft light, no shadows, great for portraits ! Three out of eight drives we went to see the cheetah cubs, we just couldn’t keep our eyes off these little fuzzy, whirlwind, fur balls. We watched them succle, then follow along as mum moved on. They were full of mischief, they  jumped, ran, climbed every tree they came across, not always being very sucsesful. Poor mum, they were all over her, jumping on her, over her, biting her tail, her legs or did whatever other crazy thing that came to their minds.

One of the cubs is learning to climb

As Andre, our Pro-photographer is a great fan of moving images we also tried our best at panning. For the non-photographers reading this : that is a special technique where you move along with the animal, in doing so blurring the background. It shows horizontal  lines, creating a sense of speed, whilst the animal or at least a part of it, (preferably the head ), is clear. As you can imagine we had to delete dozens before we got a somewhat acceptable result.  For someone who has never done this before I am rather proud of the result. But believe me, this is nothing compared to the pro’s. Andre’s got one of a running cub which I really envy him for. Well, give me a few more years….

Eland Pan

When finally the sun came out we learnt about composition, exposure compensation and  back lighting. That, combined with great guides and trackers with unbelievable eyesight, was a guarantee for some fantastic wildlife photography. I believe every one in the group was totally happy and having a great time photographing, and learning by doing.  Andre and Kyle whispering settings to us in the difficult light situations did help a lot too.

Backlit lioness

Backlit flock of quillas ( tiny little birds )

Our last morning we spent at the hide, which was something we had all looked forward to. Ofcourse our luck ran out again….If anyone read the mashatu Blog for this week, it was titled : the great vanishing act. With this they ment the elephants. Normally showing up at the hide in their dozens or hundreds, these 4 days we saw exactly two elephants. And not at the hide ! Instead we concentrated on the guinea fowls, trying to get them “in action”, when they fought with each other, throwing up lots of dust and making a hell of a noise.

Our little team at the hide, ready for some action

Guinea fowl fight

Of course we also saw leopards and lions. The great surprise being three Kalahari lions. They look quite different from the lions we’ve encountered so far, they are a greyish colour and their manes are blond, bleached out by the Kalahari sun. We were very lucky to see them, as they are always on the move, not having a fixed territory here ( yet ), and they weren’t seen the days that followed.

Kyle explained that this is a typical Mashatu leopard photo. Only here you get photo’s with such a lovely green Mashatu tree background.

Kalahari lion

From here we went to Mala Mala Game Reserve, now without Kyle and Andre to help us. We will start using everything we learnt and hope to improve our photography. Thank you to our great teachers Kyle de Nobrega and Andre Cloete for inspiring us  a little more. And of course a big hug and a thank you to Dan and Commando our guide and tracker at Tented Camp and Elvis and Goms at Main Camp ( where we unexpectedly stayed the first night ) for finding us all these wonderful, beautiful animals. These guys are a fantastic help, most of them have been working here for 20 years or more, and as you can expect after 20 years…they know every corner of this wonderful game reserve like their back pocket, and gladly share its magic with us. Many thanks !

Go to gallery

The travel story will follow soon, at the end of the month by the latest, promise !

For the link to the C4 webpage click here

We’re off to Mala Mala now !