Kenya plus two poles in two months…!

Given the Covid pandemic, the year 2021 might’ve been a disaster.

As it was, I sold six packs of greeting cards, six framed prints and over 4,500 downloads through stock agencies and gave a couple of online lectures for the SW19 and Putney branches of the WI.

I also won a few awards, including the Wildlife category in the Professional Photographer of the Year 2021 (which came with a set of 8 x 42 Olympus binoculars), the Best International Wildlife Photographer 2021 in the Southern Enterprise Awards hosted by SME News, the 2021 LUX Life Photography Coach of the Year - UK and the International Prize Leonardo da Vinci - The Universal Artist, which I’m actually picking up in person at a ceremony in the Palazzo Borghese in Florence in February!

Finally, I managed to escape London to go on three photographic trips: to Kicheche Bush Camp, Arviat and Antarctica.

They were all very enjoyable for different reasons, and it was also nice to get away from Africa for a change!

Kicheche

I was lucky to be able to go on my trip to Kicheche in January 2021.

I was originally scheduled to go with Exodus, but the advent of the Covid travel restrictions meant that the trip was cancelled.

Fortunately, I was able to take advantage of the ‘business travel’ loophole and book a 10-day safari privately with Paul Goldstein (who part-owns Kicheche).

We didn’t have the greatest weather, and the unseasonally cold and wet conditions made a very good prima facie case for climate change, but I saw yet another cheetah kill with Paul on day one, and I’ll always remember coming across a couple of buffalo during a misty sunrise.

As Paul pointed out, it was a good moment to have my 800mm lens with me, and I was able to get a couple of good silhouettes against the rising sun.

On my last day, we also saw a few European bee-eaters, and that offered us a good chance to take a few of Paul’s favourite slow pans.

I then got very lucky when taking the shot at the top of this article:

• First of all, I didn’t consciously select my shutter speed, so I was lucky that it was fast enough (at 1/640 of a second) to freeze the action.

• Secondly, I was just trying to take a portrait shot of the bird, and I didn’t even realise it had caught a fly until I looked on the LCD screen on my camera afterwards!

• Thirdly, the timing was impeccable: I couldn’t have positioned the fly more perfectly between the two halves of the bird’s beak!

As a result, I came away with what was probably the best picture I took in 2021 - and it was even chosen as one of the monthly winners in the Greatest Maasai Mara Photographer of the Year competition…

Arviat

My expedition to Arviat in November to see the polar bear migration has to be the most stressful trip I’ve ever taken.

The Covid rules and the changing flight schedules turned out to be a real nightmare, and I don’t think there was a single day between booking the trip and coming home to London when I wasn’t worried about something to do with my travel plans.

The trip was led by Andy Skillen, who’s a great guy and always game for a laugh, and he even gave me 15% off as a reward for agreeing to lead his trip to Brazil in September 2022, but it was my first time in Canadian bear country during a Covid pandemic, so I had more questions than answers!

• Canada was on the Red List for a while, so would we actually be allowed in the country?

• Even if we were, what Covid tests and documentation would we need?

• What cold weather gear did we need?

• Should we buy or rent it?

• The hand luggage weight limit on the final flight to Arviat was tiny, so would we even be able to fit in everything we needed?

• What lenses should we bring?

• What wildlife would we see?

• What were our chances of seeing polar bears?

• Etc, etc, etc…

In the end, Andy was kind enough to answer most of my questions, and Arctic Kingdom put together a 20-minute video to guide us through the thicket of Covid regulations.

I also had a bit of help from Russell, whom I’d met in Brazil on another Andy Skillen trip.

He worked out which flights he wanted to take, and he was happy for me to tag along.

Yes, that did mean getting to Winnipeg a couple of days early to get over our jet lag and spending two more days there on the way back just in case our flight from Arviat was delayed, but it was worth it.

I don’t like the travelling part of travel, and I usually go on my photography trips on my own, so it was really nice to have some company and be able to share the logistical load.

Overall, it was a pain to get there with all the Covid nonsense and flight schedule changes, but the payoff was that I saw plenty of polar bears, Arctic foxes and Arctic hares - and the northern lights were spectacular!

I wasn’t that pleased with my shots of the bears, and I had a few nightmares with my equipment due to the extreme cold, but my new mirrorless Sony a1 with 400mm lens and 1.4x TC was sensational.

I’d been a Nikon man all my career until just a few weeks beforehand, so it was a big step, but the autofocus and eye-tracking systems helped me keep my images nice and sharp, and the only problem with being able to take 30fps was occasionally running out of memory at a crucial moment!

Antarctica

My expedition to Antarctica via Argentina in December was very enjoyable, largely due to the presence of my friend Jodie and her boyfriend.

She first told me she was going on this trip a few months ago, and when she told me she was only paying three grand for it, I was very keen to join her!

I’d thought that my own £14,000 visit to Antarctica, the Falklands and South Georgia in 2016 would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but this was a great chance to go back in the company of a good friend.

In the end, the whole thing was almost ruined by a Covid outbreak on board ship, but a combination of nautical lockdown and a lot of luck allowed us to complete the voyage.

Again, I wasn’t particularly proud of the images I managed to take, but we certainly saw plenty of penguins, birds and whales, and having to comply with a few nonsensical Covid regulations was a small price to pay for a great experience.

Again, it was made all the more enjoyable by the fact I was with friends, and it was fun to spend a couple of days in Buenos Aires on the way out and on the way back.

I spent Christmas Day at a tango show with Jodie and Dan and a couple of her friends, Marshall and Ebru, and our hotel in Palermo was in the perfect area to browse bars and eateries.

2022

I’m due to work as the Resident Photographer at Muchenje in Chobe, Botswana, for the first three weeks of May and October, and I’m also due to lead my very first photographic trip when I take over Andy Skillen’s tour of the Brazilian Pantanal in September.

I should also manage to host the workshop at the London Wetland Centre that was postponed from last year, so fingers crossed!

If you want to keep up-to-date with all my trips and photographic plans, just visit my Events page.

Happy New Year!

If you’d like to order a framed print of one of my wildlife photographs, please visit the Prints page.

If you’d like to book a lesson or order an online photography course, please visit my Lessons and Courses pages.