I know what I like, and I like what I know…!
Paul Goldstein on Svalbard
Professionals like Andy Skillen are funded by the BBC and other clients to go on photographic trips around the world. The rest of us have to make do with booking our own—often at great expense!
So what’s the solution?
Travel Company
If you’re serious about your photography and/or sell your work professionally, you might want to specialise in a given location. I always like to go to new places, but I’ve set foot on all seven continents, and I still keep going back to Africa!
It has such a variety of extraordinary wildlife that you’re never short of something to photograph, and the guests I meet on safari are some of the nicest and most interesting people I’ve ever met.
The only problem is that African wildlife shots have been done to death. There are millions of photographs of the Big Five available at the click of a mouse, so competition is fierce. That might mean you need to concentrate on a different continent, but it’s entirely up to you.
Probably the most important thing to do is to find a travel company you like and stick with it!
I’ve travelled with a few different adventure travel companies over the years, including Exodus Travels, G Adventures and Young Pioneer Tours. I’ve also recently booked a couple of trips with Great Migration Camps and Hector Astorga.
However, I’ve found myself going on more and more trips with Exodus. The company offers discounts on a sliding scale, depending on how many trips you book with them, but it’s mostly because of one man: Paul Goldstein (see picture above).
Paul is a guide, wildlife photographer and presenter who leads photographic expeditions around the world. Destinations include Antarctica, Svalbard, India and Brazil, and he also does bird photography workshops in Norfolk.
Some people have described him as being ‘a bit like Marmite’—you either love him or you hate him! It’s true that he used to be quite withering in his put-downs of anyone who made a silly mistake or didn’t have the right equipment, but I think he’s mellowed a bit with age…
I don’t mind copping some flak every now and again, but the reason I like him is that he challenges me to do things differently and gives me the best possible sightings of the wildlife. He’s great company and has the most phenomenal memory for comedy routines!
He also helped me get my first photos published in the Press. I took a few shots of Paul surrounded by reindeer on Svalbard, and he arranged for them to be published in a story in the Mail Online entitled Selfie for Santa?
Paul Goldstein photographing reindeer on Svalbard
Paul hates the whole idea of a ‘cruise’, which he associates with buffet lunches and shuffleboard! He prefers the idea of an ‘expedition’, which means a laser-like focus on wildlife sightings.
As he freely admits, if someone sees a polar bear at three in the morning, he’ll be on the PA system immediately, encouraging people to get up, collect their camera gear and assemble on the bow of the ship, ready to take pictures.
That’s what I like about Paul and Exodus. They do what’s important to me. I’m not interested in Egyptian cotton sheets with a high thread count or having a lie-in and enjoying a late breakfast. I’m a wildlife photographer, so I want to get out there and photograph wildlife!
My trust in Paul was vindicated when I went to Kicheche Bush Camp with him in 2018. By that stage, I’d been on five safaris, but I’d never seen a kill, so I was starting to get a bit frustrated.
However, on that trip, I managed to see five cheetah kills in a week! It was sensational, and it was largely down to Paul’s knowledge of the wildlife and the local conditions. He’s actually a part-owner of the Kicheche Camps and spends a lot of time out there, so he brought a lot of local knowledge.
"Behind you!"
I went back to Kicheche with Paul in 2021 but only saw a single kill, this time by the Five Musketeers. That was slightly disappointing, but I’m going with him again next January, this time to Kicheche Mara and Valley Camps. Fingers crossed…!
Other Options
If you love the kind of exotic wildlife you find in Africa or other long-haul destinations, the number of trips you can take is obviously limited by your budget. I don’t happen to be an Arab oil sheikh or a California tech tycoon, so I can only manage to go abroad a few times a year!
Fortunately, I came across an online article in 2018 that completely changed my options—and yours. It was written by a photographer who’d managed to get 365 free nights of accommodation at African safari lodges in exchange for his pictures!
I didn’t even realise such a thing was possible, but I thought, “I could do that!” So I did a bit of research and sent out 50 emails with a few sample images to lodges in Kenya and Tanzania.
Within a couple of weeks, I had 17 invitations! I guess if you don’t ask, you don’t get…
I chose andBeyond and Cottar’s because they wanted me to teach their guests photography, so they were happy for me to spend a bit longer at their camps. In the end, I spent three months in 2019 at andBeyond camps in Tanzania and a month at Cottar’s 1920s Safari Camp.
It was a fantastic opportunity to take pictures of the local wildlife. The deal was that I would get my accommodation for free, and I’d only have to pay for the park fees and my flights.
Accommodation at luxury lodges in Africa is usually around $1,000 per person per night in high season, so this was a really good deal. The park fees were a bit steeper than I thought they’d be, but they didn’t charge me VAT in the end, which helped a bit.
Since then, I’ve worked as the ‘resident photographer’ at various safari lodges:
2020: Gabus Game Ranch and Etosha National Park in Namibia
2022: Ol Jogi in Kenya and Muchenje in Botswana (in the Wet Season and Dry Season).
I also managed to get a discount on my last trip to Antarctica with Young Pioneer Tours, and I’m going back to Muchenje in May 2024.
I realise now that it’s easier to reduce my costs than increase my sales—and that’s a lesson any wildlife photographer can learn! I’ve already had a couple of enquiries from people wanting to do the same, and it’s worth a try if you’re in a position to escape normal life for a few weeks or months.
The only downside to working as a residential photographer is that you don’t get much repeat business. Once the lodges have thousands of your pictures, they have no need to invite you back in future!
That was annoying at first, especially given how well I got on with the staff and how much I enjoyed my time at the andBeyond and Cottar’s camps. However, one of the owners of Muchenje Safari Lodge has been kind enough to invite me back on what I hope will be a fairly regular basis, so that one worked out well.
He’s even ordered a few of my Botswana wildlife prints to hang in all the rooms at the lodge, so it’ll be nice to see them on my next trip out there!
Verdict
If you’re not in the lucky position of having to worry about your finances, it pays to have a think about the destinations where you think you’ll get the biggest bang for your buck and how best to get there.
If you can find a travel company that fits your needs, it’s worth sticking with it—both for the experience itself and also any frequent traveller discounts!
If your finances are truly in a hole or you’re at liberty to disappear for weeks if not months, it might be worth trying to work as a resident photographer at a game lodge somewhere. It’s worked for me in Africa, but it might be possible elsewhere, too.
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.