A Day on Photographic Safari on the Chobe River

Good morning people, hope you're all doing well. I have just woken up and gotten ready for another day on the Chauvi river. This morning we are heading to Lilliland which is one of my favorite parts of the Chauvi. It is on the Namibian side of the river so you can only go here when you're staying on the houseboat since the houseboat is docked on the Namibian side and you have to go through immigration and everything. So it is a really nice treat to be able to go there while we stay on the houseboat. It is such an incredible place for birds, such a beautiful area in general and you're usually just the only boat there. So really great place for photography in general, very excited. So I'll take you guys along and let's see what we can find out there. This is not a sponsored video but I am here guiding guests for Pangolin photo safaris and if you would like to join me in Botswana next year and experience the beautiful Chauvi then you can check out all the details for my 2027 safaris in Botswana in the link below. Here we go, welcome to Lilliland everyone. This is what we call Lilliland because there's a lot of water lilies and it is a very nice place for birds and a lot of other things as well. It's a nice place to try to get a little bit lower so move around on the boat, probably see quite a lot of African jacanas and it can be really nice to get photos of them from a low angle when they are running around on the lily pads. There's an African jacana here to the right at around two o'clock to the boat. Oh and he's carrying the chicks. Yes, the male is actually the one who takes care of the young with African jacanas. Here's a pied kingfisher behind us and then wait for the timing as he turns towards the light so you get that catch light on his eye. Getting closer to the open bill here. Remember to go plus a bit because he's quite a dark bird so it's nice to just get more details out of those feathers so at least I would go plus a full stop. Remember as we get very close to the birds it can be nice to bring up your f-stop a little bit especially now that we have more lights available so that you increase your depth of field and get more of them in focus. It also helps if they were to take off. There they are. Can you guys see him there at around 10 o'clock to the boat with the tiny little babies. Very confident one we can see. So this is a great opportunity to get some nice close-ups of him. And there we go we have just gotten back from that beautiful morning. Yeah I think we were very very lucky with some amazing encounters especially the jacana with the little chicks that were so comfortable with us so they ended up getting really nice and close to the boat and especially with little chicks like that because they are so small them getting a lot closer just helps you being able to actually capture nice photos of them because otherwise they become very very small in the frame when they're further away. So that was really really magical and a lot of fun. I love Lily Land and always get some really cool photos there so a magical morning to say the least. Now it's time for brunch and I'm very hungry so I'm going to take it easy for a little bit before we do a presentation later today. I like to do a presentation where I go through all the technical sides of photography and just make sure everyone knows what I'm talking about when I talk about shutter speed and aperture and ISO out in the field. So that's the plan for the rest of the day before we head out for afternoon game drive. I'm hoping the weather changes and it gets a little bit warmer because right now it's quite overcast and a little bit cool and windy because when it gets a little bit hotter in the afternoon there's better chances of things like elephants coming down to the river to swim and drink and that always makes for really good photos in the afternoon so I'm really hoping that we might get that and also if it clears up and we don't have this overcast weather the whole day then we have better chance for a good sunset so really hoping we might get that this afternoon but we'll just have to see. Oh and I thought I'll show you guys my new camera bag that has been super super useful on the boats because I like to bring my gear with me on the boat and I like to bring both my cameras and have them somewhere to put them and then be able to like carry them on off the boat easily and that's always been a big problem for me when we're going on and off the boats but this camera bag has solved all of that because my usual camera bag, one I can't put my lenses in without taking the lens hood off and having to like pack everything away completely when I'm like I'll just be packing it up again tomorrow and then also if it takes too much space I want something that is a little bit easier to like just put on the side so I don't take space from my guests and look at this bag this is a big lens bag and it fits everything that you need obviously it's a bit messy but fits everything that I need and I've got my long lens with my lens hood on and everything and my shorter lens with me ready to go and that has been super super super useful to have on the boats so very very happy with this. As we get closer now it can be a good idea to bring up the f-stop a little bit so depending on what lens you've got how zoomed in you are especially I see that Rob is shooting on a prime lens then definitely you want to be more vigilant with your depth of field because you have a lower f-stop available on that lens and as nice as that is to use for the blurry backgrounds and for the light intake we do want to be a bit careful with it because all of a sudden we'll be shooting something where we just get the eyeball in focus and then everything else will be blurry. Big crocodile up here so then you might want to bring up your f-stop again a bit to increase the depth of field we've got a lot of light available so you could go to something like an f9 but when you then bring up your f-stop what ends up happening is obviously that you're letting less light into the sensor so now because you're photographing a stationary subject we can then bring down the shutter speed so that our iso doesn't go too high okay so the exposure triangle again they scare you fast I must be honest they will lie dead still like this and then all of a sudden like that they'll be down in the water and now he's just gone in the water would you want to go for a swim now it's really cool getting them walking towards us like that yeah now that the sun is behind the clouds it can be nice to go a bit more plus on the elephants because we don't have to worry too much about the highlights wow that's quite a beautiful scene hey yeah with the clouds so if you're able to zoom out and include the clouds that can be really nice to do could be nice to get your wide angles ready if you do have them in case these elephants decide to come nice and close to us so if you are photographing these guys here it's really nice to zoom out and include the amazing sky you're going to want to go plus as much as much as possible without overexposing the sky because you want to get some details out of those dark elephants but we want to keep those textures in the sky