Through the Lens: East Africa Safari Photography Tips

Through the Lens posts offer a practical take on how I approach travel photography in the real world. The travel photographer’s most important skill? Flexibility. We shoot landscapes, portraits, architecture, wildlife, events, macro, food, fashion, fine art, sports—sometimes all within a 20-minute span. We document. We chase light. We tell stories in a single moment.

We often have to shoot handheld in low light, and yet we lug tripods across the globe.

These posts aren’t about gear or settings. They’re about how to see—how to think like a photographer when the scene in front of you is a glorious, chaotic mess that evolves faster than you can change your f-stop.

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Most people would tell you that the most important of all safari photography tips is a great lens. A high-powered long lens so those far away animals look like they are right up close to you. And a fast lens, with a max aperture that allows you to shoot fast enough to use that long lens with an improvised setup rather than set firmly on a heavy tripod.

When I was in East Africa, I didn’t have a lens that did either. My longest lens got me to a bit over 400mm (with the sensor crop on my camera). Its fastest aperture when zoomed all the way in was f5.6.

But I had two things going for me. First, modern camera sensors are good enough to allow you to crop photos in post, so you can give yourself a bonus digital zoom. And second, we got close to most of the animals I was shooting. I got within three or four meters of gorillas, chimps, lions, leopards, cheetahs, and hippos. That didn’t happen on our trip to Kruger in South Africa, but we got very fortunate in our safaris in East Africa.

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Below, I walk through what I was thinking as I made five different photographs—one in Uganda’s Kibale National Park, the others in Kenya’s Masai Mara. A few themes thread their way through these images. First: gaze. It’s all about the eyes. Whether they’re locked on the camera, staring into space, or tracking prey, the eyes of these animals do the emotional heavy lifting. Focus on the eyes (literally). Second: camouflage. I want to show animals in their own world. And for predators, that world demands they disappear into it. So I often break the rule that says a subject should stand out from its background—because in the wild, the whole point is not to stand out. And finally: stillness. Yes, a shot of a predator at full sprint is thrilling. But that’s not how wild animals live most of their lives. These images aim to capture the quiet tension—the stillness—that defines so much of life on the savannah and in the forest.

1. Cheetah in the Grass, Masai Mara

There’s a reason every wildlife photographer dreams of catching a cat in golden light. This cheetah was cooperative in the best way: walking slow, eyes up, body angled, light pouring across the scene like it had taken direction from a studio tech. And it held the stare. Not past me. Not through me. Right at me. That never hurts.

I framed the shot in camera—no crop in post—using the rule of thirds to give the cheetah space to breathe on the right side of the frame. This isn’t just an aesthetic decision; it’s narrative. You leave space in around the subject to put it in context. At home in the savannah, the cheetah looks like it might move. It might crouch. It might pounce. Or it might just keep watching me. That tension is part of what makes this image work.

What also helps is that its body is angled, not straight-on. A straight on view would’ve flattened the perspective and lost some of the animal’s grace. This angle lets you appreciate the line of the shoulders and the length of the frame, while still getting the drama of the eye contact. Speaking of eyes...

Focus is everything. Happily, this shot is sharp—on the eyes, where it needs to be. In East Africa, I lost more than a few great frames to stray blades of grass that tricked the autofocus system. When that happens, there’s no recovery. AI sharpening won’t save you if your focus locked on the foreground instead of the soul of the animal. For this shot, I used single-point autofocus, locked just above the nose bridge, and then recomposed slightly (to get that rule of thirds placement).

One by-the-book critique of this shot is that the cheetah has very little contrast with the surrounding grass. Having the subject stand out from the background tends to be important. But I purposefully broke that rule in many of my shots of the big cats in East Africa. Those cats are meant to blend in with the grasslands. To make them stand out is to tell the wrong story. Sometimes, to give an image the narrative punch you are going for, you need to break a rule or two.

What could have made it better?

An issue with this shot is that there are some distracting blades of grass from the foreground (and in focus) drifting up into the background (out of focus). I should probably get into Photoshop and fix those.

Still, this one’s a keeper. Because when the light, the eyes, and the frame all fall into place—and you actually nailed focus—you press the shutter and thank the savanna.

2. Don’t Walk in the Grass! Masai Mara

If the cheetah shot was about elegance and eye contact, this one is about tension. The predator isn’t moving. It’s not even fully visible. But it’s there. Waiting. Watching. And if you happened to be walking through that savanna? You wouldn’t see it until it was too late.

I used the same compositional formula as with the cheetah—rule of thirds, head turned toward the lens—but the result feels entirely different. Here, the grass is the subject as much as the lion is. The expanse of dry gold dominates the frame, hiding and swallowing, reinforcing the idea that visibility is a privilege, not a guarantee out here.

That was the point of this image: to suggest fear. To make your eye wander and wonder where the danger is. Most of the lion is hidden, which strengthens the story. And while the expression isn’t aggressive or intense, it’s indifferent—which somehow makes it worse. This lion doesn’t care if you see him. Because he already sees you.

From a technical standpoint, this shot walks the line. Focus had to be locked precisely on the lion’s face, not the chaotic tangle of grass just in front. The lion was just sitting still so I had time to set up the shot. I framed the shot the way I wanted, and then used the touch screen focus to make sure I was locked onto the face and eyes. I underexposed slightly to retain detail in the highlights and avoid blowing out the lion’s mane, which was catching a lot of light.

What could have made it better?

There’s an argument to be made that this shot is too subtle. That the lion almost gets lost. That you have to hunt for it. But to me—that’s the point. You could make a case for a slightly tighter crop, but doing so would take away the sense of being overwhelmed by grass—which is exactly what this lion wants.

I have quite a few shots that I like more than most others who view them, and this one probably falls into that category. People tend to like portraits, and this isn’t a portrait. It’s a psychological scene. The kind that gets under your skin, not because of what’s visible, but because of what almost isn’t.

3. Zebra Stripe Overload

The plains of the Masai Mara were blanketed with zebras when we visited, but most of my wide shots trying to capture their sheer numbers didn’t land the way I wanted. I knew I needed a different approach. I like creating images that are about pattern—scenes that feel almost abstract in their repetition. I imagined a frame filled entirely with stripes. No horizon. No grass. No background. Just black and white chaos, contained.

I took many shots trying to make that idea work, but this was the one that hit the mark.

The central zebra looking straight into the camera provides the anchor the image needs—without it, the pattern is just noise. Its presence gives the viewer something to latch onto, a focal point within the tangle of lines. The zebra behind it, conveniently turned to the side, helps reinforce the idea that this image is more about rhythm than portraiture. And the fact that all other visual distractions have been cropped away helps keep the viewer’s eyes trapped inside the labyrinth of stripes.

The original, pre-crop shot zoomed in as close as I was able

This shot didn’t work in-camera. I had to crop it pretty heavily to get the framing right. (For reference, I’ll include the original full-frame image in the post.) I also did some Photoshop cleanup, removing a few stray blades of grass that were poking up into the lower portion of the frame. They broke the illusion. If you’re going for a concept shot like this, you have to commit. The idea was stripes and only stripes.

What could have made it better?

It would have been nice to have captured this composition without the need for a heavy crop. That would have improved sharpness and reduced noise. The light was decent, but a little more glow—either early morning or golden hour—might have given the image more warmth and depth. And while I love the central zebra’s gaze, a bit more symmetry between it and the zebra behind might have given the pattern an extra level of satisfying geometry. Still, for a concept image shot in the wild, I’m happy with how this one came together.

4. Death in the Water

Life on the savannah is beautiful—but it is also brutal. And many of the most compelling shots I captured in the Masai Mara leaned into that brutality. This image is no exception. In fact, it's one of the starkest reminders I brought home of just how unforgiving life in the wild can be.

This one is about narrative—but also about perspective. Most wildlife photography is taken at ground level, where we tend to experience the world. But sometimes, shifting your viewpoint—especially shooting down from above—can yield more dramatic, more unsettling, more powerful images. Drones are a fantastic tool for this kind of thing, but they’re forbidden in most national parks across Africa. So if you want aerial perspectives, you have to earn them the old-fashioned way: with your feet. In this case, I found a bridge over the Mara River, and it gave me the perfect vantage point to look straight down into the murky, dangerous waters.

I took a number of images of the Nile crocodiles lurking below, but this one—this frame—was the one that told the full story. The scene is haunting. A dead wildebeest, partially submerged, its twisted horns curling like punctuation marks at the end of a life. Its face ghostly pale in the murky brown. And above it, the massive crocodile, as textured as armor, nudging the carcass almost tenderly. But it’s the eye that makes it—the gleaming yellow eye locked in on something only it understands. The moment feels ancient. Primeval. Unchanged for millennia.

What could have made it better?

There’s not much I’d change about the image conceptually, but technically, the lighting was tricky. The midday sun was harsh, casting down almost too evenly. Some contrast or shadow might have helped to sculpt the texture a bit more. A slightly tighter crop might focus attention more squarely on the eye and the wildebeest head, but cropping too tightly risks losing the eerie emptiness of the surrounding water—which I think adds to the isolation of the scene. I kind of wish I would have turned the camera and shot in a vertical format for this one. All told, it’s one of the few images I’ve taken where the silence of death feels like it was captured visually.

5. The Philosopher of the Forest

So much of wildlife photography comes down to luck. You can read all the guides, prep your gear, dial in your settings—but if your subject doesn’t deliver a moment, you’ve got nothing. This shot? The chimpanzee did nearly all the work. I just happened to be in the right place, with the right lens, when the moment happened.

That pose—chin resting on curled fingers—felt profoundly human. The soft light filtered through the canopy and caught just right in the chimp’s eye, making it gleam like a thought. There’s a kind of ancient melancholy in that gaze, as if this chimp were pondering some distant truth of the universe. I didn’t pose him. He just was. I raised the camera, focused on the eye, and clicked.

Framing matters here too. I composed the shot so that there’s space in the frame ahead of the chimp—always give your subject room to “look into” or “move into” the frame. It creates a sense of openness, possibility, and direction.

What could have made it better?

There’s one thing that bugs me. That stupid branch. You know the one—it looks like it’s growing straight out of the top of the chimp’s head. In portraiture (wild or otherwise), you want to avoid anything sprouting directly out of a subject’s head. It’s a visual distraction. The good news is that it’s softened by background blur, but it’s still there, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Could I remove it in Photoshop? Sure. But sometimes, you just live with it. The pose only lasted a couple of seconds, and I didn’t have time to move. That’s how it goes. The forest doesn’t wait for perfection.