Making Magic

Date 2025/07/07 15:50:15 by Darren Donovan

Earlier this year, I co-hosted a photo safari with Jay Collier to Mashatu and the Timbavati Game Reserve. I had been in Mashatu a month earlier, and we had experienced some of the biggest floods in Mashatu’s history.

The flowers were out in full force, and all the rivers were in full flow. It was amazing to see the usually dry and dusty Mashatu completely transformed. I was sure that one month later, we would still have the flowers. However, I was wrong. As quickly as they had come, they had died back just as quickly.

We arrived at Mashatu to the golden brown hues of the drying Tribulus flowers. The usually dry rivers were still flowing — at least an indication of the life-giving rains from a month earlier. But the reserve was looking magnificent! For the week that we were there, Mashatu delivered exactly what it’s known for:

Big cats in incredibly photogenic scenes! Even the Lala Limpopo Hide was quite productive, with some excellent Spotted Hyena sightings, as well as an African Wild Cat on the night that Jay was hosting in the hide. The Croton forests along the riverbeds were quite thick, as you’d expect after all the rain, but we used some different focusing techniques to get the most out of the sightings we had.

Next, we were off to the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve in the Greater Kruger Park in South Africa. The top species we were after here were African Wild Dogs, Buffalo, and Rhino — that would complete the list. When we arrived, we found a very thick and wet Timbavati. A massive 120mm rainstorm had hit just three days prior, and everything that had been starting to droop suddenly perked up in those three days.  Here, we were going to have to make magic. We found the species we were looking for, but getting the shots would require all our collective creativity. That said, we managed some really good images of hippos, lions, African Wild Dogs, and even fireflies!