The project came about through my friend Oli Dreike, whom I first met in Zambia. He now works with The Safari Collection’s Footprint Trust, which supports conservation and community projects across Kenya. In that role, he had been working closely with the Maasai Mara Reserve Rhino Unit, helping to establish the Maasai Mara Conservation Centre – a technology hub that supports their operations, including rhino GPS tagging and ear-notching. Recognising that camera traps could help monitor rhinos moving through dense forest, Oli brought us together.

The Rhino Unit is responsible for monitoring the rhino population and helping to ensure the areas they use are properly protected. The rangers know both the landscape and the individual animals intimately, spending each day on patrol – on foot or by vehicle – locating rhinos and recording sightings.

Rhinos are identified through ear-notching, and some are also fitted with GPS tags. Combined with EarthRanger tracking data, this helps the team understand how the animals move through the reserve, which areas they favour, and which routes are especially important. Together with the rangers’ experience in the field, it gave us a strong basis for identifying promising sites for the camera traps.

They guided me to one such place.

It was a core rhino area: a patch of dense forest flanking a small river in a secluded valley. The rangers explained that rhinos regularly used the area, but were often extremely difficult to monitor there because the vegetation was thick and the animals were elusive.

A camera trap could help them keep tabs on these individuals more reliably.

The moment I saw the place, I knew it was perfect.

Entering the forest felt like stepping into another world.

Most people think of the Mara as endless open plains, but this was something completely different. Huge fig trees towered overhead, palms leaned over the river, and thick undergrowth screened well-worn animal trails.

It felt primordial, like a fragment of an older landscape hidden within the savannah.

The river itself was small but beautiful, cutting through the vegetation with steep banks on either side. When I followed one of the animal trails down to a crossing point, I found the location I had been looking for.

The trail was deeply worn by repeated passage, clearly used regularly by wildlife.

The elevated riverbanks meant I could place the camera high above the crossing, allowing the animals to be framed within the environment rather than filling the frame in a simple portrait. The palms arching over the water gave the scene a wonderfully prehistoric feel.

The setup used one of my Camtraptions camera trap systems.

The camera was mounted high on the riverbank, looking down towards the crossing, with a PIR motion sensor placed closer to the trail. Several flashes were positioned around the scene to illuminate both the animals and key elements of the background and vegetation.

Lighting nocturnal scenes like this is always a balancing act: too much light and you lose the atmosphere; too little and important elements disappear into darkness.

The camera trap was left running continuously.

The rangers checked it every couple of weeks to swap batteries and memory cards.

It quickly became clear that the crossing was even more productive than expected. It wasn’t long before the first rhino appeared on camera, and as the weeks went by, more followed.

Several of these individuals had not been documented by the rangers for many months, and one had not been seen since 2023. As a result, the photographs helped confirm the continued presence of rhinos whose status in the population figures had previously remained uncertain, giving the team greater confidence in their estimates.

But rhinos were only part of the story.

Over time, the camera trap revealed an extraordinary variety of wildlife using the crossing.

Elephants passed through in breeding herds. A leopard appeared briefly before melting back into the forest. Hippos emerged from the river. Bushbuck and giraffe moved cautiously down to the water.

One of the most exciting discoveries came unexpectedly.

When the rangers retrieved one memory card, a flurry of excited messages appeared in our WhatsApp group. At first, I didn’t understand the commotion.

A greater kudu had passed through the crossing.

This was the first recorded sighting of a kudu in the area for many years.

The news quickly spread among the Narok County tourism and wildlife management team, who are working to protect and restore wildlife populations in the region. The possibility of reintroducing kudu had previously been considered, so the discovery that they were still present naturally was very exciting.

This was one of five camera traps I deployed in the area, and not all of them survived intact.

That same flood produced one of the most dramatic images of the project.

During the night, the quiet stream suddenly turned into a raging torrent, and the camera captured a black rhino forcing its way through the flooded river.

Of all the images captured during the project, my favourite is this photograph of a rhino standing beside the river at night.

But perhaps the most important thing this project revealed is a side of the Mara that most people never see.

Visitors experience the Mara by day, watching wildlife out on the open plains. But in the main reserve there is no night driving, so the Mara after dark remains largely hidden.

In places like this forested river crossing, the Mara feels very different from the savannah most people know.

It feels ancient.

And it is full of secrets.

This project would not have been possible without the support and generosity of many people. My heartfelt thanks go to The Safari Collection’s Sala’s Camp and Footprint Trust for hosting me and helping to facilitate the project, and to all the staff for their warmth and hospitality throughout. I am also deeply grateful to the Narok County Government, the Maasai Mara Reserve Rhino Unit, and all the rangers involved – especially those who helped identify locations, set up and maintain the cameras, and look after them in my absence. Special thanks are also due to John Gitonga of KWS for sharing his extensive experience of rhino camera-trap monitoring with me and the team, and to John Tanui for being such an inspiring mentor to the ranger team. Finally, my thanks to the Mara Triangle team, who became involved later in the year and supported additional camera-trap deployments.

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Perhaps it is the discomfort and toil that makes it such a rewarding place to work. It feels like a real privilege to undertake an arduous trek to a stunning remote bai (forest clearing) and join the relatively small group of people who have gazed upon it.

Hearing chimpanzees calling from the canopy or glimpsing a forest elephant moving through the shadowed understory is the ultimate thrill. Occasionally, as you traipse through the forest, you might surprise a silverback gorilla, and he will explode out of a thicket so suddenly and screaming so loudly that it makes your hair stand on end and your heart pound out of your chest!

Wherever you go, you get the sense that wildlife lurks just out of sight, behind the veil of vegetation; a neat pile of droppings signifies the territory of a duiker, disturbed leaf litter shows where a family of red river hogs snuffled, or, most tantalising of all, pug marks reveal that a path was recently graced by the apex predator in these parts — a leopard.

These were some of the creatures that I was hoping to photograph when I collaborated with WCS in Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in northern Republic of Congo. Established in 1993, the park stands as one of the best examples of a pristine forest ecosystem in the Congo Basin. There are no roads within Nouabalé-Ndoki, the trees have never been logged, and the interior still harbours animals that have had little or no contact with people. For over 30 years, WCS has collaborated with the Congolese Government to administer and protect the park and its buffer zone.

Our aim was to photograph as many of the elusive species as possible and so I brought with me several Camtraptions camera traps. I encountered my first challenge on arriving in Brazzaville when I discovered the bags containing my camera traps had not made my flight connection. Rather than wait for them, I started the long journey up to Nouabalé-Ndoki, which was a test of endurance in itself, starting with a 12-hour car drive to the town of Ouesso on the border with Cameroon, then 5 hours by boat up the Sangha River to Bomassa where the Park HQ is situated. After the near-miraculous arrival of my bags a few days later, it was then onward by 4×4 and dugout canoe to Mbeli Bai, where I paused to set up a couple of camera traps, and then a further 21km on foot to Goualougo research camp. This last part was only possible thanks to a team of burly Bayaka porters who helped carry my camera equipment and our provisions through the forest and the waist-deep swamps that guard the interior of the park.

One of the animals that I was most keen to photograph was a leopard. To select spots for my camera traps, I was relying on researchers and Bayaka trackers who had been studying the wildlife around Mbeli Bai for years. They were able to point me in the direction of a couple of trails that they thought would be most likely to yield results and I set up my traps, each consisting of a camera in a housing, a sensor, and two or three flashes. The mere possibility of capturing a photograph of such an elusive creature was incredibly exciting!

Over the course of the project, my camera traps were constantly menaced; bad-tempered elephants dismantled set-ups, colonies of ants devoured rubber bungs and seals, and the intense humidity quickly took its toll on anything that wasn’t meticulously sealed.

Despite the challenges, it wasn’t long before the traps started generating results. Checking the cameras was a real treat, as most species captured were rarely seen or photographed.

Over the course of the project, I set up cameras at three research sites, starting at Mbeli Bai and Goualougo before moving them to Mondika on the CAR border. At Goualougo, I was aiming to photograph something a bit different…

Goualougo lies between the Ndoki and Goualougo Rivers, with extensive swamps acting as a natural barrier to human encroachment. When researchers first ventured into this area 30 years ago, the chimpanzees they encountered were not scared but curious. This “naïve” response was likely because they had never encountered humans before. These chimps have been the focus of a long-term study since 1999.

The chimps I saw were high up in the canopy and impossible to photograph, but the team showed me several termite mounds that the chimps sometimes visit to fish for termites. This tool-use behaviour – first brought to the world’s attention by Jane Goodall in Tanzania – involves pushing a smooth stick into the mound, which the termites then cling to as it is withdrawn. I was keen to photograph this behaviour so we set up camera traps at a couple of suitable sites.

On my return visit to Goualougo, we had managed to photograph a female at one of the mounds. I moved the camera closer to try for a more intimate shot and left it for a few more months. In that time, the female gave birth to a tiny infant. The resulting photos of her feeding while her baby watched – the passing on of this specialised technique from one generation to the next – made all the hard work worthwhile.

Towards the end of the project, I headed to Mondika. This is primarily a site for studying several habituated groups of critically endangered Western lowland gorillas. Their survival is threatened by habitat destruction, poaching, and diseases such as Ebola, which have devastated populations in recent decades.

For more than 30 years, researchers from the Goualougo Triangle Ape Project have shadowed the gorillas and meticulously recorded their behaviour and diet. Once my camera traps were deployed, I was able to join the researchers and photograph the gorillas in person. For me, nothing quite compares to the privilege of spending time with wild gorillas.

In the Congo rainforest, one of the greatest dangers is the elephants as they can be unpredictable and aggressive. The thick vegetation means you can get dangerously close to them before realising they are there. The Bayaka trackers seem to have a sixth sense for knowing when one is nearby and deftly detour around them. Occasionally though, one of the belligerent beasts decided to block our way, almost as if it were a game. On one such occasion, a male elephant stopped us crossing a river and we had to wait several hours for him to finish feeding. The upside was that he couldn’t easily leave the river to get to us so I was able to take some photographs, which were made all the more special when a shaft of light pierced the canopy and reflected off the water onto his side.

While elephants made their presence very obvious, another menace operated on a much smaller scale. The rainforest was teeming with tiny ticks — no bigger than pinheads but disturbingly persistent. No matter how many I removed, more would turn up in the most inconvenient places. Even several days after leaving the forest, I was still discovering unwelcome stowaways, their heads firmly embedded and leaving behind maddeningly itchy souvenirs.

The rainforest offered up its fair share of discomforts, but it also delivered moments of raw power and drama.

On one occasion, there was an almighty storm. It was too dangerous to leave camp because the trackers would not have been able to hear elephants over the sound of the rain. Remaining in camp, however, didn’t feel much safer as we were surrounded by gigantic trees and every now and then a terrific crash rumbled through the forest as a heavy branch broke off and fell more than 40m from the canopy above. I was pleased to make it through the storm unscathed but unfortunately one of my camera trap flashes was obliterated when a big branch landed on it!

After leaving the camera traps running for almost a year, it was at last time to collect them and take stock of the results. We were delighted to have photographed many unusual species including various duikers, mongooses, and even a gorgeous little golden cat.

Beyond the excitement of seeing rare and elusive wildlife, our hope is that these photographs can contribute to conservation efforts by inspiring and connecting people with the biodiversity of the Congo Basin. While camera traps are widely used for scientific research, capturing high-quality images of rarely seen species can help bring attention to these hidden ecosystems and underscore the importance of protecting them. Many of the animals photographed remain poorly studied, yet their survival is already threatened by habitat loss. Every image is both a celebration of the forest’s richness and a reminder of what is at stake if these ecosystems are not safeguarded.

Even in a place as rich in wildlife as Nouabalé-Ndoki, some creatures remain almost mythical — ghosts of the forest, rarely glimpsed even by those who know it best. For me, the greatest highlight came when I returned to a camera and discovered a photograph of a leopard. It was a large male, captured on a secluded trail near Mbeli Bai… and without a doubt, the most magnificent specimen I have ever photographed.

Ultimately, while we managed to photograph an impressive array of species, I left feeling that we had barely scratched the surface of the Congo’s spectacular biodiversity. I guess there’s nothing for it but to return one day to find out what additional secrets the rainforest might yield…

A big thank you to WCS Congo and all the trackers, rangers, researchers and others who helped me capture these photos. Particular thanks to the field teams who maintained the cameras in my absence; Jakob Villioth and the team at Mbeli Bai, Sean Brogan and the team at Goualougo, and Pavel Zoubek and the team at Mondika. Thanks also to Clément Kolopp, Christ Nzouzi, Ben Evans and everyone else at WCS who helped plan and organise the project.

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Sony Cameras

Sony Lenses for Wildlife Photography

If there are other videos you would be keen for me to make, then please leave a comment on one of the videos above and I’ll see what I can do.

The post Testing Sony’s Latest Kit for Wildlife Photography appeared first on Will Burrard-Lucas Blog.

Pangolins are bizarre creatures; covered in coarse scales, with a whip-like tongue for feeding on ants and termites, and the ability to curl up into a tight, armoured ball. Demand for their scales in traditional Chinese medicine has resulted in them gaining the unenviable status of “world’s most trafficked mammal”. It is thought that more than 100,000 are illegally exported from Africa to Asia each year.

There are eight species of pangolin in the world, four of which are found in Africa. The best-known and most photographed species is the Temminck’s ground pangolin which is widely distributed throughout Southern and Eastern Africa. However, it is still extremely difficult to see one owing to their low population density, shy nature, and highly nocturnal habits. In fact, despite all the time I had spent out in the African night, I had never even glimpsed one. That was until I started collaborating with the Pangolin Project in Kenya…

The Pangolin Project was founded in 2019 by Dr. Claire Okell and is the only pangolin-focused initiative in East Africa. A research programme was quickly established to inform a conservation strategy. The team also started raising awareness throughout Kenya, particularly amongst anti-poaching teams, law enforcement and the communities living alongside pangolins.

The Pangolin Project’s first base of operation was at Sala’s Camp in the Maasai Mara National Reserve, from which they started monitoring several Temminck’s pangolins. It was at that stage, in 2021, that I first visited the team. The purpose of our initial collaboration was to capture a few photographs of the pangolins which could then be used in their fundraising and outreach materials.

I joined Claire, Beryl, Joel and Job, and we spent a week staking out pangolin burrows in the dead of night. It turns out pangolins have an almost supernatural ability to tell if someone is waiting outside their burrow and so actually being there when one did emerge was an exercise in stealth and patience!

Seeing my first pangolin was magical. It pottered around, investigating various termitey spots and freezing for a few seconds if I inadvertently crunched a bit of vegetation underfoot. Pangolins are very sensitive to disturbance from white light and so I only used red light which resulted in black and white photographs. I spent about 15 minutes with the pangolin before leaving her to get on with her night.

Once established, the Pangolin Project received a steady flow of reports and pictures from pangolin sightings across Kenya. One day, Claire was sent a picture of a pangolin that caught her attention. The animal looked rather large and there were several subtle differences in appearance from the Temminck’s pangolin. She thought it could be a picture of a giant pangolin, the largest of all pangolin species. This was surprising because giant pangolins are found in the forests of western and central Africa. Until recently, it had been assumed that they were extinct in Kenya.

Incredibly, the photograph was taken just at the top of the Oloololo escarpment, almost within sight of the Pangolin Project’s field base. It had always been known that pangolins were up there, but most people assumed they were the Temminck’s species.

The photo warranted further investigation and so at the start of 2022, the team traveled up the escarpment and started engaging members of the local community to help them track down a pangolin.

After months of waiting, they eventually got a call in the middle of the night from someone who was with a pangolin at that moment. The team rushed to the sighting and verified that it was indeed a giant. However, their euphoria was tempered as the area was rapidly changing and the outlook for the pangolins was very uncertain…

The heart of this region is the Nyakweri Forest. The area used to be communal land but a few years ago it was sub-divided which meant many different individuals suddenly owned their own patches of forest. The majority of people set about making the most of their lots by clearing trees to sell as charcoal, converting the land into grazing for their livestock and erecting electric fences to keep out trespassers and wildlife. What was so shocking was the speed at which the transformation took place – in the space of just a few years, 80% of the entire forest was felled and the rest is unlikely to last much longer. This is the forest that was harbouring the giant pangolins.

While the pangolin’s habitat was being lost, the electric fences posed another grave threat. If a pangolin encounters a fence, it tries to climb between the strands. After receiving the first shock, it reflexively curls around the wire and then suffers a protracted death before being discovered the next morning.

Nobody knows how many giant pangolins are left in the area. It may be as few as 50. The pangolin team get called out to around 1 or 2 fence casualties a month, but the true number of animals falling victim to this fate could be higher.

In the face of this threat and the rapidly changing landscape, is there any hope that the giant pangolins can adapt and survive? This is the question that the Pangolin Project have focused their resources on addressing.

In 2022 and 2023 I joined the team in the Nyakweri Forest to document the challenges and the conservation efforts. The plan was to fit GPS and VHF trackers to as many giant pangolins as possible so that they could understand how the animals were navigating the changing landscape. Could the animals survive in proximity to the electric fences and in deforested areas or were they now marooned in the tiny fragments of remaining forest?

On arrival, I was immediately confronted by the shocking devastation cause by the charcoal industry. Huge swathes of forest cut down, the wood piled up, covered in soil, and then set smouldering to reduce it to charcoal which could then be loaded into sacks and transported to the cities for sale. The smoke and ragged tree-stumps resembled a war zone.

I was in the area for almost two weeks before we got the call to say a giant pangolin had been found in a burrow. A team was assembled comprising researchers from the Pangolin Project, a vet and ranger from Kenya Wildlife Service, and representatives from the community. We all waited about 500m away while two of the researchers kept watch on the burrow.

After several hours, the pangolin emerged and the tagging team sprang into action. I photographed the entire processing using an infrared-converted Sony a9 camera and flashes fitted with infrared filters which cut out all visible light.

The pangolin’s head was covered with a Maasai blanket and this caused him to instinctively curl up and lie still. The tracker was then attached to a scale on his back. The final task was to weigh him… 36kg! When it was all over, the blanket was removed and the pangolin shuffled back into his hole.

As we returned to our vehicles, we had to skirt a new electric fence running along the edge forest. The outlook for this pangolin may seem bleak, but there is still hope…

Some landowners in the area have come together to form the Nyekweri Kimintet Forest Conservation Trust, which seeks to protect more than 2,000 hectares of forest. The Pangolin Project has also recruited a team of “Pangolin Guardians” from the local community, who have been going from household to household, raising awareness and persuading some people to remove the lowest strands of their electric fences which pose the greatest threat to pangolins. The project was recently featured in this article from the Guardian’s Age of Extinction series.

If you would like to support the Pangolin Project’s efforts, please visit their website for more information. I would like to thank the entire Pangolin Project team and the community for their efforts to protect the pangolins and the Nyakweri Forest. A big thank you to Claire, Beryl, Joel and Job for showing me my first pangolin and helping me capture these images. Thank you also to Mara West Camp, Sala’s Camp and Serian Camp for supporting the project.

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In the relentless heat of the day, Shompole Conservancy seems like an inhospitable place. A layer of fine dust blankets everything and it is impossible to move without sending puffs of it drifting off on the breeze. It is very dry and it might appear that little wildlife could survive here. At night, however, the story is quite different…

My first inkling that this was a rather special area came early on, when we spotted five species of cat, three species of hyena and a host of smaller critters during a single night drive. Many of these species would have been very difficult to see elsewhere in Africa. It was the most productive night drive I have ever been on.

Shompole Conservancy is special for the way in which the wildlife and the Maasai community coexist. The conservancy is owned by the local people, and they benefit from tourism revenue whilst ensuring that the land is used sustainably and the environment protected. Supporting the community in the management and security of their land is SORALO, a highly effective community-driven association. An example of one of SORALO’s initiatives is the meticulous monitoring of potentially dangerous wildlife species and sharing of up-to-date location information with local livestock herders to reduce instances of human-wildlife conflict.

In the evening, people return to their bomas to safeguard their livestock behind impenetrable barricades of acacia thorns. Lions are of course one of the main threats and I spent several nights tracking them with the SORALO monitoring team. The lions in this area are truly wild and behave quite differently from those that are used to tourists; these ones are secretive, spending their days hidden deep in the thickets, and this makes them rather hard to photograph.

The Rift Valley is extremely hot and dry. The Ewaso Ngiro River runs through the centre of the valley and is a critical source of water for people and wildlife. A few other small sources of water allow animals to live away from the river and these support an astonishing quantity of life. The SORALO monitoring team took me to one such spot and of course it was an ideal place to set-up one of my Camtraptions camera traps. The results astounded me…

Over the course of just one week my camera photographed an incredible diversity of creatures: cats, hyenas, jackals, foxes, civets, genets, porcupines, honey badgers and owls to name just a few. It seemed that all night there was a constant queue of animals waiting for their turn to drink. It was the most prolific camera trap I have ever set up.

It was clear that this area had a great deal to offer photographers and safari-goers alike. Sam and Johann du Toit, the owner-managers of Shompole Wilderness Camp, had always recognised this potential and we decided to team up. We would build a new waterhole – away from all other sources of water – and a hide from which people could watch and photograph animals as they came to drink. The waterhole would give wildlife a new place to drink year-round, away from people and livestock, and this would hopefully help to reduce human-wildlife conflict as well.

Johann found an ideal spot for the waterhole, in a wildlife-rich area, with Mt. Shompole providing a stunning backdrop. I relished starting with a blank slate and refining every detail, such as angling the hide for the perfect light at sunrise and sunset, and ensuring the waterhole itself looked as natural as possible.

In December 2021, we started by digging a shallow depression and filling it from drums of water transported on the back of a pickup truck. I set up a camera trap and over the coming days the wildlife started to show up.

Next, two shipping containers were converted into a spacious hide with windows, a toilet and fold down beds. In April, the containers were lowered into a large hole so that the windows were just above the water level.

Thirty Maasai people from the Shompole Community helped construct a 5km pipeline from the river and a solar pump was then installed to keep the waterhole permanently topped up. By July, Shompole Hide was ready…

My first nights in the hide were challenging! The wildlife was skittish and my movements were clumsy. More often than not, animals would get spooked and disappear in a cloud of dust before I could take a photograph. Over time, however, I got better at moving around silently and the wildlife got used to the new occupant of the hide.

At night I learnt to work in complete darkness and I figured out how to light the waterhole without disturbing the animals. Lighting was as critical as the design of the hide itself. It was important to me that this would be totally flexible, so that any photographer could illuminate the waterhole in their own style and capture photographs that didn’t look the same as everyone else’s. For me, experimenting with lighting is one of the most challenging and exciting aspects of working at night.

Of course, my dream was for the lions to turn up and eventually they did. Thinking back to that experience still gets my pulse racing… I was alone with nothing but air between me and the lions. The cats were just a few meters away and seemed impossibly large from my vantage point. The lions knew I was there and held my gaze as they approached the water. Nothing compares to that connection, the feeling of vulnerability and the exhilaration.

Shompole Hide is now open to anyone staying at Shompole Wilderness Camp. Every session in the hide generates a contribution to the local community. Shompole Hide’s journey is just beginning, and I can’t wait to see what comes next…

Thank you to Johann and Sam du Toit for partnering with me and for really driving forward this entire project. Thanks also to Joseph Namisi Hamisi for your work on the hide and the rest of fantastic team at Shompole Wilderness Camp. Thanks to John Kamanga, Guy Western and the SORALO rangers and monitors for your help and the valuable work that you do. Thanks to Tom and Celia O’Connor for your generous backing and to Contech for the container conversion. Finally, a big thank you to Joel Karori, Daniel Kishanto and the Shompole Conservancy Leaders for supporting the project, and to the team from the Shompole Community who helped with the earthworks.

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It seems I am quite lucky when it comes to rare black cats.

Last week I was at Namiri Plains in the Serengeti. I was aware that over the last couple of years, a  melanistic serval cat had been seen quite regularly near to camp. When I arrived, however, I was disappointed to learn that it had not been seen for a couple of months. But, I had not come to the Serengeti looking for black cats; my aim was to photograph lions for my next book project and so I resolved to focus all my attention on that instead. The lions of Namiri did not disappoint and thoughts of mini black panthers soon left my mind.

Fast forward to my penultimate evening and I was photographing a spectacular male lion at sunset. My guide, Keko, happened to turn around as he was reversing the vehicle and suddenly exclaimed that he thought he had just seen a small dark cat disappearing into a thicket amongst a jumble of boulders.

We agreed it was worth briefly leaving the handsome male lion in beautiful sunset light to go check it out. As we approached the thicket, we spotted a regular spotty serval dart across a clearing. Perhaps it had just been trick of the light that had made it look dark?

We circled the outcrop a few times and just as we were about to give up, we spotted two pairs of ears poking above the grass. One set was golden, the other black! Although all we could see were ears, it was clearly a melanistic serval.

The next day we returned to the outcrop at dawn and dusk. On a couple of occasions we caught tantalizing glimpses of fur through the dense grass. It became apparent that there was an adult spotty serval (the mother) and a pair of kittens, one of which was melanistic.

Then, just before we headed back to camp for my last night, a little black furball leapt out of the grass and sat atop a rock for just long enough to allow me to capture a clear shot. I couldn’t believe my luck! It was a perfect end to our stay at Namiri Plains.

The next morning we were up early to transfer to a new camp. We decided to quickly checkout the rocks just in case we got lucky again. As we approached, to our amazement, the serval kittens were out in the open, playing!

We sat quietly and the cats relaxed completely. Soon the mother emerged and I captured a series of images that I scarcely imagined possible when we had first glimpsed that timid pair of ears two evenings before. Click on the picture below to cycle through a small slideshow…

Just like the black leopard I photographed, melanism in servals is caused by a recessive gene that overrides the usual golden coat with black spot pattern when it is inherited from both parents.

Many thanks to my guide, Keko, and the entire team at Asilia Namiri Plains.

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However, the project did not end there. For a period of time, I knew where I could find an African black leopard and I was keen to make the most of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It wasn’t long before I was back in Kenya with ambitions to expand my portfolio of images.

For more than a decade I have increasingly specialised in photographing wildlife at night. This has sometimes involved improvising and making up new techniques on the fly, such as this early example from 2008. As the available equipment limited my ability to capture images the way I wanted, I developed my own specialist devices, such as the remote-control BeetleCam and my Camtraptions camera traps.

Photographing animals with stars in the sky in a single exposure became one of my obsessions. My star pictures (such as the example below from 2013) offered a rarely seen perspective — a glimpse into a night-time kingdom where nocturnal creatures such as hyenas, leopards and lions were in their true element.

Photos combining animals with stars are quite challenging to achieve. It took six weeks to get a handful of images of hyena and lions under the stars in Zambia (as featured in this blog post) — and those animals were easy to find. It took a full month to get a single star photograph of a black rhino in a sanctuary full of rhinos (as described in this blog post). If it took that much effort to get photos with those animals, could I ever hope to achieve it with the rarest and most elusive creature I’ve ever encountered? An animal that embodies the night more than any other I can think of…

A photo of a black leopard under the stars would be both the rarest and most difficult wildlife photo I had attempted to date. My ambition was clear, but my chances of achieving my dream photograph were far from certain.

For this new phase of the project, the team was much smaller. Luisa Ancilotto – on whose property the leopard mostly resided – generously facilitated the entire endeavour by hosting me and allowing me free-reign to deploy my camera traps.

Luisa’s team from the local community, in particular Muhammad Parasulan and Patrick Lempejo, helped me find new locations for my cameras, with clear views of the night sky. They also kept my lenses clean and cameras running when I wasn’t around.

At any one time, I now had between five and seven camera traps deployed, and most of them were set up to capture the star shot.

To make my life more difficult, it seemed the black leopard was now roaming further afield as he avoided a bigger male and sought out a safe territory of his own. He passed by my camera traps much less frequently than in the early days which greatly reduced my opportunities. The big spotty male on the other hand was often around.

It only took a couple of weeks before I had captured the photo I had envisaged — except it featured the wrong leopard! Nevertheless, it is possibly my favourite photo of a spotty leopard to date and so I wasn’t too disappointed.

Thereafter, weeks turned to months without another successful star photo. For the image to work, many factors needed to come together. Firstly, of course, it needed to be a clear night. But as the rainy season took hold, it became increasingly common for clouds to blot out the sky completely. This led to some atmospheric images albeit not exactly what I was hoping for.

It was also important that the night was very dark, with no moon or twilight to lighten the sky. To reveal stars, an exposure time of at least 15 seconds was necessary. The flashes would go off at the start of the exposure to illuminate the leopard before it moved off. Thereafter, as long as the background behind the leopard remained dark, the image would work. However, if there was ambient moonlight to lighten the background, the animal would appear translucent. Here is an image that demonstrates the effect, although, in this case, I rather like the ethereal cat emerging from the night; for me it is a photo that conveys the essence of the ghost-like leopard.

Another infuriating factor was the black leopard’s cooperation — or rather lack thereof! I wanted head-on shots so that meant when the animal passed by my camera I had a 50-50 chance of either seeing his face or backside. Several times the other conditions were perfect, but the leopard passed by in the wrong direction. Without the leopard’s piercing eyes in view, he was almost invisible in the final picture!

Other animals could also be uncooperative. I set up one of my cameras on a rocky outcrop on Suyian Ranch with spectacular views out over Laikipia. My aim was to get an image that captured the essence of this land of leopards. Here is a behind-the-scenes image of camera trap set-up:

Within a few days the camera captured this photo of a young leopard at dusk.

However, shortly thereafter, a troop of naughty baboons discovered the camera and comprehensively dismantled it.

I eagerly checked the remaining cameras and, on the lower of the two cameras, I had the following two images (the first image was taken at the same moment as the behind-the-scenes picture above).

As the skies cleared in July, I also captured one more star photo; the black leopard prowling under a carpet or stars…

Some of these images and many other never-before-seen pictures of the leopard appear in my new book, The Black Leopard, out now! Hand-signed copies are available here and additional purchase options listed here.

I would like to end by thanking everyone in Laikipia who helped me to photograph this beautiful animal. Firstly, Luisa Ancilotto, Mohammed Parasulan, Patrick Lempejo, Evelyne Wanjiru, Pauline Catherine Wambui, Komit Roitii Ponut, Sinkan Kiloku, Jonathan Lekishon, Peter Parasulan, Simon Itodo and Peterson Maina for supporting me every day for more than a year as I worked on this project. Thanks to Steve Carey, Annabelle Carey and the team at Laikipia Wilderness Camp for backing my project in the early days. Thank you to Ambrose Letoluai and Nick Pilfold for sharing their research with me and for their valuable work as champions for Laikipia’s leopards. Thanks to Anne Powys and the team at Suyian Soul for helping me in the later stages of the project. Finally, I would like to thank everyone in Nairobi and at home for the support that facilitates all of my projects, plus my publishers, Blackwell & Ruth and Chronicle for encouraging me and helping me to write the book. This project has been a real team effort and I am truly grateful to all who have helped me on this journey.

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Black rhinos are notoriously grumpy. On a couple of occasions I have been forced to climb trees in a hurry whilst tracking some particularly cantankerous specimens in Zambia’s North Luangwa National Park. Tsavo’s rhinos were no different. One particular individual took exception to my cameras and flattened every one that I placed in his territory. Thanks to him, I now have a collection of dented camera housings and snapped-off tripod legs!

Fortunately, I found other rhinos that were more amenable subjects and I soon captured several black and white images with my infrared-converted cameras.

However, as the end of the month drew near, the shot I really wanted of a rhino under the starry night sky was still eluding me. By the end, all of my cameras were setup to try and capture this image.

Finally, two nights before I had to remove the camera traps, I captured an image in which all of the elements came together. One month of effort, for a single image…

Having made a good start in Tsavo, I was keen to continue my rhino project in other parts of Kenya. I first visited the grassy plains of Lewa and Borana. This habitat contrasted greatly with Tsavo and I was able to get close enough on foot to be able to photograph the rhinos with a 400mm lens. There is nothing quite as exhilarating as approaching black rhinos on foot and the week I spent hiking and tracking rhinos with the rangers on Borana was particularly thrilling.

I also visited Solio on the other side of Laikipia. I initially went there for the black rhinos, but it was the white rhinos that captivated me, particularly when I came across them in the beautiful fever tree forest that follows the valley through the centre of the reserve.

When I first visited Solio, I only had my traditional handheld kit with me. At the time, I wondered if it might be possible to use BeetleCam with the white rhinos but my experience to date with the short-tempered black rhinos had persuaded me that it would probably not be in BeetleCam’s best interest.

A few months later, I was a guest on the BBC’s “Animal Park”. Over the course of a couple of episodes, I used BeetleCam to capture close-up photographs of some of Longleat’s residents. It was an action-packed assignment, featuring close encounters with Wolves, Lions and Tigers. However, it was an encounter with white rhinos that really surprised me; they turned out to be incredibly inquisitive and playful! Seeing a gigantic, 2,000kg rhino frolicking in front of BeetleCam like a daft puppy was quite a sight (watch the behind-the-scenes video at the end of this post)! I began to think that perhaps I might be able to use BeetleCam to photograph the white rhinos in Kenya after all.

After a year of ruminating on the idea, I finally managed to organise a return visit to Solio. I was single-minded in my purpose: White Rhinos with BeetleCam.

I arrived at lunchtime and set out for my first session that afternoon. It did not go to plan…

I found the rhinos as they were heading back into the forest for the night. I immediately noticed that they seemed much more skittish than the placid animals that I remembered from my previous visit. I began to suspect that it was my Land Cruiser that was spooking them, as it looked very different to the Solio Lodge game-viewers that the rhinos were used to. Hanging far enough back so as not to spook them would be an additional challenge that I would need to overcome.

Next, I discovered that white rhinos have unbelievably good hearing. I could barely edge BeetleCam in their direction without their ears swivelling around and pinpointing the origin of the unfamiliar sounds and it wasn’t long before the gigantic beasts had trotted off into the undergrowth. I began to think I would be lucky to capture a single close-up image.

The next morning, I went out for sunrise and it was a similar story. I changed my approach and managed to capture a few photos by guessing where the rhinos were heading and leaving the buggy motionless in their path. I improved things further by swapping the camera in the BeetleCam for a Sony a9 which is capable of completely silent shooting. Nevertheless, it was a low-odds approach.

I headed back to the lodge for breakfast and to pick up Nat and the kids for a mid-morning game drive. We set off again in search of the rhinos. After a couple of hours, we emerged out onto an open hillside. It was here that the rhinos were gathered in small groups. It seemed to be some sort of social gathering and, unlike in the evening and early morning, it seemed that the rhinos were relaxed and had no agenda.

I deployed BeetleCam and the rhinos’ behaviour was completely different; they were no longer skittish, but inquisitive. The youngsters were even playful. At times, BeetleCam was surrounded by curious rhinos.

Over the days that followed, the late-morning photo shoot continued to be the most productive session, and the images I had imagined started to materialise. After ten years of photographing various animals across Africa, it seemed that BeetleCam had finally found its perfect match! Back in 2009, when I built the first BeetleCam, I never would have thought that ten years on, I would still be finding new subjects and new ways to use this tool.

You can watch my behind the scenes video from Solio here:

A big thank you to Safari Collection and Solio for partnering with me on this project. Thanks also to all those who have helped with my ongoing black rhino project: Michael Dyer, Wilson and the team at Borana Conservancy, Chris Gordon from Conservation Alpha, Zeke Davidson, Albert and Moses Wekesa from ZSL, Richard Moller from Tsavo Trust and the entire KWS team in Tsavo West.

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