Both trips have been specifically designed with photographers in mind and all levels of photographic ability are welcome. If you are looking to improve your photographic skills, I will be on hand to provide expert tuition and give you helpful hints and tips. If you are already a proficient photographer, this is your chance to travel with a group of like-minded people, and of course to take some fantastic photographs. During the trips I will try to impart as much of my knowledge as possible… I will be happy to critique images and discuss anything from gear to photographic techniques and online marketing to Photoshop.

The Pantanal: Monday 2nd July – Tuesday 10th July 2012

£2,995 per person in twin share accommodation.

The Pantanal is a vast wetland area, most of which lies in Brazil. It is the world’s largest wetland and a renowned wildlife hotspot. The landscape is open and this makes it possible to see creatures that are usually very hard to find in the dense rainforest that covers much of South America – this includes animals such as jaguars, giant anteaters and tapirs. Everywhere you look you will also find caimans which provide a wealth of photographic opportunities. Finally, the Pantanal is famed for its incredible diversity of bird species.

I have been to the Pantanal three times and I have seen and photographed many of the unique species that can be found there. I now invite you to join my Pantanal photo tour so that you can experience and explore this unique ecosystem for yourself.

During the tour we will visit two locations, which will allow us to photograph a cross-section of the region’s flora and fauna. The two lodges we will be staying in are comfortable and ideally located to explore the wetlands. The group size is small, just 8-10 people, and at all times we will be accompanied by expert naturalist guides.

For more information about this trip, please click through to Steppes Discovery’s website where you can find a detailed itinerary and make enquiries: Pantanal Wildlife Photography Tour

If you would like to read more about my experiences in the Pantanal, please check out the following posts: The Pantanal Revisited, Caiman under Stars & Caiman by Moonlight.

Madagascar: Saturday 27th October 2012 – Thursday 8th November 2012

£3,395 per person in twin share accommodation.

Madagascar is an enchanted island inhabited by strange and exotic creatures. The island split away from mainland Africa around 160 million years ago and its subsequent isolation created a laboratory in which creatures could evolve into weird and wonderful forms. Madagascar is now home to 5% of the world’s plant and animal species, of which more than 80% are found nowhere else on Earth. This country will overwhelm you with its abundance and diversity of photographic subjects.

During the tour we will visit three strikingly different habitats, each with their own compliment of unique flora and fauna. First we will visit the towering rainforests of Andasibe-Mantadia in search of the largest of the lemurs, the Indri. We will then travel to the desiccated spiny forests in the south of the country, in order to photograph the iconic ring-tailed lemurs and Verreaux’s sifakas. Finally, we will head to the spectacular Avenue of the Baobabs and Kirindy Reserve in search of creatures such as Madagascar’s largest carnivore, the bizarre Fossa, and the smallest primate on Earth, Madame Berthe’s mouse lemur. Throughout the trip we will have the opportunity to photograph a variety of other lemur species and a spectacular array of birds. We will also be looking to hone our macro skills on a multitude of colourful chameleons and exotic geckos.

The tour dates have been chosen specifically as it is the best time of year to photograph animals such as fossas, lemurs with their young and many of the cold-blooded animals. The group size is small, just 8-10 people, and at all times we will be accompanied by an expert local wildlife guide.

For more information about this trip, please click through to Steppes Discovery’s website where you can find a detailed itinerary and make enquiries: Madagascar Photographic Tour

If you would like to read more about my experiences in Madagascar, please check out the following posts: Wildlife of Madagascar, Madagascar’s Lemurs & Madagascar’s Amazing Geckos.

I was well aware that finding a wild panda in these thickly forested areas was not going to be easy… in the past, people have spent weeks searching for them without success. I therefore adopted the attitude that I would enjoy the spectacular trekking and it would be a bonus if I glimpsed a panda!

I soon discovered that wild panda tracking is exceedingly hard work; scrambling up ridge after ridge, fighting through bamboo thickets and boulder-hopping across rivers. I was soon covered in scratches and aching all over! I was led by an expert local tracker who would promptly declare “no panda here” every time we reached a new valley. He explained that he was looking for signs such as fresh droppings or recently chewed bamboo stems. He was also listening out for the unmistakable crunching sounds made by a panda eating bamboo.

One day started with a grueling climb up a brutal incline to the top of a ridge. The gradient was so steep, and the earth underfoot so slippery, that the only way to climb was to grab hold of branches and haul myself (and my 15kgs of camera gear) upwards! As I approached the top of the ridge, my heart skipped a beat as I heard a snap come from the thick bamboo forest below… there could be no doubt that a panda was down there somewhere.

The tracker and I approached the noisy panda but it heard us and careered down the slope at an incredible speed. I returned to the ridge dejected – despite being less than 10 metres away, all I had seen was thrashing bamboo stems rippling down the mountain. Then to my shock and amazement we saw a white head and two black ears just 20 metres down the other side of the ridge; there was a second panda sitting there, chomping on bamboo! I felt a tremendous rush of emotion… relief that the effort I had gone to reach this remote part of China had not been in vain; privileged that this iconic and endangered animal was sitting in front of me; and awe at the beauty of it.

From then the experience only got better. The panda came up the slope towards me, passing within touching distance, and proceeded to shamble along the top of the ridge. He was a young male patrolling the boundary of his territory. He stopped to sniff and mark each tree he passed. After ten minutes or so, he lumbered back into the bamboo, plonked himself down and started munching again. At no point did he show any fear and he even treated me with mild curiosity (as you can see from the video below). It was the most incredible animal encounter I have ever had and I am still left pinching myself.

Now that the pressure of seeing a panda had been lifted, I was able to enjoy the rest of the trip. We found a couple more pandas but they were concealed deep in the bamboo and I was unable to get clear shots of them.

I discovered that there was an abundance of other amazing wildlife in the Qinling Mountains such as takins, golden monkeys, golden pheasants and flying squirrels.

I have put together a short 10-minute documentary that tells the story of my trip and shows me taking some of the photos that appear in this post. The footage really illustrates just how incredible my panda encounter was (if the video does not appear below then click here to view it).

As I approached the end of my time in China, I was able to reflect on the plight of the Giant Panda. It is a sad fact that these beautiful creatures face grave challenges. There are around 1,600 wild pandas but many live in fragmented, unsustainable populations, like small islands surrounded by a sea of humanity. Efforts to increase the number of pandas have been hampered by an extremely low birth rate. Some conservationists say that there is not enough habitat left to sustain pandas in the wild and that the money spent on panda conservation could be better spent elsewhere. Having seen these incredible creatures in the wild, I believe that every penny spent protecting them is well spent. After all, if we cannot protect this global icon of conservation, then what can we protect?

For more Giant Panda photos, visit our China wildlife gallery. If you would like to see China’s wild pandas for yourself, I am able to lead personalized photo tours/trips… if you are interested in joining me then please get in touch.

The Philippine tarsier is one of the smallest primates, with a body length of around 10cm. Their enormous eyes are their most distinguishing feature; they actually have the largest eye-to-body size ratio of any mammal! A tarsier’s eyes are so large that they cannot swivel in its skull… instead the animal has to turn its head to face whatever it is looking at. Since tarsiers are nocturnal, their massive eyes give them excellent night vision.

Their innocent demeanor belies that fact that these animals are consummate predators. In fact, tarsiers are the only entirely carnivorous primates on earth. I was actually taken aback by just how veracious these little predators are…

As I was photographing one of the lethargic bundles of fur, a large, juicy katydid (an insect resembling a grasshopper) appeared. The tarsier’s huge ears instantly swiveled towards it, like two satellite dishes locking in on a signal. It then slowly and deliberately turned its head to face its unsuspecting quarry. After a pause of a second or two, the tarsier exploded, leaping two meters through the air to land squarely on top of the insect. In an instant, the tarsier had dispatched its victim by biting its head off. It then proceeded to chomp through the katydid’s fat body, eating everything but the wings. I thought this hardly seemed to be appropriate behavior for the world’s cutest creature!

Sadly, the Philippine tarsier’s loveable looks are contributing to the decline of the species; tarsiers are commonly taken from the wild to sell as house pets or for exhibiting to unenlightened tourists. These tarsiers do not usually survive long as they do not take well to being handled or woken up regularly during the day. Rapid habitat loss and domestic cats also pose a grave threat to the survival of the species. On the island of Bohol, wild tarsiers used to be a common sight until around 1960. Since then it has been estimated that the number living in the wild has dwindled to less than 1,000.

I would like to thank Carlito Pizarras of the Philippine Tarsier Foundation who helped me find and photograph these tarsiers. The Philippine Tarsier Foundation is providing a lifeline for the species by establishing protected areas, educating communities, conducting tarsier research and promoting responsible ecotourism.

For more tarsier pictures, visit our Philippines gallery.

Join me on the trip of a lifetime to Madagascar!

As many of you know, Madagascar is one of my favourite places on Earth; it is an enchanted island inhabited by strange and exotic creatures. I have partnered with Steppes Travel (an excellent UK-based travel agency) to bring you a fantastic two-week photo tour that takes in some of Madagascar’s highlights.

On this tour we will first visit the towering rainforests of Andasibe-Mantadia in search of the largest of the lemurs, the Indri. We will then travel to the desiccated spiny forests in the south of the country, in order to photograph the iconic ring-tailed lemurs and Verreaux’s sifakas. Finally, we will head to the spectacular Avenue of the Baobabs and Kirindy Reserve in search of creatures such as Madagascar’s largest carnivore, the bizarre Fossa, and the smallest primate on Earth, Madame Berthe’s mouse lemur. Throughout the trip we will have the opportunity to photograph a variety of other lemur species and a spectacular array of birds. We will also be looking to hone our macro skills on a multitude of colourful chameleons and exotic geckos!

This tour has been specifically designed with photographers in mind and all levels of photographic ability are welcome! If you are looking to improve your photographic skills, I will be on hand to provide expert tuition and give you helpful hints and tips. If you are already a proficient photographer, this is your chance to travel around Madagascar with a group of like-minded people, and to come back with some great images of the country’s unique flora and fauna. Throughout the trip I will try to impart as much of my knowledge as possible… I will be happy to discuss anything from gear to photographic techniques and online marketing to Photoshop.

The tour dates are [update: see Photo Tours for the new Madagascar photo tour dates]; these dates have been chosen specifically as it is the best time of year to photograph animals such as fossas, lemurs with their young and many of the cold-blooded animals. The group size will be 8 to 10 people and on most activities we will split into two small groups of 4 or 5 people to ensure your experience is as intimate as possible. In addition to myself, an expert local wildlife guide will accompany us. Due to the varying states of Madagascar’s tourist infrastructure, the standard of accommodation will vary from the comfort of a rainforest lodge and a luxury tented camp to more basic bungalows in Kirindy Reserve.

If you are interested in joining me on this trip then please head over to the Steppes website for details of pricing and to make your reservation.

I would love for you to join me on this trip so that I can share my passion for this wonderful country and its unique wildlife. Have a look at our Madagascar Galleries to see some of the creatures that we will be photographing and please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

[update: see Photo Tours for the new Madagascar photo tour dates]

We started our trip with a night on French Island, home to one of the densest koala populations in the world. Koalas in Australia were almost hunted to extinction during the early 20th century and populations on the mainland are in decline due to disease, habitat loss and the impact of urbanisation. As a result, koalas are regularly taken from French Island to repopulate areas on the mainland.

Next we travelled to the rugged and remote northwest coast of Tasmania in order to photograph Tasmanian Devils in the wild (this will be the subject of a future post). While our nights were taken up with photographing the Tassie Devils, our days were free to explore the wild and beautiful coastline. This gave us a great opportunity to test a new 10-stop Neutral Density filter that we recently bought! This filter cuts out 10-stops of light, allowing us to achieve extremely slow shutter-speeds, even in the middle of the day. The effect of this was to blur the sea and even the clouds as they moved across the sky.

After leaving the coastline, we drove to Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park. We spent several days there and got treated to the full spectrum of Tasmanian weather… on a couple of occasions we even got snowed on, despite it being the middle of the southern-hemisphere summer!

Wildlife around Cradle Mountain was abundant and we enjoyed stalking wallabies and goofy wombats when the light was not appropriate for landscape photography.

Our next location was Kangaroo Island in South Australia. As its name suggests, the island is home to plenty of kangaroos! These kangaroos are a subspecies of the Western Grey Kangaroo found on the mainland. They emerge to graze shortly before sunset, which presented us with a brief opportunity to photograph them in good light. We also photographed a variety of other creatures such as the bizarre egg-laying echidna.

We were fascinated to find that fossilised forests were exposed along parts of Kangaroo Island’s coast. The first image below shows a fossilised root system that we found under an overhang. Taking the shot involved clinging precipitously to a crumbling cliff-face, high above the crashing ocean! The island also boasts some spectacular coastal features such as Admiral’s Arch, shown in the second picture below. The formations hanging down from the roof are also fossilised tree roots.

The final part of our journey took us to into the heart of Australia’s outback. Five hours drive from Adelaide, lies the spectacular Flinders Ranges – the largest mountain range in South Australia. The Flinders Ranges has an abundance of animal and plant life, however extensive sheep grazing and the invasion of non-native wildlife have taken their toll on the biodiversity of the region. One of the species that has suffered most is the Yellow-footed Rock-wallaby, shown below in its typical environment. On the other hand, emus are common in the Flinders Ranges, and they can often be seen grazing in the more open areas. As shown in the photograph below, it is the male Emu that looks after the chicks, staying with them for up to 7 months in order to protect them and teach them how to find food.

You can find more photographs from Australia in our Australian Wildlife gallery. Feel free to post a comment letting us know which photograph you like best!

The Island of Madagascar split away from mainland Africa around 160 million years ago. This isolation created a laboratory in which animals could evolve into weird and wonderful forms in order to fill different ecological niches. Madagascar is now home to 5% of the world’s plant and animal species, of which more than 80% are endemic (i.e. they are found nowhere else on Earth).

Madagascar’s fantastic biodiversity is in part due to its highly varied habitats. These range from cool highland rainforests in East to arid deciduous and spiny forests in the West. We started our trip in the lush tropical rainforest of Amber Mountain National Park in the North of Madagascar.

We found that the rainforests were a haven for a large number of Madagascar’s famous chameleons. Almost half the World’s species of chameleon are found in Madagascar and we photographed a variety, ranging from the tiny Brookesia chameleons to the huge Oustalet’s Chameleon.

Brookesia, or leaf-mimicking chameleons, are the smallest chameleons in the World. They live on the ground and hunt tiny insects under the fallen leaves. Since they are only around 2cm long, we found it almost impossible to spot these little critters! Luckily our guide had an uncanny ability to find them on demand!

Of course other reptiles and amphibians were also plentiful in the rainforests. We went on numerous night walks and found some beautiful tree frogs. For the shots below, we worked as a team with one of us using the camera while the other held an off-camera flash pointing into a large white reflector. We used this “forest studio” set-up for almost all of our macro images (including the day shots).

Madagascar also has some beautiful bird life. The first image below is an Amber Mountain Rock Thrush. This bird is only found in one National Park and is an example of how localised much of Madagascar’s wildlife is. Deforestation is a massive problem in Madagascar and many species are threatened by habitat loss.

The second image below is a Madagascar Malachite Kingfisher. This species is closely related to the Malachite Kingfisher of mainland Africa, but it is less dependent on water. We even saw one of these birds catching crabs on the beach!

After the rainforest we drove west for a few hours and found ourselves in the dry deciduous forest of Ankarana National Park. En route we passed some spectacular formations know as “Red Tsingy”. These were carved by erosion and are unique to Madagascar.

The dry deciduous forests were teeming with lots of lovely little snakes and, safe in the knowledge that Madagascar has no dangerous snakes, we spent a long time attempting to get the perfect snake portrait!

Later in the trip, we travelled down to the Southern Coast of Madagascar and for the first couple of days found ourselves in a perpetual storm! Photographing wildlife was difficult so we concentrated on landscapes and plant life.

In search of a moody seascape, we ventured out onto the slippery coastal rocks in the height of the storm. It was dusk, and the clouds were very dark, so we made use of the conditions and took some long exposures of the tumultuous sea. The image below shows the rain in the distance and the sea covering the rocks in front of us.

The area near the town of St. Luce is a boggy marshland and we found that carnivorous pitcher plants covered vast swathes of it! For some reason we find carnivorous plants irresistibly cool, so we happily dedicated an entire afternoon and morning to photographing them!

Last, but not least, we come to the ubiquitous lemurs. These are the true icons of Madagascar and everywhere we went we encountered a wonderful array of lemurs large and small. We will be dedicating an entire blog post to Madagascar’s lemurs so we’ve only included two shots below, one of a Ring-tailed Lemur and one of a Verreaux’s Sifaka (subscribe to our blog via email or RSS if you would like to be notified when we release the rest of our lemur shots).

Wildlife of Madagascar Talk

We could go on forever about the weird and wonderful wildlife of Madagascar and we plan to introduce you to some particularly interesting species in future blog posts. We will also be giving a talk about the wildlife of Madagascar on 24th October 2010 at the London Wetland Centre. You can find out more about the talk on our Facebook event page or on the Wetland Centre website. It will be a great day out and we hope to meet as many of you there as possible!

Nat and I aren’t really ones for lying around on beaches, so we decided to go on safari for our honeymoon (yippee)! The day after our wedding we were on a plane to Zambia for two weeks of wildlife and relaxation. Obviously BeetleCam was not invited on this trip (although I did manage to sneak two camera bodies, 4 lenses, a couple of speedlite flashes and a tripod into our luggage)!

Our first stop was the spectacular Victoria Falls, also known by the indigenous Lozi people as “Mosi-oa-Tunya” (literally, “the Smoke that Thunders”). We were there shortly after the wet season and the volume of water flowing over the falls was incredible. In numbers, Victoria Falls is 1.7km wide, with a maximum drop of 108m and, at that time of year, approximately 3,000 tonnes of Zambezi River water flows over the falls every second! Standing in front of the falls, you get drenched by a deluge of spray that rises up over 400m and is visible up to 50km away. On the ground there is so much spray that it is impossible to appreciate the scale of the Victoria Falls… it is only from the air that you get a true sense of its magnitude.

Possibly my favourite image from the whole trip is this one of Nat looking out over the falls at sunset:

Our next stop was South Luangwa National Park. This is a beautiful park, teaming with animals. The Luangwa River runs through the heart of the park and provides a focal point around which the animals congregate. Below is a picture of the river at dusk and also a shot of some spoonbills feeding. The spoonbills were very comical to watch as they manically pursued small fish around the shallow pond.

A highlight of South Luangwa National Park is a trip to the enormous yellow-billed stork colony. This is the only colony of its size in the region and is an impressive spectacle, particularly at dusk when hundreds of birds fly in to roost. In the following photo I silhouetted the storks against rich purple African sky, shortly after sunset.

Another highlight of South Luangwa National Park was some of the nocturnal wildlife that we were able to see. One evening, after enjoying a lovely sunset on the banks of the Luangwa River, we were extremely fortunate to come across a beautiful Serval Cat on our drive back to camp. Since these cats are nocturnal, good sightings of them are few and far between. I was keen to get a decent shot of the Serval but I did not want to use a flash on an animal with sensitive night vision. This was my first trip with the new Canon EOS 1D Mk IV so I decided to really put its low light capabilities to the test by shooting only by the light of a single spotlight. The following shot was taken at 400mm, f/3.2 at ISO 8,000… I find it incredible that this was even possible and the resulting shot shows just how far digital cameras have come in recent years.

After South Luangwa we moved to Lower Zambezi National Park for the final leg of our trip. We spent most of our time cruising up and down the river watching elephants, buffalo and hippos. We stayed in a spectacular camp overlooking the Zambezi River… it was a very fitting and romantic end to our honeymoon!

Zambia is a wonderful destination for a safari… it is much quieter than other parts of Africa I have visited and boasts some beautiful national parks. I can’t wait to return someday to undertake a more in-depth photography project. To finish off this post, here is a picture of Mr. and Mrs. Spider in their web at sunset, overlooking the Zambezi River (you might have to look closer to spot Mr. Spider).

Kanha National Park is located in the Satpura Hills of Madhya Pradesh. Verdant Sal forest covers most of the park, interspersed by grassy meadows and rocky ridges. This is the area where Rudyard Kipling gained inspiration for his novel “The Jungle Book”. It’s easy to see how such a beautiful environment could have inspired Kipling.

The aim of my trip was to photograph a broad selection of Kanha’s wildlife, but at the top of my wish list (like many other photographers) was the Bengal Tiger. It was a difficult prospect to try and photograph these magnificent cats within the limited time I had available, however I was lucky enough to see seven different cats whilst I was there. Photographing them was extremely difficult – often I just caught a fleeting glimpse of orange and black stripes melting into the jungle, or a tail flicking out of the long grass. In the end I managed to get a good photo of this tigress lying on the forest floor. She had three sub-adult cubs, which were resting out of sight.

Tigers are the top predators in their ecosystem, and have been a prominent symbol in Indian civilisation for centuries. It is a sad fact that tiger numbers have fallen by about 95% in the past 100 years and they only occupy 7% of their former range. I feel privileged to have seen this magnificent animal in the wild but I am greatly saddened by its current demise.

The birdlife in Kanha was amazing – the park hosts over 200 resident and migratory species. The 600mm lens and cropped-frame Canon 1D MK IV allowed me to get some great images of bee-eaters, owls and a number of other feathery creatures. Peacocks are a common sight in the forest, but you can never tire of their beautiful feathers and extravagant display.

Perhaps my favourite creatures to watch and photograph in Kanha were the langur monkeys. These playful primates provided hours of entertainment and fantastic opportunities for photographs. They live in troops that consist of around 20 or 30 monkeys, led by dominant males. They can often be a good indicator of nearby tigers or leopards, because they give a distinctive alarm call if a cat is spotted.

My award for “least favourite animal” undoubtedly goes to the Giant Honey Bee. Imagine your average honey bee and then double the size. Then imagine having two of these incredibly huge, notoriously aggressive beasts stinging the inside of your ear canal… for ten minutes… that’s what I experienced… and that’s why I don’t like them. To this day I still don’t understand why they launched an airborne assault on me when I was minding my own business! I certainly won’t be going remotely near a colony of giant honey bees anytime soon! However, I do appreciate the spectacular nests that they build on the underside of tree branches.

After recovering from the bee incident (which included a visit to a local hospital) I was back up and photographing the spectacular animals around me. This included soft-ground barasinghas and an Indian leopard. Leopards are difficult to spot in India, due to their timid behaviour and highly effective camouflage.

Overall, I found my trip to Kanha extremely rewarding. It is a beautiful wilderness with a profusion of wildlife – a small haven in a country that is fast changing.

We started our journey on the shores of the Dead Sea, a body of water with a salinity of 33.7% – that is 8.6 times saltier than the ocean! Due to this high salt content, swimming in the Dead Sea is a unique experience as you literally float like a cork! The wind was very strong while I was “swimming” and it whipped spray off the tops of the waves and into my eyes… the stinging sensation that ensued was also a very memorable experience!

Our next stop was Petra, an ancient city that I have wanted to visit since Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade came out in 1989! Petra was the capital city of the Nabataeans and is staggeringly old having been established sometime around the 6th century BC. The buildings at Petra are colossal and have been carved straight into the rose-coloured sandstone cliffs.

We only had one full day at Petra and I wanted to make the most of it… in typical fashion I insisted on getting up before dawn in order to make the most of the day. The entrance to the ancient city is through a narrow gorge called the Siq. As I wound my way through this deep gorge, all of a sudden I turned a corner and found Petra’s most famous monument, the Treasury (Al-Khazneh), towering in front of me. It was a sight that took my breath away. The canyon was still quite dark but I had lugged along my tripod and was able to photograph the Treasury before the hordes of tourists arrived.

I spent the rest of the day hiking around exploring as many of the archaeological sites as possible. Every rock face I came across had a tomb or shelter carved into it. The natural swirls and colours of the sandstone were more beautiful than any man-made painting or wallpaper.

For sunset I headed up to the “Monastery” which is about an hour’s climb from the city centre. This is Petra’s largest monument and dates from the 1st century BC. I wanted to photograph the Monastery from a slightly unusual viewpoint so I scrambled up a nearby mountain in order to get the following shot:

In total I spent 12 hours hiking around Petra with around 20kg of camera gear. By the end of the day I was exhausted, my legs were cramping and my back was in spasm. In hindsight I should have spent longer at Petra!

Our next destination was the Dana Nature Reserve. March is a very special time of year to visit Jordan because many of the wild flowers are out in bloom. We trekked into the reserve through Wadi Feinan, a beautiful lush valley. At one point we came across a camel browsing amongst the flowers… it was the final element I needed to complete my picture of this blossoming paradise.

In addition to extraordinary natural beauty, Dana also boasts some impressive archeological sites. Copper has been mined here for over 6,000 years and some of the oldest mineshafts in the world still exist today. Exploring these ancient mines was quite an adventure and I enjoyed meeting some of the cute residents.

Next stop was Wadi Rum, an area made famous by T. E. Lawrence A.K.A. “Lawrence of Arabia”. It is hard to describe Wadi Rum more eloquently than Lawrence does in his book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom:

The crags were capped in nests of domes, less hotly red than the body of the hill; rather grey and shallow. They gave the finishing semblance of Byzantine architecture to this irresistible place: this processional way greater than imagination…Our little caravan grew self-conscious, and fell dead quiet, afraid and ashamed to flaunt its smallness in the presence of such stupendous hills.

On arrival I was delighted to find the desert covered in a carpet of pretty little purple flowers. I had a field day as I ran around taking photographs of the delicate flowers against the quintessential desert backdrop. The flowers are only out for a few weeks each year so once again I had been very lucky with my timing.

We spent a magical two nights camping in heart of Wadi Rum. The desert gets terribly busy during the day as many visitors come on day trips from Petra or Aqaba. However, we found that at dawn and dusk we had the desert to ourselves, and this is when I captured many of my favourite images.

We finished the trip with a couple of nights by the Red Sea for some well-earned relaxation and a bit of scuba diving.

I would thoroughly recommend a trip to Jordan… There are few countries of comparable size that offer such variety, so much history and such astonishing natural beauty.

For more pictures from my trip, have a look at the Jordan tag.

King penguins are the most impressive and beautiful species in the Falklands. They stand almost a metre tall and can weigh up to 16kg. The Falklands are at the limit of their global range and consequently there are only around 400 breeding pairs on the islands, almost all of which are found at a single site called Volunteer Point. We spent one night at this location and were blessed by a few fleeting periods of good light during which we rushed around frantically taking as many different shots as possible!

Gentoos are the second largest species and are recognisable by the white stripe extending across the top of their heads like a bonnet. They breed in large colonies which can be situated a kilometre or more inland. Each morning the penguins make the long journey down to the sea where they eat fish and crustaceans. In the afternoon they return to the colony to feed their chicks. On Sealion Island we could see a gentoo colony from our bedroom window and this allowed us to pop out and photograph them at all times of day (and night!).

We found magellanic penguins on every island we visited. Unlike the other penguins in the Falklands, magellanics live in burrows. They are very shy and would scarper underground if we ever got too close… this made photographing them quite a challenge! However, by keeping a low profile and approaching painstakingly slowly, we were able to get close enough to photograph a pair standing in front of their burrow (below, right).

Rockhoppers are the smallest and most common penguin species in the Falklands. Rockhoppers get their name because they move around by hopping with both feet together. We were constantly amazed by their ability to tackle the most challenging terrain and by the bravery they exhibit when leaping between ledges on precipitous cliff faces! Rockhoppers live in large colonies often mixed in with albatross or imperial shags. They are noisy and quarrelsome little creatures but their comical antics and inquisitive personalities make them very endearing and they soon became our favourite animal of the trip!

The picture above is one of our favourites; it shows rockhopper penguins showering under a freshwater spring. Throughout the day the penguins were splashing around in the water and squabbling for the best spot. Taking this shot involved lying under part of the waterfall for several hours… we got completely soaked and covered in some rather unsavory stuff which earned us the nickname the “Guano Brothers”.

View more penguin photos in our Penguin Galleries.