C4 Photo Vehicle Experience, Part 2 - By Kyle de Nobrega

Part 2 to our gallery of our epic photographic experience at Mashatu Game Reserve, thank you to ranger Fish for the fantastic sighting! See more about the C4 Photo Vehicle.

Male lion stretching in satisfaction

 

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C4 Photo Vehicle Experience, Part 1 - By Kyle de Nobrega

Just a few days back Mashatu resident photographer Kyle de Nobrega hosted guests on the C4 photo vehicle for an awesome four day experience.

The four days where jam packed with world class sightings and photographic opportunity. Everything from mating lions, new born hyena relocation, multiple leopard sightings and two great mornings spent in the C4 hides including birds and elephants galore.

Here is part one of a two part series of images by Kyle taken over the four days spent on the C4 photo vehicle:

Mating lions

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A Productive Morning at the Hide

After a night of strong winds, we were unsure of what the morning would hold for our regular Matabole Hide session. We set off from the lodge before dawn into the crisp morning air, all wrapped up for our 30min drive towards the hide. As the sun slowly rose where excited to see the many puffs of scattered cloud cover slowly illuminate creating a fantastic backdrop to what we hoped would be a great hide session.

On arrival to the hide we set up our camera gear, we even experimented with a more artist approach to shooting with a Go Pro that we had lodged inside the waterhole. All set up and ready to go, and right on queue an elephant bull arrived. The bull gave us a good show before meandering off back into the Mopane. He most certainly set the tone for the morning with great birds following pursuit, as well as, herds of impala, a troop of baboons, a terrapin and a shy squirrel.

Feeling very content with our morning spent at the hide, we decided to head back to camp for brunch. Jokingly we mentioned between us that all we needed to top off an already top class morning in the bush would be a leopard ... and in true Mashatu style a leopard we did see!

 

Clouds making a perfect backdrop for the morning activity

 

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A Detour to the Matabole Hide - By Kyle de Nobrega

After an early rise at 5am, it wasn’t long before we heard the distant sounds of Hyena and lions calling whilst having a well needed morning cup of coffee. The calling was different, it was intense and clearly not for territorial reasons.

We where planning on heading to the underground hide for the morning but we decided it worthwhile to bypass where the commotion was going on and see what was out there.

We followed the audible commotion for a while before we found what it was all about. A clan of Hyenas where challenging 2 young male lions over the remains of an impala ram kill, yet another victim of the Impala rut. There wasn’t much left and we were lucky enough to catch the last bit of action. The sun was just about to rise and we positioned ourselves according to the lions and hyena, and the approaching golden light. As classic Masahtu has it, there wasn’t a tree or shrub in our way and we had the 2 young males walk past us, shortly followed by 13 hyena unsatisfied with the scraps they were left.

After almost an hour of interaction, the rising sun set the tone of calmness once again. With adrenaline flowing in full force, we retreated to the hide to absorb what we had just witnessed. With a cup of coffee in hand we browsed through the images we had just got on our ‘short’ little detour to the hide.

The good old saying of ‘Mashatu always delivers’ never seems to fail.

 

 

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Mashatu Photo Workshop, April 2 - May 3 : By Isak Pretorius

Safari Diary - 29 April 2015

Photo Workshop, Mashatu Game Reserve in Botswana

We were so inspired by our photos and the potential at the bee-eater hide that we decided to give it another try this morning. The dark background, golden side-lighting and action created stunning photos. A coffee break under a big Mashatu tree concluded both the morning drive as well as the first photo workshop. We to...ok our guests back to the border and picked up the new guests for the second workshop. During the afternoon drive our original plan was to have a look at the lions feeding on the elephant carcass. Instead, we found a leopard and spent the whole drive with her as she climbed a few trees, walked around, drank water and finally disappeared into the thicket. This was a fantastic start to the second workshop and the bar had been raised very high.

 

 

Leopard | 1/50sec at f/4.5, ISO 2500 | Canon EOS-1D Mark IV + EF200-400mmf/4L IS USM | Shutter priority, -1 EV

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C4 Photo Vehicle

 

Designed and built by the same wildlife photographers who built the world famous underground photo hides at Mashatu, the C4 photo vehicle is a fully customised vehicle built exclusively for Mashatu Game Reserve. Its design and concept stem from wanting to give clients unparalleled access to the excellent wildlife of Mashatu and allow them to photograph uninhibited and unconstrained. Our many thousands of hours on safari vehicles have been the best research and combined with our photographic experience we have produced a specialist photo vehicle that is simply the ultimate experience in photographing from a vehicle.

C4 Photo Safaris has been hosting photo safaris across Africa since 2005. Over this time we have seen thousands of game drive vehicles, each one with its advantages and pitfalls. No one vehicle was ideal for photography, so we went forth and built the definitive photo vehicle that caters perfectly for wildlife photographers. Using our extensive experience of driving on vehicles in the field whilst taking photos, we used this knowledge to design a vehicle that is unique in its kind and that offers you unparalleled photographic ease, speed, stability and comfort. No element of design was left out. We designed this vehicle to be our perfect photographic vehicle and we demanded perfection based on our many years photographing in the field.  Only once it was good enough for us, did we allow it to be enjoyed and used by our clients.

C4 Photo Vehicle

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