It’s always fair to say that to get the best chance of getting good pictures you have to be in the right place to start with. So with this in mind I booked us onto a trip to Port Lympne Wild Animal Park with the same photographic experience company we had spent a day with earlier in the year when we visited the Wildlife Heritage Foundation at Smarden. On that particular day I had chances to get some amazing close up shots of the animals and was hoping to do the same on this day too.

What this photographic day with Wild Arena allowed us was private access to some areas of the park plus the use of a driver to take us around the African Experience safari section in one of their Land Rovers, stopping whenever a good photographic opportunity was there. We had been on the African experience many years ago when it first started and our memories were that the animals were usually at a great distance, so with this in mind I had my long lens on ready.

 

Very soon, however, I realised that the animals are now so used to seeing the safari vehicles that quite a few of them don’t have a problem coming close as you drive past.  One such animal is a Rothschild’s Giraffe called Harris. He was hand-reared and has recently joined the other Giraffes. He loves some bread as a special treat and thought nothing of putting his head inside the Land Rover we were travelling in to get some. It’s quite something having a Giraffe breathing down your neck I can tell you.

Later on we went off the usual track looking for other animals and were amazed that the Grévy's Zebra came just as close to the Land Rover as the Giraffes had done. It was at this point I actually put my macro lens on as they really were so close. They have beautiful markings when you see them this close and at one point one of the animals put its head in the back of the land rover and sniffed my knee.

David from Wild Arena was always on hand to offer advice to help us get better pictures. One good piece of advice was to be sure of getting a good shutter speed by increasing the ISO setting on your camera, especially as this particular day it was quite overcast for most of the time. Another piece of advice he gave us when we stopped by the male Gorilla enclosure was rather than rush around trying to get a good shot of the quickly moving animals, slow down and concentrate on just one animal, especially if it settles down. This was something I must admit never occurred to me, but I found it worked really well and I have some pictures of the male Gorillas I’m particularly pleased with. 

 

After lunch in the Mansion House, which was very nice, we went back out on the road again and had another drive around the 100 acre African Experience to see if any more of the animals were close to the tracks, but it was mostly the same ones we had seen during the morning. We had planned to be by the large family group of Gorillas at feeding time and watch the antics they get up to. There was one really very young baby clinging onto its mother fast asleep and it didn’t even wake up when some of the female gorillas were having a very noisy fight. 
 

After tea and biscuits back in the Mansion House our last highlight of the day was to see feeding time at first the Red Pandas, and then the De Brazza’s  and Black and White Colobus Monkeys.  All of these have open-topped enclosures, which meant nothing was going to obstruct the view for taking pictures.

Over the course of the day I took a staggering 1400 pictures; the most I think I’ve ever taken in one day. This was due to using the motor drive a lot during the day. The vast majority of these pictures are now in the recycle bin on the computer having not been good enough to keep. However, those that I think are most successful are those where the motor drive allows the chance of capturing an interesting expression or the glint of the sun in an animal’s eye.

Today was one of the most enjoyable photographic days out we’d had for a long time and the close encounters with the animals made it even more memorable. There are quite a few pictures in the album that accompanies this journal entry and it was very hard not to include more than I have.

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