Bird Wildlife along the shores of Lake Victoria
After watching Thomas Heaton’s video about the importance of waking up early for “sunrise” photography and it resonating with some of my personal challenges with lack of motivation to shoot what I love (nature and wildlife), I decided to act quickly. I looked up a contact I got last year for Emma, a small boat operator along the shores of Lake Victoria and made a plan for 5:30am, Easter Monday for a moderate fee of course. In this post I narrate my experience and share the images I captured, some learnings and what I ought to do better next time I’m out photographying.
Waking up at 5am was a lot easier than I thought it would have been, thankfully I had packed the previous night so all I had to do was freshen up, have a light breakfast then off I went, left the house by 5:25am and at 5:34am, I was at the pre-agreed meeting point, Mulungu. This is when the plan seems to start falling apart. I called Emma, but his number was available, I did this until 5:49am after which I decided to drive to another location and take images of the sunrise. This was such blessing because it gave me the opportunity to photograph one of the most beautiful sunrises I have seen in a long time.
Setting up the tripod to take this is attracted a few of the fishermen and they initiated small talk; to make them feel comfortable, and for my own security, I engaged politely, thought that did distract me from the picture taking, so couldn’t find other location at this site but I’m pretty proud of this shot!
Because I didn’t want my morning to be a complete bust, I tried Emma’s phone again and it was available, said he over slept (5am isn’t for everyone) and that he had phone issues, but was about 10 min from our earlier agreed location, Mulungu, so I packed up and drove back, it is a 5min drive so didn’t lose much time.
Getting to Mulungu, I meet Emma and explained to him what I had wanted to achieve in detail and how best he could help. In hindsight, we should have had this discussion over the phone when I made the appointment but it was pretty rushed and learning on the job makes more sense. To be honest, I was a bit frustrated that he wasn’t able to keep the agreed time essentially because we wouldn’t go as far out into the lake as I had planned and we wouldn’t have the right light as we got there so we reached a compromise and would do better next time, there definitely will be a next time.
His small boat was spacious, with cushions, a roof and side mats in case it rained, so perfect for my gear! I didn’t take a photo the boat but have a short reel I posted on Instagram of my experience, you can see the boat there. We set off at 6:49am and after a 6min ride, we had reached Bulinguge island, whose shoreline we were going to use as our site for the wildlife, here are some of keeps, click on any of the images to enlarge it.
The water excursion ended at 8:35am, some of the best 2 hours of the year thus far and looking forward to many more of these! Share your thoughts in the comment section below and for images, check out my portfolio here;