Getting creative with the wildebeest river crossings  

Taken with EOS-1D Mark III, EF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS lens at 400mm, 1/30 second at f20, 100 ISO. Image © Brian Hall

The annual crossing of the wildebeest from the Mara to the Serengeti is a spectacular event. It’s noisy, dusty and happens very quickly so as a photographer you need to be prepared.

As well as more general images of the wildebeest crossing the Mara River I wanted to get some more abstract images capturing the dynamic movement of the animals during the crossing. By resting the camera on a good sized bean bag on top of our safari vehicle I was able to shoot at a very slow speed and capture the movement of the animals. Shooting slightly into the light enabled me to get some sparkle in the water, however with the dark animals against the dark background the camera did try and lighten up the image too much, so exposure compensation of minus one and a third stops was set.

You can never be sure exactly what you will get with this sort of shot but by keeping the composition tight and shooting lots of images I ended up with some good ones.

This image was taken on safari with Jonathan Scott – experience the wildlife photography trip-of-a-lifetime