Every wildlife photographer remembers their first safari. The nerves, the excitement, the slight panic when a leopard finally appears and your hands won’t quite cooperate with your camera settings fast enough. It happens to everyone, and it’s nothing to be embarrassed about.
After hosting wildlife photography safaris across Botswana, Namibia, Kenya, and South Africa, I’ve watched guests make the same handful of mistakes again and again — usually in the first day or two, before everything starts to click. The good news is that all five of these are easy to fix once you know what to look for.
Mistake 1: Shooting With Too Slow a Shutter Speed
This is, by far, the most common mistake I see. A lion lying still in the shade is one thing, but the moment it stands, stretches, or a bird lifts off a branch, a slow shutter speed will turn that moment into a blur.
As a general guide on safari, you want your shutter speed at 1/1000 of a second or faster for most wildlife, and considerably faster — 1/2000 or above — for anything in flight, like a fish eagle diving for prey. If you’re worried about increasing your ISO to compensate, don’t be. Modern cameras handle noise far better than they used to, and a slightly noisier sharp image will always be more useable than a smooth, blurry one.
Mistake 2: Trusting the Camera’s LCD Screen
It’s tempting to glance at the back of your camera after a shot and think, “that looks great.” The trouble is, your screen lies to you. Glare, brightness settings, and the screen’s small size can all make an underexposed or slightly soft image look perfectly fine in the moment — until you see it later on a laptop screen.
Instead, get comfortable reading your histogram. It takes a little practice, but it gives you a far more honest, instant read on your exposure than your eyes alone ever will. I always encourage guests to check it periodically through a sighting, especially as the light shifts.
Mistake 3: Photographing Only Close-Up
Tight, frame-filling shots of a lion’s face or an elephant’s eye feel like the “trophy” shots, and there’s nothing wrong with capturing them. But one of the easiest ways to spot a beginner’s portfolio is that every image looks the same: animal, filling the frame, plain background.
Some of the most compelling wildlife photographs are the ones that show scale and place — a lone giraffe against an enormous sky, or a pride of lions dwarfed by the openness of the plains around them. Next time you’re in a sighting, try deliberately zooming out for a few frames. You may be surprised which version you prefer once you’re back home.
Mistake 4: Heading Out at the Wrong Time of Day
Midday light in Africa is harsh, flat, and unflattering, full of hard shadows that do no favours for fur, feathers, or faces. Yet it’s tempting, especially on your first safari, to want to shoot constantly, including through the middle of the day.
The light that photographers chase — soft, warm, low in the sky — happens in the hour or so after sunrise and the hour before sunset. It’s not a coincidence that these are also the times animals tend to be most active, moving to water or beginning to hunt as the heat eases. This is exactly why our safaris are built around early morning and late afternoon game drives; the timing isn’t just about wildlife sightings, it’s about giving you the best possible light to work with.
Mistake 5: Not Focusing on the Eyes
This sounds almost too simple to matter, but it changes everything. A photograph can be technically sharp throughout and still feel flat and lifeless if the eyes aren’t the sharpest point in the frame. Conversely, even a slightly soft image can feel powerful and alive if the eyes are crisp and full of detail.
Whenever possible, use single-point autofocus and deliberately place that point on the animal’s eye, not its nose, ear, or the nearest patch of fur. It takes conscious effort at first, but it becomes second nature surprisingly quickly — and it’s the single biggest difference between a snapshot and a portrait.
The Real Secret: Nobody Gets It Right Immediately
If you take nothing else from this post, take this: every wildlife photographer, including the ones whose work you admire most, made every one of these mistakes when they were starting out. Wildlife photography rewards patience and repetition far more than it rewards expensive gear or technical perfection on day one.
This is also exactly why photography mentorship is built into every safari we host. You don’t need to arrive knowing all of this. You need someone beside you in the vehicle who can quietly say “try dropping your shutter speed” or “wait, watch its ears” at the right moment — and then let you take it from there.
If you’re hoping to spend a week getting hands-on, in-the-field guidance like this while photographing some of Africa’s most extraordinary wildlife, take a look at our upcoming safari departures, or get in touch if you’d like help finding the right one for your experience level.
Which of these mistakes do you recognise from your own early days behind the camera? Let me know in the comments — I’d love to hear your story.
by Minkie du Toit | Copyright © 2026