Getting To Know Me: Part One

Some might not know this but I spent some time as an intern before university at?@ezemvelokznwildlife?Hluhluwe Imfolozi Park, working with the Park Ranger at the time in the Wilderness Section there.

We patrolled park boundaries, sat for days in the same place looking for any signs of poaching and helped out the stable hands with the horses. I even got to shoot the standard issue R4 during the anti poaching unit range practice.

The amazing thing about the wilderness section is that it is only accessible on foot or horseback and on one expedition accompanied by a journalist and a photographer for a UK magazine we stumbled across some lions, the horses bolted, we had acacia tree scratches nearly down to the bone. The very unfortunate Englishman’s horse, Tokaloshe, a black beastly thing stepped into an abandoned ant hole and sent the plump gentleman into a bollemakiesie right over the horse’s neck!

On the way home that evening the photographer stopped to change a filter to take a snap of the sunset (a screw in ND filter with a Grad to darken the sky and bring out the beautiful African colours of the sun)

I didn’t know it then but I think that experience gave me an insight into a career that seemed so unimaginable I didn’t think of it again for YEARS.

I was also fortunate to spend time with my Grandfather in the bush along the river banks of Pongola as a child, I was never to far from a bush holiday thanks to him and my parents and those memories shaped my love for the African bush and its wildlife.

It was only many years later as a professional photographer myself that I had the opportunity to combine my two passions of photography and Wildlife. My volunteering work for Eco Defense Group took me to Southern African reserves documenting the battle against rhino poaching and later on an assignment for?@africanparksnetwork?into Angola to the beautiful Iona National Park.

If you’d like to collaborate on any wildlife causes that need exposure and impactful imagery please get in touch, I’d love to expand my volunteering services in the conservation space in 2025.

See my work at https://www.caseycrafford.com

#Wildlife?#conservation?#photography?#africa #wildlifephotography?#antipoaching?#volunteerwork