Ghosts dance at the edge of the darkness. See them?  Shape-shifting spirits smokily forming and reforming. Dream creatures vanishing and reappearing as you trace their rhythms in and out of the deep black nowhere with your camera. See them? A flickering play of light, darkness and dust, a surreal stop-motion tableau, a danse macabre messing with your mind. Welcome to the night country. Welcome to photographing wildlife from the Shompole Wilderness overnight hide …

Night hides have added a tantalising extra dimension to photographic tours in recent years providing the thrilling opportunity to not only witness the nocturnal lifestyles of celebrated safari subjects and lesser known night-dwelling species, but also to capture mesmerising, high quality wildlife images previously not dreamed possible.

When the first custom-built night hide opened on Zimanga, South Africa’s pioneering photographic game reserve, several years ago, we jumped at the chance to help guests capture the secret night-time world of subjects we’d never before been able to photograph between dawn and dusk. The special overnight experience has since become a hugely popular feature of the safaris we run there.

You can imagine then how excited we were to learn about two new purpose-built night hides in East Africa that were turning out a distinctive style of night-time wildlife image, set up so there’s the option to do backlighting and which regularly attract some unusual species safari-photographers don’t often get to see, let alone shoot. We were eager to check out their potential as soon as we could.

The images here were all taken during two consecutive nights on a visit to just one of these new low-level hides in October last year. Shompole Wilderness is a small, family-owned reserve in Kenya’s southern rift valley on a conservancy operated in conjunction with the local Masaai. Its night hide, constructed with the help of award-winning wildlife photographer Will Burrard-Lucas, who knows a thing or two about the importance of low angles and staying concealed from your subjects, is located in a wide area of open plain which by day appears barren and lifeless. But at night – well that’s a whole new story.

As there are few other waterpoints nearby, the hide, under cover of darkness, is a massive draw for the normally shy and secretive wildlife that appear from the shadows as if from nowhere come dusk. During our visit we were struck by the amazing variety of species, plus the frequency of visiting wildlife. We were rarely long without a cool subject to point our cameras at.

A female leopard graced us with her presence early on the first night and drank thirstily for several minutes in two spots on the edge of the water, giving us a different take each time. Normally that’s headline news for any night session, but we didn’t have time to bask in the glory of those shots because we were straight back to business tracking the next beautiful subject that came.

The constant traffic makes it hard to single out top-note moments. The giraffe were certainly unexpected stars (and hide regulars) pitching up in small groups as well as in ones and twos on both nights, giving us the chance for some graceful and shapely compositions. A couple of bull elephants bossing the drinking edge weren’t to be sniffed at either. It always blows you away how even more awesome elephants look in the dark. We also enjoyed the plentiful impala trooping by and, of course, the zebra – the latter seemingly put on the planet to be photographed against the blackness.

Turned out though that it was the less well-known cast of night critters, what we’d dub the ‘nocturnal specials’ that ended up fascinating us most. These are animals rarely seen and tough to get great shots of. Getting genet, honey badger, civet and African wild cat (some of them visiting more than once) was a game changer. It didn’t matter that the local lion pride and striped hyena that regularly frequent the hide failed to show on the nights we were there. In no way were we complaining.

Also up there on our ‘must mention’ list is the flexible lighting operated from within the hide, including the welcome option for backlighting.  Given the amount of dust around due to the hot, dry conditions we were extremely keen to try some backlighting – one of our favourite techniques for producing atmospheric wildlife pictures. The ability to control the intensity of the light in different areas of your field of view from inside the hide allows for enhanced creativity in your shots when the chance arises. Eerie silhouettes with your subjects against a halo of dust as they cross in front of strategically placed lights means you can achieve stunningly evocative shots and come away with something a little bit different. We had fun trying out the effects with an obliging and busy clan of spotted hyenas (another species that visited the hide on numerous occasions during our stay). It’s a little more challenging than conventional front-lit night hide photography given subjects are often on the move, but with the ability of modern cameras to shoot at high ISOs it’s possible to get some excellent results. We were generally shooting in the range of ISO 1600 to ISO 6400 with successful shots at both the lower and higher end of this range. With judicious use of noise reduction software at the editing stage we concluded there’s wonderful potential here for some winning wildlife shots.

A word of warning however. While Shompole has the creature comforts our guests have come to expect from their night hide photography – there are beds, meals and drinks are provided and there’s a flushing toilet and wash basin, you are not shooting through glass in this hide. When there’s dust around it’s coming your way. More importantly silence is golden. Any noise will be picked up by approaching sensitive wildlife so it’s even more important to keep things quiet.

Finally, before we sign off we should say how we were also surprised by how productive we found both daylight sessions book-ending our night photography. The blue hour, the golden light, the morning – all were extremely rewarding and we loved the effects we could achieve when animals chased around in all that dust. Notable during our time there were daytime visits by two wonderfully crinkly old bull elephants and a large and entertaining troop of feisty olive baboons. The view of Shompole mountain as a backdrop to your pictures was not a shabby one to wake up to either, as we took a brief break from our photography to enjoy a well-earned slice of banana cake and some coffee to keep us going.

Both our trips to Kenya’s new night hides in 2024 and 2025 are already full, but you can get in touch to be waitlisted for cancellations or receive early notification of dates for our trip there in 2026. Email us or sign up for our newsletter.