An African game reserve managed for the conservation of wild animals, but developed and focused around the requirements of wildlife photographers sounds too good to be true. An African game reserve focused around the requirements of wildlife photographers that not only has the Big Five and an impressive 400 plus bird list, but also wild dogs, one of Africa’s most endangered and fascinating predators, that you can photograph at eye level, well now you’ve really got to be kidding…

Black collared barbet, Zimanga private game reserve

Yet such a place exists. It’s in South Africa and is called Zimanga and it’s the brainchild of South African pioneering sugar farmer, Charl Senekal, who, for the past 10 years has been busy turning a former hunting reserve into a 6,000 hectare wildlife haven and unique, specialist safari destination as fast as his team can keep pace with his bold and innovative ideas for the place.

Charl is no mean wildlife photographer himself so he knows exactly what us photographers want. When we talk about wildlife hides here you can forget about those badly positioned for the light jobs you often get stuck with in many public reserves where your compositions have to be compromised because of distracting man-made structures like angular metal drinking troughs and so on.

No. Charl wants the best and went to the top guy, Bence Máté, and considerable trouble and expense, when it came to designing the first three of this private reserve’s well-executed, perfectly-placed, state of the art hides. Months were invested in test sites to ensure they’d got the perfect spots to begin with and exhaustive refinements of measurements re focal lengths were made and tried out. The effort has paid off as they’re each more than five-star by our reckoning.

Bence Máté is an award-winning wildlife photographer you’ve no doubt heard of. He has a ton of gongs to his name including, not one, but two Eric Hosking Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards in the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. He’s even scooped the prestigious Photographer of the Year title and currently leads the chart of top photographers for the number of category wins he’s had in this annual contest.

Yellowbilled stork, Zimanga private game reserve

He’s also becoming known in the ‘business’ as ‘the invisible wildlife photographer’ for the clever, custom-built photography hides he’s now developing and setting up around the world including those at Zimanga. The first three on the reserve – the Bhejane and Mkombe infinity-pool, bird bath hides and the stunning low-level lagoon hide are his first in Africa. Not only are these hides precision designed to suit their intended subjects they’re also comfy to be in (with air-con) and ‘smooth’ to photograph from from. By smooth we particularly like the way the executive-style chairs glide along the laminated floor of the hide for complete ease and efficiency of movement when photographing or grabbing bits of gear. Plus the hides come equipped with tripods and heads so you’re ready to roll when you pitch up.

Zimanga’s not just about these deluxe photo hides. Traditional game viewing is on offer too, but comes as you’d expect by now on this reserve, with an extra twist to suit the wildlife photographer. For some subjects it’s possible on occasion to work off the vehicle, on foot, so you get a chance at the sort of intimate, dynamic and in-your-face low level perspectives that are tough to achieve elsewhere in the African bush when you’re confined to a game viewing vehicle.

So what’s next, you might ask, on Mr Senekal’s shopping list for this blossoming photographic reserve? Well, long term there are plans to expand and develop Zimanga even further and already a fourth signature Bence Mate hide, for nocturnal photography, is due to come on stream in 2016. Sounds thrilling – we can’t wait to give it a go!