It's Monday 24th December 2007 and the winner is ...

Many of our guests take such great photographs, of which we usually only see a handful. In a very selfish attempt to sneak a peak at all your photos we thought we would hold a competition - "Being on Safari with RPS". With a tempting carrot of a free week at RPS, we asked most of our guests to send us their favourite pics!

What a response we had from everyone – the emails came flooding in and it was my job (a fun one at that) to go through them all and sort them out. In theory this should have been quite quick and easy, but some folks (who shall remain nameless) didn’t quite follow the instructions and sent through photos with names such as ‘IMG0611.jpg’, so I had to go through and rename them all, but I learnt a couple of shortcuts and it all went very quickly.

Any spare moment I had I was going through the photos and picking out my favourites … but heaven’s above there were some hard choices as there were so many great shots! After Jo came back we started again asking all the questions - is this photo better than this one? How does the composition compare, how is the light, does it tell a story, does it speak to us? To make sure that things were super fair, we called in the troops – Robin, Conor, Emily and Marko to add their opinions the mix. And everyone had different favourites! But after shedding lots of blood sweat and tears we eventually made our final decisions. So wait for the moment….drums rolling….

And the winners are (click on the photo for a closer look)

Funny Moments on Safari

There were so many that made us giggle … but here are our favourites.

Runner Up: Tom Walton
Can’t you just hear Jason and Jenn laughing?

Winner: Mary Chris Wall
What a great expression!

Safari Camps

We thought these two photos really illustrated key points of safari life…

Runner up: John Henshall
Porridge Pot - early mornings at camp with a lovely warm bowl of porridge to start the day right

Winner: Mark Holford
Laundry at the camps – simple yet effective

Landscape

Decisions, decisions … there were so many beautiful pictures, it was tough going to choose only two, but Tom Savage won the day.

Runner up: Tom Savage
Absolutely fantastic light – it looks like it’s on fire

Winner: Tom Savage
Just stunning, words have failed me

People on Safari

This was possibly one of the most debated categories as we all had different opinions on the essential criteria. My original selection was thrown out the window, and new ones were selected, and then another set … and eventually we managed to narrow it down to three …

Joint Runner Up: Paul Otten

(we couldn’t decided between the two, but since Paul took both, they’re both winners!) – both photos were taken on David Roger’s Photographic Workshop – trying to get the perfect shot.

Winner: Sherry Sullivan
Doesn’t this just speak volumes about what safaris with Robin Pope are all about?

Wildlife

There were so many fantastic shots in the category that we couldn’t just choose two, so we sub-divided into three more categories – Small Things, Birds and Big Animals.

Small Things

Runner up: Jill Snyder
Finding chameleons in the spot light is an amazing skill our guides have, allowing you to get up close and personal to this Flapnecked Chameleon

Winner: Wim Jacobs
Conor liked this exceptional photo so much he’s made it his desktop image

Birds

This was tough – all of the photos were fantastic, and we had to be really really harsh to narrow it down to two photos, but we managed in the end.

Runner Up: Tom Savage
Firecrowned Red Bishop, colour, light and composition, all make this photo beautiful.

Winner: Paul Otten
Great white Egret, I can only say WOW!

Animals

Another tough category, although these two photos both whispered (actually shouted would be a better description) in our judging panel’s ear …

Runner Up: Alex Paul
Tena Leopard … catching the moment and
illustrating what a privilege it is to view the
elusive and beautiful leopard.

Winner: Tom Savage
Giraffes, the timing and position for
getting this shot just astounded all of us

AND THE WINNER IS …

And then the really tough decision had to be made – the overall winner and receiver of our prize – a week at Robin Pope Safaris. After much discussion we chose Tom Savage’s double-headed giraffe shot. Congratulations Tom!

Overall winner: Tom Savage
double-headed giraffe shot

Honourable Mention:

Although we have been told on many occasions that the game in South Luangwa is out of this world, we thought that Bill Knight must have had the best game drive of all time!