“YOU WANT TO get the glint in their eyes,” wildlife photographer Lyn Francey says as I train my camera on a reed cormorant on the bank of a river in Botswana’s Chobe National Park. “That’s it, that’s it,” she coaxes. “Cool beans.”  It takes 10 minutes in the company of Ms. Francey, a 54-year-old Zimbabwean who has spent more than 20 years guiding tours in southern Africa, to capture my first halfway decent image.  Every feather in the bird’s beige-brown plumage is sunlit and in focus, its neck is arched and ready to strike and its left eye, fiery and orange, looks full of fish-catching intent.  Arriving at Pangolin Safaris’ boat, moored at a riverside hotel, I’d felt pathetically underendowed. My high-end “enthusiast’s” Canon CAJ -1.23 % camera body, 70-200mm telephoto lens and, please don’t laugh, iPad had done the job for the past six days in Botswana’s wildlife-packed Okavango Delta. But that was largely thanks to the travel company’s skilled safari-vehicle drivers getting me close enough to privileged sightings, like a postprandial leopard up a tree, that I couldn’t miss.  Stepping aboard the photo-safari boat I could see that size and quality really did matter. Ranged across the middle of the boat in front of me were eight swivel seats, able to rotate 360°, and a battery of Nikon NINOY 1.40 % D7000 cameras sporting powerful 500mm telephoto lenses, sitting on mountings—ultra-flexible tripods—modeled on those used by the South African army to accommodate machine guns.  As a photographer who rarely strayed from automatic mode, going through camera settings with Ms. Francey only increased my general sense of lazy ineptitude. “We set the aperture at 5 to keep the depth of field small, the shutter speed high to let in more light, and the ISO, our measure of the image sensor’s sensitivity, low to prevent graininess,” she explained.  “Here on the river,” she added, as I wondered how on earth I’d gotten away with 21 years of supplying photographs to accompany my travel articles, “we also slightly underexpose to cut down on reflection and to compensate for the intense African light.”  But now, thanks to Ms. Francey’s encouraging tuition and that first cormorant photograph, my self-doubt is dissolving and I’m able to concentrate on the captivating Chobe River and its teeming wildlife.  On a felled tree trunk straddling the riverbank, our driver, Shandweza Shandweza, spots movement, and carefully maneuvers us into position beside it. There, basking in the sun, are two baby Nile crocodiles, their mother watching them protectively from the water below. A Nile monitor lizard struts along the bank toward them. I rattle off close-ups of its head, its black and cream scales arrayed tightly around its eye like corn kernels on a cob.  I hold my breath, anticipating a cruel moment in nature, and debate whether to shoot the unfolding drama. But the lizard, having seen the vigilant mother, veers away.  “As you do more,” whispers Ms. Francey, “you learn to anticipate movements, in birds particularly, so that you can shoot them with wings spreading or taking off to fly.”  Over the next two hours I take 696 photographs, mostly of herds of bathing elephants cavorting in the river, their pleasure conspicuous. Five of those are keepers—including one that captures every wrinkly detail of an elephant’s head and its lush eyelashes and another of a baby with droplets of water spilling from its lofted trunk.  There are portraits, too, of a handsome water buck posing on a grassy verge, of Lozi fishermen from the Namibian side of the river poling their canoe-like mokoro boats along the northern bank and of a portly hippo, taken, lying down, from water level, resting my telephoto on the boat’s purpose-designed padded gunwale.  I’m just congratulating myself on my newfound talent when a thunderous tor of black cloud begins sweeping across the African plains, throwing down skewers of lightning and turning the river into a raging sea. In waves more tumultuous than Ms. Francey has seen in years, we just make it back to the wharf, scurrying through the pelting rain, clutching trash bags full of expensive camera gear.  Back at my base at Chobe Under Canvas, a comfortable camp located inside the park and moved in its entirety every week, I reflect on the day. From now on, I decide, I’m going to shun my camera’s automatic setting altogether.  The following dawn, on my first post-tour game drive, I wield my camera at everything from baboons to a pride of nine lions with a newfound swagger. Experimenting for the first time with all my settings, I produce 408 photographs that are too dark, out of focus or full of white noise. But there are also a few gems to make Ms. Francey proud—sharp and capturing the glint in the animal’s eye.  It isn’t the most spectacular start but I’m happy. And anyway, a leopard doesn’t change its spots overnight.
Shooting Wildlife on a Photography Safari in Botswana: Capturing lions, crocodiles and elephants on film in Africa is as difficult as it sounds. But with the right setup and teachers, it’s possible to come away with the perfect shot