You don’t need to be a professional photographer to join us. You just need to be someone who looks at Africa and wants to capture what you feel.
Every camera welcome
Whatever’s in your hand, we’ll help you use it better.
Some of our guests travel with a full mirrorless kit and three lenses, others bring an iPhone. Both leave with images they’re proud of.
In Focus is built around the person behind the camera, not the camera itself. Our full time Pro Photo Safari Guide, Matt teaches composition, light and timing the same way regardless of what you’re shooting on, reading a scene, anticipating behaviour, knowing when to wait and when to move. Those are photography skills, not gear skills, and they matter more to your images than the equipment in your hands.
If you shoot on a phone, Matt will show you how to use its limits well: framing without false zoom, working exposure lock, knowing when burst mode earns its place. If you’re shooting a full system, Matt will help you push it further than you would alone.
Either way, you’re not the beginner in the vehicle and you’re not the odd one out. You’re exactly who this trip is for, and where you need to be.
The two-guide method
One person finds the animal. The other finds the photograph.
Every In Focus Tour carries two guides: a local Safari Guide who knows the terrain, the wildlife and the light of that specific reserve, and Matt, your Pro Photo Safari Guide, who translates what the local guide finds into the image you’re chasing.
The local guide might know the leopard is resting in that drainage line. Matt is the one saying: let’s come round to the far side so the light’s behind us, and let’s wait, she’s about to move. One knows the animal. The other knows the picture.
It’s a small structural difference that makes a real one. You get the fieldcraft of a guide who has spent his life reading this land, and the eye of a guide who has spent his career reading light and behaviour for photographers specifically. Neither replaces the other. Together, they’re the reason our guests come home with images they didn’t expect to get.
Travelling with a non-photographer?
Not everyone in your group needs to be behind a camera to have the trip of a lifetime. In Focus is designed so a non-photographing partner is never waiting on the sidelines. The wildlife, the landscapes and the camp experience stand on their own, the photography is what you get to take home as well, not the only reason to be there. Many of our happiest guests have travelled exactly this way: one shooting, one simply watching.
Our five conditions
What actually makes a great photograph, guaranteed.
Great wildlife images come down to a small number of specific conditions lining up. We don’t leave that to chance. Every In Focus departure is built around five commitments.
This is the checklist we hold ourselves to on every departure. If a trip doesn’t deliver on all five, it’s not an In Focus trip.
Upcoming In Focus departures
Tanzania In Focus: 24 February – 4 March 2027
The Serengeti. Calving season. The circle of life unfolding in front of your lens.
There is a small window each year when the southern Serengeti becomes nature’s most extraordinary nursery. Thousands of wildebeest calves are born in rapid succession and with them comes everything that follows. Predators, drama and breathtaking life playing out across the plains. There is nowhere on earth quite like the Serengeti in calving season. Join Matt, our Pro Photo Safari Guide, alongside expert local Tanzanian guides who know these plains, the animals, and their movements. Together, they’ll put you in the right place at the right time to capture the extraordinary intimacy of new life in the wild.
Tour leader: Matt Yardley, Pro Photo Safari Guide
Dates: 24 February – 4 March 2027
Group size: Maximum 6 | Guaranteed departure from 3
Vehicle: Open-sided, clear roll-downs, pop-top roof | Maximum 3 per vehicle
Per person twin share: USD 9,997 | AUD14,700*
Single supplement: USD 553 | AUD 850*
Learn more Register your interest
*AUD pricing is indicative only, subject to exchange rate at time of booking and payment.
More In Focus departures are added throughout the year. If Tanzania’s dates don’t suit, get in touch, we’re always planning the next one.
Meet Your Guide:
Matt Yardley
Born and raised in Africa, Matt trained as a trainee guide at &Beyond Phinda Private Game Reserve, one of the continent’s most respected reserves, earning his Advanced Field Guide and Lead Trails Guide qualifications. Over 14 years he has guided private photographic safaris across Botswana, Brazil, Namibia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa, and worked as an Expedition Leader, Advanced Safari Guide and Wildlife Photographer with Wild Eye Destinations, &Beyond and National Geographic Expeditions.
What that means for you: Matt has already made the mistakes, sat through the hundreds of hours of quiet nothing, and learned exactly what separates a good sighting from a great photograph, so your time in the vehicle is spent on the second, not the first.
He now lives in Australia, and leads every In Focus departure personally from there, so if you’re booking from Australia or New Zealand, you’re talking directly with your guide, in your own timezone, before you’ve even left home.
Beyond the CV, what sets Matt apart is what happens when he picks up a camera himself. He’s drawn to the unpredictable and the fleeting, shoots with a fine art and monochrome sensibility, and isn’t afraid to break a rule of composition if the moment calls for it. Every evening in camp, he runs an editing session so you leave not just with images, but with the skills to keep improving long after the trip ends.
