The idea of a high and a low season, particularly in the Masai Mara Conservancies, is patently absurd. For years I have listened to scorched earth diatribes from people extolling the benefits of dry season photography and why you pay a premium for it. Dry and hot weather tests any photographer’s patience as you wait hours for catatonic felines to wake and other animals to languidly rise, in stages, from several coats of stupor.
No-one is denying a clear, sharp dawn has its benefits. These conservancies have not only set benchmarks in terms of behaviour and animal concentrations, with off-road driving permitted, they also have the most protracted ‘golden hours’ in the world: light other areas of Africa only dream of. However, it is about more than the crepuscular hours. Around eleven, after a clear morning, I long for the first cotton wool cumulus to race across the sky. This generally means by lunch there will be fifty shades hovering above the table. The convection builds and we take bets on whether the deluge will hit us.
Animals in rain — particularly cats shaking down — are always good subjects, but this is a sideshow. There is never a dull sky in the Mara but when it is being disembowelled by a biblical storm it is little short of witchcraft and far more potent photographically.