People ask us this more than almost anything else: when’s the best time to come? & my honest answer is that it depends entirely on what you want to come home with, because we run something worth photographing in every single month of the year. There’s no off-season at NaturesLens, just a different subject, a different continent & a different kind of light waiting for you depending on when you can travel. This is the month-by-month version of that answer, running from this month through to next June, & it’s the hub for a series that follows the next twelve months as they actually unfold rather than a generic calendar year.
What could you be photographing in July?
July mixes tropical colour with Europe’s rarest cat & one of our most requested mammals. Birds of Brazil is departing this month & fills a portfolio with tanagers, toucans & hummingbirds against genuine tropical forest, Iberian Lynx in Summer gives you patient, hide-based access to the Iberian lynx in warm Andalucian light, Bulgarian Mountain Butterfly Macro moves the macro season up into the high country, & Brown Bears of Finland puts you in hides on the country’s eastern border for one of the most reliable brown bear encounters we know of.
Photograph Europe’s most elusive wild cat in warm summer light
Iberian Lynx in Summer gives you patient, hide-based access to a species most European photographers spend years trying to reach.
Explore our Iberian Lynx photography holiday
What could you be photographing in August?
August is our quietest month for scheduled departures, which makes it a genuinely good month to plan ahead rather than travel. African Wildlife of the Lemek Conservancy is the one trip running, giving you the Mara ecosystem’s civets & big cats without the crowds of the main reserve. If you’re free this month, it’s worth using the quiet spell to book ahead for September’s Maasai Mara season, which fills quickly.
What could you be photographing in September?
Read the full September guide →
September is peak East Africa season. African Wildlife of the Maasai Mara covers the tail end of the wildebeest migration with elephants, buffalo & leopards all in play, & further south Lions of the Serengeti gives you the Lobo region’s resident prides in genuinely open country. For something completely different, Ultimate Birds of Colombia is one of the richest bird trips we run anywhere, built around cloud forest species like the Andean cock-of-the-rock.
Is East Africa really worth planning a whole trip around?
Yes, & September through October is usually the best window for it. Our Kenya & Tanzania departures are built around resident prides & genuinely large mammal densities rather than a single migration event, so the photography holds up well even outside the peak river-crossing weeks most safari photography is built around.
What could you be photographing in October?
October is Africa month twice over. Wildlife of Shompole is where our night-hide photography happens, elephants & occasionally lion or leopard emerging from complete darkness into carefully managed light, & Wildlife of the Chobe River in Botswana gives you elephant & buffalo herds against water, which is a different, more classically beautiful kind of African image.
Create night wildlife images that almost nobody else has
Shompole Wilderness gives you purpose-built hides & carefully managed lighting for African wildlife photographed properly after dark.
Discover Shompole Wilderness
What could you be photographing in November?
Read the full November guide →
November takes you a very long way from Africa. Essential Costa Rican Wildlife fills a portfolio with colour & volume, toucans, tree frogs & hummingbirds against genuine rainforest, Tibetan Wildlife of the Qing-Zang Plateau gives you black-necked cranes & blue sheep against some of the most dramatic high-altitude scenery we work in, & Madagascar Wildlife & Rainforest is built entirely around species that exist nowhere else on the planet, aye-ayes, asities & mantellas among them.
What could you be photographing in December?
Read the full December guide →
We close the year the way a lot of photographers open their wish list. Ultimate Costa Rican Wildlife runs again in December for anyone who wants tropical colour over the festive period, & Iberian Lynx of the Spanish Winter gives you the same rare cat as our summer departure but in an entirely different palette, cooler light, sparser scrub, a genuinely different portfolio from the same species.
What could you be photographing in January?
January is one of our strongest months for dramatic winter bird photography. At Lake Kerkini in Greece, Dalmatian pelicans lift off mist-covered water in freezing dawn light, & the same trip regularly turns up common cranes & great white pelicans working the same stretch of lake. Further north, Białowieża Forest in Poland gives you Europe’s last lowland primeval forest & a real chance at wild European bison moving through snow, while Hungary’s Hortobágy is where eastern imperial eagles & wintering cranes gather in genuinely large numbers.
Start your year with pelicans in the mist
Pur Dalmatian Pelicans of Lake Kerkini holiday is built around dawn boat sessions timed for the moment the birds lift off the water into freezing, mist-lit air.
Explore Lake Kerkini in winter
What could you be photographing in February?
Read the full February guide →
February belongs to Japan as far as I’m concerned. Our Japanese Wildlife in Winter holiday gives you red-crowned cranes, Steller’s sea eagles on drifting pack ice & the snow monkeys everyone recognises but few photograph properly. It’s graphic, minimal, restrained photography, the complete opposite of a species checklist. If you’d rather stay closer to home, Hungarian Winter Wildlife puts you in hides for otters, kingfishers & buzzards through the same cold months.
Do you need to travel somewhere cold to get good wildlife photography?
No, though winter conditions do produce some of our most requested images. Snow behaves as negative space & concentrates wildlife around a smaller number of reliable feeding & roosting sites, which is why our winter trips to Japan, Hungary & Greece are consistently among the most popular in the calendar. Warmer months elsewhere in this list deliver an entirely different, equally strong style of image.
What could you be photographing in March?
March is a genuine crossroads month for us, spanning three very different continents. Northern Sweden’s Eagles in Winter still holds proper snow & golden eagles working the forest edge, Wolves, Lynx & Winter Wildlife of Canada gives you boreal owls & Canada lynx in genuinely wild conditions, & Majestic Bengal Tigers of India starts our tiger season, with Bengal tigers in reserves like Bandhavgarh & Kaziranga’s elephants & bar-headed geese not far behind.
Photograph tigers with structure, not luck
Vehicles positioned for photography rather than viewing, & enough time for a composition to develop before the moment passes.
Discover our Bengal Tiger photography holidays
What could you be photographing in April?
April is a strong month for European & Arctic birdlife. Winter Wildlife of Arctic Varanger in Norway is still properly cold, with arctic foxes, arctic hares & Atlantic puffins all on the same trip, while our Birds of Extremadura & Birdlife of Northern Spain holidays cover Iberian raptors, black kites & booted eagles across some of Spain’s richest birding country.
What could you be photographing in May?
May is easily one of our most varied months. Fennec Foxes & other Moroccan Wildlife takes you into the dunes for one of the most charismatic small mammals we photograph anywhere, Reptiles & Amphibians in Bulgaria is a proper macro trip built around snakes & frogs most photographers never get close to, & Birds of the Danube Delta & Spring Birds of Lake Kerkini both give you an entirely different, warmer-season version of the pelican & heron photography Kerkini is known for in winter.
Get close to one of the desert’s most photogenic mammals
Fennec Foxes & other Moroccan Wildlife is built around low-light dune sessions with a species most photographers only ever see in a zoo.
Explore our Moroccan Wildlife photography holiday
What could you be photographing in June?
Wildlife Photography Hides of Hungary is at its best in June, with cuckoos, kingfishers & hoopoes all working the same hide network. It’s also peak puffin season, & you can choose between Fair Isle in Scotland or Grímsey Island in Iceland depending on which coastline appeals more, both with Atlantic terns & arctic skuas alongside the puffins. If macro is more your thing, Bulgarian Butterfly Macro is one of the most productive butterfly trips we run anywhere.
Do I need to book around a specific month, or can I travel whenever suits me?
Both work. Some subjects are genuinely seasonal, tigers, lynx, puffins & cranes all set their own calendar, so if a particular species is the priority it’s worth building your trip around its month. If you’re more interested in wildlife photography generally & flexible on subject, there’s a strong departure running somewhere in the world in every month of this list.
How far in advance should I book?
As early as you can once you know your month, particularly for small-group hide-based trips like the Iberian lynx, Shompole’s night hides & our Japan & Kerkini winter departures, all of which are capped at low numbers specifically to protect the photography.
Twelve months, six continents & a genuinely different photographic discipline in almost every one of them, snow minimalism in Japan, night hides in Kenya, tropical colour in Costa Rica, a rare European predator in Spain, mist & scale in Greece, structured tiger photography in India. Wherever you are in the year, there’s a NaturesLens holiday built around exactly that month, & the guide for each one follows below.
In this article
- What could you be photographing in July?
- What could you be photographing in August?
- What could you be photographing in September?
- Is East Africa really worth planning a whole trip around?
- What could you be photographing in October?
- What could you be photographing in November?
- What could you be photographing in December?
- What could you be photographing in January?
- What could you be photographing in February?
- Do you need to travel somewhere cold to get good wildlife photography?
- What could you be photographing in March?
- What could you be photographing in April?
- What could you be photographing in May?
- What could you be photographing in June?
- Do I need to book around a specific month, or can I travel whenever suits me?
- How far in advance should I book?
This month-by-month series
- What You Could Photograph Over the Next Twelve Months with NaturesLens
- Why You Could Be Photographing Wildlife in July
- Why You Could Be Photographing Wildlife in August
- Why You Could Be Photographing Wildlife in September
- Why You Could Be Photographing Wildlife in October
- Why You Could Be Photographing Wildlife in November
- Why You Could Be Photographing Wildlife in December
- Why You Could Be Photographing Wildlife in January
- Why You Could Be Photographing Wildlife in February
- Why You Could Be Photographing Wildlife in March
- Why You Could Be Photographing Wildlife in April
- Why You Could Be Photographing Wildlife in May
- Why You Could Be Photographing Wildlife in June
