Serengeti leopards
Pedro took these wonderful leopard photos while on safari on the Serengeti and northern Tanzania. He is planning a trip to Selous or Ruaha next! You can see more about him in the bio at the end of this photo essay.
We love it when such talented photographers share their experiences with us in this way.
Pedro Ferreira do Amaral
Born to a German mother and Portuguese father, my childhood and youth were spent in Portugal - a quaint and peaceful country on Europe’s Atlantic coast mostly famous for football, fado, and port wine.
Ever since I can remember, I always had a fascination for animals. And while Europe does not offer the same scale of wildlife as other parts of the world, I always took great pleasure in observing frogs, hedgehogs, snakes, turtles, and all kinds of birds in the fields surrounding my parents’ house. If I was very lucky, I could even see an owl occasionally, once the sun had set.
And for the rest, TV and books had to fuel my imagination. In the pre-Internet era, I vividly recall watching BBC documentaries on Portuguese TV on Sundays before lunch. This was always a big highlight every week. In my childlike way of thinking, I obviously knew that those images were real, but somehow never imagined that many years later I would be catching planes and travelling to the most remote parts of the world to experience nature in all its splendour.
Fresh out of university, my first job working for an international media agency took me on assignment to Angola, Dubai, Brazil, Jordan, Malaysia, Oman, Papua New Guinea, and South Africa in the course of five years. It was during this period that I, as a young professional, started to explore wildlife tourism and photography more seriously.
I have been to India to see tigers, to Brazil to see jaguars, and to Sri Lanka to see Asian leopards. But my biggest soft spot is subsaharan Africa, and it never ceases to amaze me how I seem to enjoy every trip more than the previous one. I have been to many of the main national parks and reserves in South Africa, Botswana, Tanzania, Zambia, Madagascar, and Rwanda, and I still can’t get enough of it. Somehow, every time that plane door opens and I get that first whiff of African air I feel like I am home again, and the excitement about the journey ahead makes me feel elated. The landscapes, the wildlife, the climate, the serenity, the early morning wake up call before the game drive, the scents in the air, the kind smiles, the roadside markets… Africa is special to me, but hard to put into words.
So I borrow a quote by Ernest Hemingway way, which perfectly sums up the way I feel: “I never knew of a morning in Africa when I woke up and was not happy”.
Born: 18.05.1983 in Lisbon
Residence: Barcelona, Spain
Occupation: Head of Sales for a media / publishing company
On Instagram under pedro_lfa