For any photographer who loves to travel, going on an African photo safari must be near the top of their wish list. I've been lucky enough to do that twice now, leading trips to Tanzania in 2006 and the other one a few weeks ago. Each was great in its own way.

The first time, in 2006, we were simply blown away by the scale of everything. The Serengeti is huge, and several of the major animal species number in the hundreds of thousands. There are times where you have a nearly unobstructed 360-degree view of open plain, and animals are everywhere. On that trip we were thrilled to get close to lions, hippos, elephants and many, many other animals. We spent most of our time in the Serengeti, with one day in Ngorongoro crater. We also visited several native tribes, which was an eye-opening experience. We returned home exhausted, but happy. I thought I'd lead another Africa trip in three or four years.

By the fall of 2006, though, I was already getting requests from people for another Africa trip. So working with my friends at Pack Paddle Ski (the same adventure travel company I used in 2006) we scheduled another visit for February of 2008. This time I wanted to build off of what we learned in 2006 and make the trip even better. That meant more time in the Serengeti and a second day in Ngorongoro.

Time changes everything. In 2006 there was a drought, the land dry and brown. This time everything was green, and there were even more animals. With more time, and the knowledge that with that time we'd see all the animals we wanted, we were able to be more patient and look for different kinds of photos. Beautiful animal shots are great, but this time we looked more for action and interaction, both within the same species and between different ones.

And we had some great experiences. We watched a group of young impalas playing in the early-morning sun. A hippo chasing a bird from the back of another hippo. Two cheetahs stalking a group of gazelles. A couple of lions on their honeymoon. Our best animal experience, though, came courtesy a leopard.

After an hour of seeing nothing but a few birds, we found a leopard in a tree. She was kind enough to give us several poses - napping, stretching, yawning, even looking right into the cameras. After thirty minutes of that, she decided to leave. She worked her way down the tree, jumped to the ground, and walked straight toward our trucks. As it became obvious she wasn't going to turn, I dropped the 200-400mm lens (oops, I mean "carefully set it down") I was using and grabbed a wide-angle. Not only did she walk right up to our trucks, she continued, and walked right under the truck, out the other side, and off into the savannah. We were blown away! I think all of us could have left that day without a single regret. But we weren't done yet.

Over the next couple of days we continued to photograph the animals, but also had the chance to visit some of the peoples living there. The Masai have smartly realized that tourists can supplement their cattle-centric lives, so they welcome visits, at a price of about $15 per person. They put on songs and dances, and a tour of their village (we saw dung beetles in action!). We were also able to visit the Dagota people (similar in lifestyle to the Masai, but enemies) and a bush people called the Hadzabe in the Lake Eyasi region. They were the most interesting of the groups, a hunter-gatherer society that numbers less than a thousand today. We watched as the men made arrows and smoked a pipe filled with a mix of tobacco and marijuana, and followed the women out to dig for tubers. On our walk out we came across a group of young men returning from hunting, and they let our group try out their bows.

By the end of the trip, we all had some great photos. Perhaps more important, though, we had some great experiences together. Memories that will last a lifetime. As much as I love making beautiful photos, it's the stories that go with those photos that bring them to life.

Technical Specs: Cameras: Nikon D3 and D300
Lenses: Nikon 200-400 f/4, 70-200 f/2.8, 24-70mm f/2.8
Cards: Lexar 8GB UDMA cards
Computer: Lenovo ThinkPad T61
Reader: Lexar Pro UDMA CF and SD reader

Workflow: Each night we downloaded the day's shoot to the computers. Using Photo Mechanic (www.camerabits.com) I'd set up the download to apply metadata (date, location, copyright, caption information) while the images were being transferred to the computer. Using Lexar UDMA cards and readers, with their extremely fast throughput, I'd start the download, then clean and re-pack my cameras for the next day, and the download would be finished. Then I'd sort the photos by capture time and re-name them (again with Photo Mechanic) before backing up to a small external USB 2.0 drive. All that could be accomplished in less than thirty minutes, before going to dinner. Every couple of days I'd go through the shoots and mark my favorite images, then copy them to a separate folder. On the flight home I refined my selections, prepped up a web gallery and sorted images out for a slideshow.

Tips: Aside from camera gear, the three most important accessories were beanbags, pillowcases and patience. Most of us arrived in Tanzania with empty bags (camping stuffsacks work great, or you can buy bags made especially for this) that we then filled with beans from local stores. We used those to rest our lenses on (for stability), whether shooting from the roof of the trucks or out the windows.

Travel in the trucks is long, rough and dusty. Taking a tip from photographer John Shaw, we used large pillowcases to "bag" our camera gear to protect it from the dust, and that worked great.

And being patient is key to a successful trip to Africa. It takes a long time to get from place to place. You can drive hours without seeing any animals you want to photograph. Once you find them, if it's a good situation, you have to be willing to wait and see what develops. And finally, you also have to be patient with your fellow travelers, since it's a group experience. If you have the time and the interest, an African photo safari can be the trip of a lifetime.