Sometimes, you just get lucky. And by that, I don’t just mean out of the blue luck. For those of you who have read my earlier blogs, you’ll know that last year I spent a week on a game farm in South Africa. You’ll also know that every afternoon and evening, Dad and I would spend a few hours at Impala Waterhole photographing the animals that came down to drink.

One evening, Dad went hunting with my uncle, so Mum and I went to Impala by ourselves. So it was lucky that I was standing in the hide where Dad usually stood when a large mother warthog took unkindly to a few bold piglets who wanted to eat some of the lucerne that had been fed out. So I did what any photographer would do – attempt to lock focus on the charging warthog and jam my finger on the shutter release. Below you can see the sequence of photos that I got (the three in red are just versions of the same image that I’ve processed).

She charged them twice, and in the second photo from the left in the bottom row you can see the mother of the two bold piglets hanging back. They ran off into the bush after the second charge, but came back later when the ill-tempered mother and her piglets had left.

I’m not sure whether to thank luck or my reflexes (or both!) that I managed to focus on the charging warthog as she rounded the tree in a haze of dust, but it resulted in the photograph that I am most proud of from the whole trip. While the subject matter may be warty and not your classical impressive Wildlife-of-Africa shot, I love the action in the image and the story that it has.

And after a little post-processing, it’s hanging on the wall in our lounge. A warthog may not be one of the Big 5, but I think it is no less impressive. For me, the worth of a photo is more about the story than the subject.