Woohoo! Here it is; the much-anticipated 2015 Safari Guide of The Year video, featuring outstanding finalist safari guides, expert judges, hosts, sponsors and guests, including this year’s VIP Nadav Ossendryver, who is the founder and CEO of the phenomenal crowd sourced wildlife community, LastestSightings.com. Follow that link to discover an exceptional opportunity for you to participate in sharing your own sightings.

To give you an idea of what’s possible for your viewership via Nadav’s YouTube channel, it currently has over 220,000,000 views. And speaking of wildlife, of course there’s plenty of that in this video too. Big five sightings abound on the guided game drives and bush walks, even extending to the thrill of seeing lions on foot. This is not your everyday experience, neither in game viewing terms nor in the exceptional calibre of people who participated.

Leading South African lodges were superbly represented by the finalists: Winner Ian Lombard from AndBeyond’s Phinda Private Game Reserve, Runner-Up Adrian Bantich of Passage To Africa, Rudi Venter of Tswalu Kalahari (Shooting and Tracking winner), JP Le Roux from Tswalu Kalahari (Birding winner), Andrew Kearney from Shamwari Game Reserve (Walking winner, centre of pic) and Chris Erasmus from Singita Lebombo. Congrats Guys!

Of course the main challenge with editing a documentary video of this nature is the question of what to cut. The raw footage incorporated such a wealth of great clips, drawn from 6 days of non-stop action (much of it shot simultaneously on two cameras), that refining the selection to 10 minutes was time-consuming. In our favour is the fact that we’ve covered the finals of the SGOTY competition for 3 years in a row, which helped to streamline the process.

It’s been brilliant to see how the bar has been raised each time, so heartfelt congrats to everyone involved, and well done again to all the finalists!