Dave Bugs You

22/07/2025

27/06/2025

Upcoming field guides - You'll learn a crap-load.💩🤠🐾

26/06/2025

📸 Amateur wildlife photographers - A chance to win epic prizes, and contribute towards Pangoling conservation while you're at it.🙏🏼 A win-win! 🏅🐾🎉

Welcome to The Pangolin Photo Challenge 2025. Your chance to win one of 7 Botswana photo safaris in our annual amateur-only photo competition. In addition, y...

13/06/2025

🌼The moments that shape you as a guide aren’t always the ones you expect.

Not the big cats. Not the sunsets (though they help).
It’s the quiet, often-overlooked micro-moments that leave the biggest imprint.

Moments like:
🦗 Watching a cricket build its burrow from scratch
🌬️ Noticing how the wind shifts animal movement
🐾 Sitting perfectly still... and earning the trust of a skittish duiker
☁️ Learning to predict rain just by how the air smells
These moments don’t come from rushing.
They come from being present, observant, and tuned into the land.

At Kukama, we train guides to see the invisible — because that’s where the magic lives.

What moment in nature shifted how you see the world?

🌐 www.kukamacollege.co.za
📧 [email protected]
📞 +27 79 229 1061 (WhatsApp Only)

🚩 Nearest town is Griekwastad, Northern Cape

13/06/2025

Happy FLYday the 13th! 🪰💀

Just a small collection of photos I've taken of flies not having the greatest day...😅

Careful out there.👀😄

Have a great weekend ahead everyone! 🎉

10/06/2025

💚🐾 Become a Pangolin Guardian – from the comfort of your home!

It’s icy cold here in South Africa currently, but I’ve just done something truly warming — I completed the short online course with Pangolin Africa to become a Pangolin Guardian! 🔰

These gentle, mysterious creatures are the most trafficked mammals in the world — and they desperately need our voices, our hearts, and our help. 🌍

The course is quick, eye-opening, and beautifully put together. It gave me such a deeper understanding of the threats pangolins face and how we can all make a real difference in their conservation and survival.

👉 If you're curled up at home today, why not spend a little time doing something meaningful? Become a Pangolin Guardian too. Every person who joins strengthens the circle of protection around these incredible animals.

https://www.pangolin.africa/become-a-pangolin-guardian

Let’s stand together for pangolins. 💪💚
.Africa

28/05/2025

Red-headed finch / Rooikopvink (Amadina erythrocephala).♂️

These little beauties are quite common in the garden at this time of year, and they seem to be particularly abundant this season. Being quite a tiny bird, it can be tricky getting good shots of them with me only having a 250mm telephoto lens. Thankfully, these garden visitors are quite habituated to humans, and with a bit of patience, let me get to within about 3meters to get this shot.

Frankfort, Free State, South Africa.🇿🇦

📸Canon EOS R10
🔭Canon 250mm IS STM

23/05/2025

In another small anouncement... While I will be spending as much time away from social media as possible - Please note that I will be shamelessly self-promoting my work as a photographer on here going forward.😅 And it will no longer be limited to bugs and spiders, but will rather be of anything and everything I found beautiful and captured through my lens.

I will also be offering my services and doing photography work for others, and posting that work as well.📷 I'll also be promoting photography courses, training and opportunities with me. (More on that in future posts).

The page will be renamed accordingly, soon. If that's now what you signed up for and want to see, I'll take no offense if you leave. I'll be glad and grateful to those who want to stay and support the next chapter of my journey, though.

Thank you, and hope everyone's having a fanstistic Friday and wonderful weekend ahead.🙂🎉

*This image was captured on a farm a few kilometers outside Frankfort, Free State, South Africa.🇿🇦 Got to love how the cosmos flowers bring life and colour before winter sets in here.

📸Canon R10
🔭Canon 10-18mm IS STM

21/05/2025

In a rare highlight of what has undoubtedly been the most heartbreaking and challenging year of my life, I was deeply humbled and incredibly honored to be announced as the winner of the 2024 Orms x Canon Wonders Through Focus photo competition.

A second photo of mine also placed in the Top 20 and is currently being exhibited along the Sea Point Promenade in Cape Town.

This moment was bittersweet—marking a beautiful farewell as I step away from being a full-time macro photographer. It has been one of the greatest privileges of my life to highlight and celebrate the small, often overlooked creatures of our world. Through the lens of my God-given talents and love for nature, I’ve tried to bring people closer to the tiny wonders of the natural world—and I’m proud to know that my work has made even a small difference.

A huge THANK YOU to Orms and Canon
for this incredible recognition and the generous prizes. And a special thanks to my wonderful niece Loumay Broekman who told me about the competition—while I was completely offline from social media. Without her, I wouldn’t have even known to enter.

And to all of you who have supported me on this journey over the years—this one is for you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

With love and gratitude,
Dawie🕷🙂📸

17/05/2025

🏆Already winners of the Tripadvisor Travelers' Choice Award 2025 (Top 10%) - You know Serenity Camp is something special!

While my journey with Dave Bugs You has come to an end, please support those who walked with me and made it all a possibillty - Treat yourself to an unforgettable African Safari! 🦁⛺️🐘🦒

*Feel the Wild. Live the Moment.*

At Serenity Camps & Lodges in Tanzania, you don’t just visit Africa — you become part of it.

Imagine waking to the distant roar of lions, the scent of acacia on the breeze, and the sunrise painting the savannah gold. Their intimate, tented camps place you in the heart of the wild — close enough to hear nature breathe, yet wrapped in luxurious comfort and care.

This is not just a safari. It's soul-deep connection. It’s walking with ancient landscapes, dining beneath stars that tell timeless stories, and witnessing wildlife as it was meant to be — raw, real, and breathtaking.

Go experience the magic.
Book your safari of a lifetime with Serenity.

www.serenitycampsandlodges.com

16/05/2025

🐛The end of Dave Bugs You.🦋

While I shared this news on Patreon last year already, I have not done an official post on here, yet.

There will be more nature and photography related content shared on here in the future, but not limited to bugs and spiders anymore. I'm keeping future plans under wraps for a bit for now, and will reveal more over time as things unfold.

What I can share for now is that I made the tough decision to end Dave Bugs You last year.

While it was an incredible privilege to share my love of bugs and nature with millions around the world through my macro photography and posts —and to volunteer in bug and spider education on groups for well over a decade previous to that —it simply wasn’t sustainable. As much as I loved the outreach, the growing demands of social media began to outweigh the benefits, both personally and financially. I found myself spending more time managing content than creating and living life.

I also realized I’m just not cut out to be a “content creator” in the social media sense. Life changes, priorities shift—and for me, that means stepping into a new chapter with a different approach to my life, work and responsibilities. (More on that soon.)

For now, I just want to say a massive THANK YOU to everyone who supported me over the years. It was truly an honor to do what I did, and I couldn't have done it without you—family, friends, followers, experts, fellow photographers, my amazing Patrons on Patreon who did their best to try and support my efforts, and of course (Instagram) whose generous donation helped me keep going for longer and reach millions more people than would otherwise have been possible.🙌🏻

I’ll be sharing a special thank-you and spotlight on Serenity Camps & Lodges in upcoming posts—don’t miss it!

That’s all for now. More updates to come...
Thank you once again, and till next time...

Much love,
Dawie
📷🙂🦋