Wildlife Photography

A pygmy elephant crossing the Kinabatangan — trunk up like a snorkel.

Borneo has a way of humbling photographers. You arrive with a shot list in your head — an Orangutan in golden light, a Hornbill mid-flight, maybe a Clouded Leopard if you're feeling ambitious — and the jungle answers on its own schedule, not yours. That's part of the appeal. This isn't a place where wildlife is arranged for you like it is at a zoo enclosure; it's a place where you put in the hours, trust your guide, and let the forest decide what it wants to show you.

Borneo isn't one destination, it's several very different ones stitched together, and each spot rewards a different kind of photography. Some are about patience and a long lens from a boat. Some are about being at eye level with the canopy instead of craning your neck at it. Some are about staying up until 1am in a 4x4 hoping a cat crosses the track. Below is where to go, what you'll actually get a shot at, and a few honest trade-offs worth knowing before you book anything.

Where to go

Kinabatangan River: Elephants and Primates from the Water

If you only have time for one place in Sabah, most photographers would point you here. The Kinabatangan is Sabah's longest river, and its lower stretch is a floodplain where wildlife concentrates along the banks, which means you're not hunting through dense forest — you're gliding past it in a small boat, engine cut, waiting for movement in the trees.

The headline subject is the Bornean Pygmy Elephant, the smallest elephant in Asia and found nowhere else on Earth. They move through the sanctuary in herds, and when you get lucky, you get more than lucky — groups of a dozen or more elephants wading along the bank, sometimes swimming across the river with just their trunks up like snorkels. It's genuinely one of the best wildlife photography moments Borneo offers, but it comes with a caveat: elephant sightings depend on migration routes through the sanctuary, so they're not something you can plan around precisely. Staying two or three nights rather than doing a single day trip meaningfully improves your odds, simply because you get more cruises in.

The primates are the more dependable payoff. Proboscis Monkeys are the local celebrity — that improbable nose isn't for show, it's a resonance chamber that amplifies the males' calls, and watching a troop leap between trees at dusk, sometimes badly misjudging the distance and belly-flopping into the water, is as entertaining to photograph as anything in the jungle. Long-tailed and Pig-tailed Macaques are everywhere and easy, Silvered Langurs show up in the same riverside trees, and if you're patient you'll get Orangutans too, usually solitary, often building or resting in a nest high in the canopy rather than moving around much.

A few practical notes: bring at least a 200mm lens, ideally longer, since most subjects are across the river rather than beside the boat. Keep quiet — sound carries badly over water and a loud comment can end a sighting before you've raised your camera. And do the night cruise if it's offered; it's easy to skip in favour of rest, but Slow Loris, civets and firefly displays along the banks make it worth the late start.

Gomantong Caves: The Bat Exodus (and a Bonus Orangutan or Two)

Gomantong is usually visited as an add-on to a Kinabatangan trip, and it's worth building your schedule around rather than squeezing in. The cave system itself is enormous and home to millions of bats and Swiftlets, but the real photographic event happens outside it, at dusk, when the Wrinkle-lipped Bat colony streams out of the cave mouth in a dense, swirling column that can last close to an hour.

What makes it worth a photographer's time specifically, rather than just a tourist's, is what shows up to hunt the bats as they leave. Bat Hawks and Wallace's Hawk-Eagles both work the exodus, diving through the column at speed, and getting a raptor mid-strike against a backdrop of thousands of bats is one of the more unusual action shots available anywhere in Borneo. Even more unexpected, researchers have documented Bushy-crested Hornbills — and, on other occasions, Oriental Pied-Hornbills — perching at the cave mouth and snatching bats out of the air as they pour out, a hunting behaviour in an otherwise mostly fruit-eating bird that's only recently been properly recorded. You'll want a fast shutter and a lens with decent reach, and you'll want to arrive before the light drops too far, since the exodus timing is somewhat variable — it can start up to an hour before sunset.

The forest surrounding the caves is also worth walking with your camera ready rather than packed away. Pig-tailed Macaques and Maroon Langurs are common, and Orangutans are seen here often enough that guides treat it as a real possibility rather than a rumour, particularly on the walk in and out along the boardwalk. It won't be your main Orangutan opportunity in Sabah, but it's a genuine bonus on a stop most people go to for the bats alone.

Sepilok and the Rainforest Discovery Centre: Eye Level with the Canopy

Most bird photography in tropical forest means looking straight up into backlit branches and hoping for a clean silhouette. The Rainforest Discovery Centre, just outside Sandakan near Sepilok, solves that problem structurally. Its canopy walkway runs over 600 metres through the treetops at up to 27 metres high, connecting three towers — Bristlehead, Trogon and Hornbill — that put you level with, rather than beneath, the birds you're trying to photograph.

That change in angle matters more than it sounds like it should. Broadbills, Trogons and Hornbills that would otherwise be distant shapes against bright sky become photographable subjects with visible colour and detail, because you're shooting across at them instead of up through cluttered branches into glare. Over 300 bird species have been recorded here, and the site is one of the more reliable places in Borneo to get a look at the Bornean Bristlehead, a genuinely strange-looking endemic that most birders rank near the top of their want list — though "reliable" is relative; plenty of visitors do several trips before they connect with one.

Beyond the walkway, RDC's ground-level trails are worth an early morning slot before the walkway gets busy — book early entry if it's offered, since 6am gets you working light and no crowds. It's also, practically speaking, the easiest serious bird photography site in Sabah to reach, which makes it a sensible place to spend a morning if you're passing through Sandakan on the way to or from somewhere more remote. If birds are the main event rather than one subject among several, the birdwatching guide and the bird hides of Sabah are the two to read next.

Tabin and Deramakot: Chasing the Wider Mammal List

If Kinabatangan is about elephants and primates from a boat, Tabin and Deramakot are where you go for the rest of Borneo's mammal list — and specifically for the cats.

Deramakot Forest Reserve is, by reputation, the single best place on the island to photograph a Sunda Clouded Leopard, and it's not a small claim. All five of Borneo's wild cat species — Sunda Clouded Leopard, Marbled Cat, Bornean Bay Cat, Flat-headed Cat and Leopard Cat — have been recorded here, and the reserve, despite being an active but sustainably managed logging concession, is thought to hold higher densities of them than untouched primary forest nearby. The way you actually get these shots is through long 4x4 night drives, often running from after dinner until well past midnight, with a guide operating a serious spotlight. Leopard Cats turn up on most nights; Clouded Leopard is the far rarer prize, and worth treating honestly as a matter of luck stacked over time rather than a predictable outcome. It's not a place for a rushed visit — most operators recommend a minimum of two or three nights, and serious photographers often stay a week or more purely to improve their odds with the leopard. Days at Deramakot aren't wasted either: Orangutans are regularly seen on morning drives, since a substantial share of Sabah's Orangutans live in this belt of forest around Deramakot, Tangkulap-Pinangah and the Kuamut reserves.

Tabin Wildlife Reserve, further east near Lahad Datu, gives you a broader and slightly gentler mix. Its mud volcano is the standout feature — a mineral-rich clearing that draws Pygmy Elephants and other wildlife in to feed on the salts, and it's one of the more distinctive backdrops you'll photograph in Borneo. But the animal most people come away remembering fondly is the resident troop of Northern Grey Gibbons that live around the lodge itself. Unlike almost everywhere else in Sabah, where you're straining to hear Gibbon calls echoing from somewhere deep in the canopy, at Tabin there's a genuine chance of watching a family move and play at reasonably close range along the Gibbon Trail, which makes for a rare opportunity to actually photograph Gibbon behaviour rather than just a silhouette. Tabin's lower canopy and abundance of fruiting trees also make it a solid birding stop, with most of Sabah's Hornbill species recorded along the reserve's roads.

If you can only pick one, the honest answer depends on what you want: Deramakot for cats and a genuine shot at something rare, Tabin for a gentler pace, Gibbons, and the mud volcano. Photographers chasing a complete Bornean mammal list often do both back to back — the mammal-watching guide goes deeper on night-drive technique, thermal imagers and the five cats.

Danum Valley: Different Ways to Do the Same Forest

Danum Valley is arguably Sabah's premier stretch of primary lowland rainforest, and unusually, you have real choices in how you experience it, which is worth understanding before you commit.

The Borneo Rainforest Lodge is the well-known option — a genuinely excellent, comfortable lodge sitting inside the conservation area on the Danum River, with its own canopy walkway strung between ancient Mengaris trees. Orangutans, Gibbons, Red Leaf Monkeys and Hornbills are regularly seen right around the lodge grounds, and the walkway itself is a strong photography platform in its own right. It's expensive and capped at around 60 guests at a time, which keeps the trails relatively uncrowded.

The Danum Valley Field Centre sits inside the same conservation area, uses the same trail system and broadly similar guiding, but with basic research-station-style accommodation instead of a luxury lodge. It's popular with birdwatchers and photographers on a budget who'd rather put their money into extra nights than extra comfort, and it's a legitimate way to get the same forest and the same wildlife for a fraction of the price — the trade-off is dorm-style or simple rooms and a more spartan setup generally.

There are also a couple of newer, lower-cost bases just outside the conservation area, in the buffer zone of the Ulu Segama-Malua Forest Reserve. Infapro, built around a long-running rainforest restoration project, offers comfortable rooms and is popular with photographers specifically for its productive night drives through regenerating forest. Nearby, the Langom Research Station, opened in 2025, is a newer, low-impact facility offering simple twin rooms and its own trails and 4x4 tracks through a mix of old-growth, restored, and riparian forest. Both sit close enough to Danum Valley proper that day trips into the Field Centre trails are usually possible, and both are worth knowing about now that the older budget option in the area, Kawag Danum Rainforest Lodge, is closed.

Whichever you pick, the canopy walkway is the site's real photographic asset — it's the only place in Danum where you're shooting across into the canopy instead of up into it, and Gibbons, Hornbills and Orangutans are all realistic possibilities from up there.

Bako National Park: Bearded Pigs and Proboscis Monkeys, Sarawak-Style

Bako sits in Sarawak rather than Sabah, but it earns its place on any Borneo wildlife photography itinerary, largely because of how habituated its animals are. As Sarawak's oldest national park, gazetted back in 1957, its wildlife has had decades to get comfortable around visitors, and the difference shows immediately at park headquarters.

Bearded Pigs wander the grounds around the HQ buildings constantly, grazing, wallowing in mud, occasionally squaring off with each other over territory, and they're close enough and unbothered enough that you can work a variety of angles without a long lens. It's an easy, almost guaranteed subject, and one of the more photogenic animals in Borneo once you actually study one up close — that improbable beard, the mud-caked coat, the strange pale eyes.

Proboscis Monkeys are the park's real drawcard, and while you'll need to walk the trails rather than just linger at HQ, sightings are frequent enough that most overnight visitors come away with usable shots — the park holds an estimated 150 to 275 of them. Telok Assam, Telok Paku and Telok Delima are the areas guides typically point to. Long-tailed Macaques and Silvered Langurs round out the primate list, and a local guide is genuinely worth hiring here, not just for navigation but because someone who knows the trails intimately will get you closer to a calm, unhurried monkey rather than one that's already bolting.

Staying overnight rather than doing Bako as a day trip from Kuching is the single best piece of advice anyone will give you. It gets you dawn and dusk light, which is when the animals are most active, and it means one rained-out afternoon doesn't sink your entire visit.

Tanjung Puting, Kalimantan: The Orangutan Trip

Cross the border into Indonesian Borneo and Tanjung Puting National Park, in Central Kalimantan, becomes the obvious answer if Orangutans are genuinely the priority over everything else. It's widely considered the best place on Earth for close, reliable wild Orangutan encounters, and the way you experience it is part of the appeal: multi-day trips aboard a klotok, a traditional wooden houseboat, drifting up the Sekonyer River between three feeding stations — Tanjung Harapan, Pondok Tanggui, and the historic Camp Leakey, where researcher Biruté Galdikas began her work in 1971.

The feeding platforms are semi-wild rather than fully wild encounters, which is worth knowing going in, but the Orangutans themselves are not performing — they're genuinely wild animals that happen to know the schedule, and the sessions still produce excellent, close photography, often with mothers and young together. White-bearded Gibbons frequently show up at the platforms too, sometimes arriving just ahead of the Orangutans to grab fruit first, and macaques, Hornbills and the odd basking crocodile fill out the rest of a typical cruise.

Two to three nights on the boat is the standard, and it's worth doing rather than the rushed day-trip option some operators offer from Kumai — you'll see less wildlife and lose the best part of the experience, which is simply being on the river at the quiet hours. The dry season, roughly May to October, gives clearer air and sharper long-lens results than the wet months.

Private Guide or Mixed Group: What Actually Changes

This decision affects your photography more than almost any single site choice, so it's worth being direct about it.

A private guide means the pace, the trails, and the stopping points are built around what you specifically want. If you want to sit still for forty minutes waiting for better light on a Hornbill instead of moving on to the next checklist species, a private guide can give you that. If you're shooting on a tripod, or want an early 5am start that a mixed group might not vote for, private guiding removes the friction entirely. The cost is obviously higher, sometimes considerably so, and a private guide alone doesn't guarantee good sightings — it guarantees flexibility around whatever the forest gives you.

A mixed group is cheaper and, frankly, can still be great if the group is small and genuinely interested in wildlife rather than just ticking off a tour itinerary. The downside for photographers specifically is that you're negotiating everyone's pace and patience at once — someone in the group inevitably wants to move on just as you've got a bird in perfect light, or wants to talk at a volume that scares off a Proboscis Monkey you'd been quietly approaching. Larger groups also mean more boats, more noise, and more disturbance generally, which matters a lot in a place where animals are genuinely wild rather than habituated.

If photography is the actual point of the trip rather than a nice bonus, a private guide — or at minimum a small group of other photographers rather than general tourists — is worth the extra cost, especially at sites like Deramakot and Danum where a single well-timed pause can be the difference between a shot and a memory.

Planning a trip around this

No single itinerary covers everything above, and trying to cram it all in usually means seeing less of each place properly. A common approach is to pair Kinabatangan with Gomantong and RDC as a lowland, boat-and-canopy-walkway leg near Sandakan, then add either Danum Valley or the Tabin/Deramakot combination for deeper forest and mammals, depending on whether cats or Gibbons matter more to you. Bako fits naturally onto a Sarawak leg around Kuching, and Tanjung Puting is really its own trip, given it's a different country and a different style of travel entirely — river-boat rather than lodge-and-trail.

Whatever the route, the same rule holds everywhere in Borneo: the wildlife sets the schedule, not you. The best shots tend to go to whoever was quiet, patient, and already had the camera up when something moved.

Pick the locations you want to photograph, then send the finished plan straight to an operator.