Photography Hotspots in Borneo (Sabah)

Part of the Borneo (Sabah) travel guide — see every topic in All Borneo (Sabah) Guides.

Sabah gives a photographer three distinct problems: high-altitude landscape on Kinabalu, low-light wildlife in dense forest, and underwater work on the reef. All three reward specific preparation and none is casual. The compensations are considerable — a granite summit plateau above a cloud sea at dawn, an orangutan at ten metres in primary rainforest, and a barracuda tornado at Sipadan are all images that are genuinely difficult to obtain anywhere else.

Mount Kinabalu

The summit plateau at dawn: bare granite, cloud filling the valleys below, and Low's Peak catching the first light. Shoot in the twenty minutes either side of sunrise. It is cold, windy and dark on the approach, so a head torch and gloves that allow you to work the controls matter. Weight is the constraint — you are carrying everything up 2,200 vertical metres — and most climbers regret bringing more than one body and one lens. From below, the mountain from Kundasang at first light is the classic frame and requires no climbing.

Wildlife

The Kinabatangan from a boat: proboscis monkeys in riverside trees at dusk, hornbills in flight, macaques, crocodiles. A long lens is essential — 400mm equivalent is the working minimum — and image stabilisation matters because you are shooting handheld from a moving boat in poor light. Danum Valley and the forest interiors are darker still; fast glass and high ISO are the only approach. On night drives use a red-filtered light and no flash. Never bait, never call, and keep the guide's distance.

The reef and the coast

Sipadan wide-angle: the barracuda tornado, turtles against the wall, bumphead schools at dawn. Mabul macro: flamboyant cuttlefish, blue-ringed octopus, frogfish, mandarinfish at dusk. Both need strobes and both need buoyancy control good enough not to touch anything. Above water, Bohey Dulang's crater rim in Tun Sakaran gives the best landscape in Sabah — a flooded caldera of turquoise ringed by green ridges — and Kota Kinabalu's sunsets over the islands are as good as any in Malaysia.

Practicalities

Humidity is severe and equipment suffers; carry silica gel, allow lenses to acclimatise before opening cases, and expect condensation moving between air conditioning and outside. Rain is constant in the forest, so proper covers rather than a plastic bag. Power at remote lodges is often generator-limited to certain hours — bring several batteries and a large power bank. Drone use requires permission and is prohibited in the national parks and conservation areas. And ask before photographing people in villages and longhouses.

Photography Hotspots at a glance

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