Ariadne Van Zandbergen is a freelance wildlife and travel photographer specialised in Africa. Born and raised in Belgium, she is now based in South Africa, from where she makes regular photographic trips all around the continent.

After completing an engineering degree in 1994, Ariadne left Belgium for a six-month trip to pursue her childhood dream of travelling in Africa. She started in Morocco, headed south through the Sahara to West Africa, then east across the Congo to Uganda and Kenya, before heading southward to the Cape. African transport being what it is, the journey stretched from six months into a year, then another, until the idea of going back home to an engineering career seemed inconceivable.

While travelling around this fascinating continent, Ariadne decided to combine her long-standing hobby of photography and her passion for African travel to embark on a new career. And this is exactly what she has done. Since that first trip in 1994, she hasn’t really stopped travelling, and has accumulated more than 50 000 photos from around the continent, which she now markets as The Africa Image Library.

Ariadne deals with all photographic queries personally, applying her specialised knowledge of Africa’s wildlife, people and fascinating places to select images appropriate to any given requirements.