08-JAN-2006
Puku at dawn, Puku Ridge Tented Camp, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
The Puku, along with the impala, is ubiquitous in Zambia's Luangwa Valley. It is sturdier than the impala, and lacks its markings. Pukus emit a shrill whistle, almost like birds. This female puku came to drink from a pond behind our tented camp every morning. The rising sun glows in a marshy pond, edged in darkness broken only by the silhouette of the puku. There is a sense of peace, loneliness, and perhaps even vulnerability here. To stand in a tented camp and see a sight like this is an important part of the Safari experience. This image is based on abstraction and mood. I am asking my viewers to bring themselves to this place and see it, and perhaps even listen to it, along with me.
07-JAN-2006
Leopard, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia,
During the second week of this, my fifth wildlife safari, I photographed my first leopard. It was high in a tree, not far from our Puku Ridge camp. Leopards are frequently seen in South Luangwa National Park, generally at night, but there are no guarantees of a sighting. During the first week, we briefly saw a leopard running through bush in the glare of a spotlight during a night game drive. But this one was sitting high in a tree in late afternoon. It was a difficult shot at best -- the leopard was in deep shadow, and sun was coming directly into the lens through the leaves. I exposed for the leopard, and extended my zoom lens to nearly 700mm to bring it close enough to look us in the eye. Extremely shy, this leopard would take flight even as I pressed the shutter button. This image is compelling because of its context and its intimacy. It is more than a closeup of an animal. It tells us where it lives, and reflects its wary, tense response to my presence. The green eyes are enormous, aware, and dramatically outlined in black. We don’t see all of it – just enough to integrate its body with the branches of the tree. It seems to be protecting itself, framed in bark and vines and leaves. A study in reclusiveness, its the story of the leopard itself.
After posting this image, viewer Alister Benn suggested cropping it to place greater emphasis on the leopard itself, and less on its original leafy context. It is the cropped version you see here. You can compare it to my original full frame version which is posted at
http://www.worldisround.com/articles/271122/photo7.html
07-JAN-2006
Leopard in flight, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
This leopard, the only one I was able to view in Zambia, raced down the trunk of a Sausage Tree (named for the shape of its fruit) only an instant after I had photographed it higher up on its branches. It is moving so fast that even at 1/60th of a second, the shutter records little more than a blur of spots. Yet that blur echoes its speed and strength. Leopards are powerful enough to haul prey as large as full-grown antelopes or baby giraffes high into the treetops, foiling scavenging hyenas or opportunistic lions. The diagonal placement intensifies the energy expressed by the leopard, as does the blur.
You wont see this shot on a postcard rack because it asks something of the viewer – we must see in our minds what we can’t see with our eyes.
07-JAN-2006
Leopard on the prowl, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
After fleeing its perch high in the Sausage Tree, the leopard darted through heavy brush and burst into the open a good distance away. I made this image by extending my zoom to nearly 700mm. The big cat, about five feet long, could be clearly seen plodding deliberately across Luangwa's fields, heading deep into an awaiting forest, probably to emerge again only at night. This prowling leopard must compete for its food with a lion pride that claims the same territory. This image points up an important principle of expressive wildlife photography. This is not a picture of leopard – instead I have made a landscape that happens to features animal behavior. In this case, the animal is much smaller than its context, yet because of the contrast in color, and the shock of seeing this rare, nocturnal animal in full daylight, the image stimulates the imagination of the viewer, and asks it to fill in the details.
(Shortly after writing this caption, I read the comments of Michael Reichmann, who runs the well known photography website The Luminous Landscape, in an interview on page 9 of issue #4 of Pbase Magazine. His comments reinforce the very principle I am demonstrating with this image of the distant leopard. Reichmann says “I guess any wildlife photographer needs to ask himself: ‘Does the world need another photograph of a lion?’ The answer is probably not. We really do have enough, and yet to me the challenge is to find a new way to interpret what already is a clichéd subject. If you look at my wildlife work, what you will frequently find is the animal itself tends to be relatively small in the frame and I tend to show it in context of its environment. So to me, I guess it’s landscape with creatures rather than just a photograph of the animal. I am not interested in animal portraiture.”)
04-JAN-2006
Monitor lizard looking for a snack, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
We saw this monitor lizard, a reptile about four feet long, crossing a road. It is actively searching for food, perhaps a snake, or squirrel. Even a large insect might do. It swallows its prey whole, and can maneuver on both land and in water. To seize the essence of monitor lizard, a portrait won’t do. When I looked at the two-pronged shadow this animal was casting, I noted that its extended claws reached for one of the prongs and its extended forked tongue reached for the other. The image becomes a moment stopped in time, rich in tension and incongruity. This is a cropped version, displaying only one third of the original picture. The full image showed the entire lizard, including its full belly, rear legs and distinctive long tail. It was too literal -- there was too much going on at once in it. The tension, the hallmark of a stalking monitor lizard, only appeared when the image was cropped.
09-JAN-2006
African Cape Buffalo, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
Among the most vicious of all of the African mammals, the Cape Buffalo can kill a lion or a human with its sharp horns. It can run as fast as 35 mph if need be and if wounded, will sometimes stalk its prey. It's ugly as well -- and usually gathers in herds. We saw many of them in Luangwa, including this huge animal grazing in the deep bush. This is essentially an environmental portrait – without the sea of high grass around it, and the leaf incongruously hanging from the open mouth, this buffalo would become just another animal having its picture taken. The lush sea of green surrounding the buffalo expresses the flavor of the Zambian wet season. Only in the rainy summer does this buffalo have it this good. I also feel its confrontational presence – this animal comes at us from around a bush, as if we have taken it by surprise. If I was not making this image from the safety of a Land Rover, I would probably be much the worse for wear.
13-JAN-2006
Wounded Lion, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
A deep facial wound does not seem to bother this old male lion. He probably picked it up at a squabble over a kill. He sleeps up to 20 hours a day. This image works as expression because of its intimacy and detail. The wound is an incongruity. It tells a story. Without that detail, it’s just another sleeping lion shot. I shot more than 20 images of this lion, and selected this one because it was the most abstract. It showed less, and thus says more. The huge head is framed rich green vegetation, which obscures much of the face, and softens the gory effect of the gaping wound filled with flies. Because the foliage hides the mouth, the big black nose stands in for it. It almost seems to be incongruously grinning, as if from a pleasant dream.
06-JAN-2006
Riverscape, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
Spectacular cloud formations are a photographic benefit of Zambia's wet season. I made this image in the late afternoon, exposing for the cloud and letting the Luangwa River recede into darkness. Safaris offer more than wildlife – unique environments are involved as well, and images such as this can help give a safari its sense of place. I used Photoshop’s “Shadow/Highlight” control to restore a bit of detail in the river, while keeping the delicate colors in the sky intact. The tradeoff, of course, is a noisy sky. But “electronic noise,” as some pixel-peepers would have us believe, is not always a drawback. In this case, it adds a subtle impressionistic texture that enhances the expressive mood and meaning of this picture. The noise helps it become an image filled with power and beauty of nature itself, reminiscent of 19th Century paintings of New York’s Hudson River Valley.
03-JAN-2006
Puku Trio, Luangwa River, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
A week spent at the Luangwa River Lodge included several game drives by boat. We floated past these three female pukus, which have arranged themselves perfectly for us, integrating three bodies into one. Their heads are in perfect relationship as all stare intently at me. The heads and ears create a rhythmically repetitive horizontal movement, echoing the flow of the river and the grass they stand in. The afternoon light outlines their bodies, and contrasts their dark brown forms to the rich green grass. I used my spot meter to expose for that grass, which caused the muddy riverbank behind them to become virtually black. If I had used normal matrix metering, the image would have equally balanced between green grass and brown mud and the impact of the three puku would have been greatly reduced. This image speaks of family, and of constant watchfulness. Puku, like all of Africa’s ungulates, are vulnerable to predation by lion, leopard and crocodile.
02-JAN-2006
Elephants crossing the Luangwa, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
Elephants regularly cross the Luangwa River in the morning and again in the evening. I made this image from the beach, using my 420mm zoom lens a good distance from the elephants. If I had been any closer to them, they would not have crossed. Since the point of the picture is movement, I organize it to stress motion through a strong horizontal composition. I placed five elephants on the right, leaving the left half of the image open for them to move into. I strengthen the sense of movement by repeating the rhythmic flow of the horizontal lines below, behind, and above them. The lines in the water, the long strand of river reeds below their feet, the sandy beach, muddy river bank, line of bushes and trees behind them, and even the bank of clouds in the sky, all echo the rush of the elephants. It is an image in motion, and that’s what this image is all about.
31-DEC-2005
Elephants climbing the river bank, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
The Luangwa River defines the Eastern boundary of South Luangwa National Park.
Elephants hanging out near our camp at Luangwa River Lodge usually spent their nights in the game management area just outside the park on the other side of the river and then crossed over in the morning to spend the day inside the park. They made use of the same depression in the riverbank as we do to get up and into the park. Only we used Land Rovers, while the elephants just marched up the side of the bank. I photographed these elephants from the river’s beach just a few moments before we followed them up the bank. This image helps tells a story through incongruity – it is not often that both man and wild animal will share both the construction and use of a ramp to higher ground. Our vehicles made it easier for the elephants to get into the park, while the elephants trampled the mud into the ground and made it a firmer track for our vehicles. This image makes a strong follow up to the preceding image as well. It adds another dimension to the river-crossing story.
01-JAN-2006
Cool hippos, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
Many of Luangwa's lagoons are covered during the wet season with a plant known as Nile Cabbage -- favorite places for hippos to spend the hot African summer days. This image is rich in abstraction and incongruity. I use the cabbage as an abstracting device to incongruously disguise the hippos. It is an image rich in color and unfamiliar textures, which complement the incongruity of seeing a hippo’s head detached from its body. A layer of green powder clings to the forehead of this hippo, almost as if it was a cosmetic. A second submerged hippo adds context. It almost seems as if these enormous animals are playing hide and seek with us. Actually, they are merely trying to keep as cool they can. Once again, less is more. The hippo is one of the largest mammals on earth. Yet these are barely revealed to us.