05-JAN-2006
Trunks and tusks, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
The trunks of trees and elephants have strikingly similar colors and textures. Elephants use their tusks to pry off chunks of delicious bark, and grasp them with their trunks to begin the meal. I draw the two kinds of trunks together in this photo, adding the tusks and even the missing chunk of bark. By abstracting an elephant in this way, I create incongruous juxtapositions to tell this story.
31-DEC-2005
Big gulp, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
A suckling elephant calf at work. The mother provides her newborn with milk, while the rest of the herd pitches in to protect them from predators. I was able to create a triple abstraction with this image – the calf burrows its face into its mother’s breast, while the mother’s head is enveloped by a mass of foliage. A third elephant merges into both, providing safety and shelter. The contrast between the large animals and tiny cattle egrets at their feet adds a touch of scale incongruity to the scene. Finally, nourishment – the subject of this image – is just as much a human value as it is an animal value.
10-JAN-2006
Sheltering the calf, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
Rain usually sweeps through South Luangwa National Park in the late afternoons of the wet season. This elephant keeps her two-month old calf from a soaking by providing moving shelter. There is a double scale incongruity here – the tiny calf is a miniature elephant compared to its huge mother, while this pair of animals is quite small compared to the landscape they occupy. The image is not just a study of maternal diligence. I am also commenting on the ecosystem of South Luangwa National Park itself. I’ve organized this photo as a series of symbolic layers – with the elephants as context in the foreground, the dead tree and a field of stumps in the middle ground, symbolizing the devastation caused by feeding elephants, and the leafy trees in the background, representing the trees that elephants have propagated by spreading seeds through their digestive tracts.
07-JAN-2006
Elephants on Chichele Hill, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
In the hot and humid rainy season, Luangwa's elephants keep cool by bathing in the reddish mud. By contrasting the two reddish elephants to one brownish one, it’s easy to see the effect of such pleasures. The elephant at the rear has been nursing the calf in the middle. This image is organized into layers – with the bushes in the foreground adding depth perspective, the two smaller elephants as the middle layer, and the massive nursing mother as the background layer.
06-JAN-2006
Feeding frenzy, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
An elephant and nine cattle egrets simultaneously enjoy the abundant nutrients at Luangwa. This elephant is using its trunk to shovel food into its mouth. The trunk is more than an elongated nose -- it's the elephant's tool for smelling, breathing, touching, hosing, digging, and pulling, as well as eating. The image comes to life because of the sense of movement and the vivid colors. The elephant strides downhill through a field of cattle egrets, carrying grass into its mouth with its trunk at the same time. It seems to be in a hurry, probably because the afternoon rain is moving in. The sky is a deep bluish gray, and the thunder is starting to rumble in the distance. The sun still shines on the rich green grass and on the goldish brown elephant.
08-JAN-2006
Ivory Irony, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
In 1977, Africa had over a million elephants. Today, half of them are gone, all because of those two ivory tusks that come at us out of this image. While it is now illegal to kill an elephant in Africa, the slaughter continues. Farmers shoot them, and poaching is still rampant. I asked one of my guides, a former Scout for the Zambian wildlife service, why poaching can't be stopped in South Luangwa Park. He told me that the Park is over 5,000 square miles in size, and only a tiny fraction of it can be visited -- the rest is a wilderness domain, without roads or patrols. And so ivory poaching continues to remain an issue in not only this park, but in parks throughout Africa. I composed this image with those prized ivory tusks as its focal point. A symbolic arrow made up of the sun struck leaves in its mouth points directly at them. The angle of the warm light illuminates the textures on the skin of the elephant – every wrinkle and crease stands out in bold relief, underscoring its age and toughness. Yet the two ivory tusks remain its most vulnerable point – it could well die because of them. This image is a study in irony – the elephant’s most potent weapon might well spell its doom.
05-JAN-2006
Abundance, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
Elephants comb trees for fruits, seedpods, and choice twigs, leaves and bark. When they aren't enjoying a good meal from a tree, they are mowing lawns with their trunks. This elephant seems to have the whole forest for itself. This idyllic image brings the wet season itself into play. Water is everywhere, the trees are heavy with foliage, and laden with abundant morsels that elephants enjoy. Even the color speaks – the elephant’s skin carries the color of both bark and earth, and the rest is emerald green. And best of all, it has it all to itself. The entire image is softly cast, instead of hard-edged – adding a patina of timelessness. This image could have been made a thousand years ago.
10-JAN-2006
Large feet tread lightly, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
The elephant carries its bulk well. It walks swiftly and quietly, and seems to know exactly where it is going. You can spot it coming a long way off, even when you can't see all of it. To tell this story, I isolate the legs of this elephant by abstracting the rest of it in foliage. There is purposefulness in its stride that makes the point, and I leave nothing else in this image to detract from it.
08-JAN-2006
Lion ahead, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
He was looking right into my eyes as he came over the hill and down the road towards my camera. As "part of a vehicle," I was invisible to him. People invariably ask if it was dangerous to be in such situations as this. Lions perceive vehicles and their occupants as part of a familiar, non-threatening landscape, and pay no or little attention to either. There are more than 200,000 lions in Africa, and a good number of them, including this male, roam Zambia's huge South Luangwa National Park. I divided this horizontal image into three vertical bands – high grass, low grass, and gravel. These bands rhythmically echo the frontal view of the lion itself, which prefers to walk on the low grass, and moves directly on us.
02-JAN-2006
Scratching post, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
This sleek year old lioness cub is scratching and smelling a tree -- perhaps taking note of the other lions that have left their own marks and scent there. Using my multiple imaging feature, I held down my shutter button and shot at least ten frames of this cub as she went through her territorial posturing. I chose this one because of how she composed it for me – the angle of her back and head echoes the angle of the overhead branch. I also liked the tension crackling in the space between the cub’s chin and her paw. It energizes the image.
11-JAN-2006
Sisters, Chichele pride, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
Eleven lions make up this pride, residing within a five-mile area surrounding our tented camp at Puku Ridge. My six-day stay at Puku Ridge allowed me to eventually photograph all of them. I spent much of one morning with four lionesses relaxing together near the Katete River, where I found these sisters at rest and at play. Once again, the multiple imaging option on my camera, which repeatedly triggers the shutter with just one press, found the perfect moment. The sisters compose this image for me by arranging their legs and heads in a circular flow. The two extended tongues add visual exclamation points. This image incongruously presents the human values of affection and pleasure to us in animal form.
09-JAN-2006
Mating pair, Chichele pride, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
I observed eight matings involving three sets of lions within the Chichele pride. Lions mate over a period of a week, so we could return to them again and again over several days. Although they changed locations constantly, the roars that accompanied mating allowed us to easily locate them. I made this image within moments after a mating session. I organized the image around the diagonal flow of the lioness’ back, which allows me to place the male’s head in the top left corners of the frame and the female’s head in the lower right corner. The female seems to make eye contact with us, while the male only has eyes for her.