Archival Pigment Print

LUGARD

THE WORLD’S BIGGEST BIG TUSKER ELEPHANT

Tsavo, Kenya 2017

Lugard – A massive 48 year old elephant in Tsavo.

​In my talks, I have been known to say that for me there are four key words in fine art photography and they all begin with the letter R.

Research

Great photography, more often than not, starts with great access. Access has to be found and earned. The platform for this is research. You cannot turn up to Nairobi airport and say: “take me to the biggest elephant in the world”.
Poachers want him too. After a great deal of research, I found the only person who knew his rough location (he is not tagged). We found him by flying a tiny plane at 200 feet above the massive Tsavo ecosystem. I worked with the local conservation trust and a percentage of sales from this image will go back to protecting Lugard. I do a great deal of this now – encouraging a cash trail partnership between the local fixer and me – especially if it has a conservation angle.

Relentless

Once we knew where Lugard was, we flew near to him everyday and landed on the closest bush plane strip. Tsavo is 12,000 km2 so this is a vast ecosystem and working here was a continuous logistical challenge. When we reached him, he was often not in the clear (he would be eating shrubs in a dense area and if you surprise him, it’s game over – for you). This made remote control work impossible and any kind of transcending imagery very unlikely. Then one day, we got him on a mission to a watering hole and in the clear. All our thoughts revolved around his need for a drink, which I can relate to!
So finding Lugard was one job, getting this image was the next. Both are a bridge too far for those that are not relentless. This was a dangerous picture to take – as Lugard manifestly is moving with purpose and intent. It’s not perfect, as I had two seconds to put the camera down and run like hell.

Relevance

This is the toughest R to attain and as you get older the bar gets higher. There are only 18 or so big tuskers left in the world – elephants with tusks touching the ground – and the gene pool is at its best in Tsavo. This is unequivocally the best place to photograph these primeval beasts. I photographed two of them that week and Lugard is the big one. That makes this image very relevant – as Lugard is the “King of Kings”.

Reductive

Less is more. This is a portrait – it claims no loftier goal. My style of using wide angle lenses and being immersive, makes sure that the viewer is asked of no bigger task than to admire nature close up. No big context, no back-drops, no colour. I am asking that the viewers attention be focused on one subject – Lugard!!!

Amboseli, Kenya – 2012

This is a special picture taken in a special place. Amboseli is the best canvas in the world on which to photograph elephants. In late October the lake is dry and huge herds make the daily trip across the scorched earth in search of water. This group contained elephants of every age and they composed themselves with great consideration for my lens. The protective instincts of the adult on the right of the image draw the eye in to the centre of the photograph. When I took the picture, there was no other vehicle within at least five miles – that is the joy of Amboseli.

Amboseli, Kenya 2018

​This is one of the most unusual contextual images I have taken in East Africa in the last few years. The white of the flowering meadows and the white of the summit of Kilimanjaro combine to give the image an ethereal glow. The extreme weather conditions – it had rained torrentially for four or five days – had resulted in an implausible theatre of dreams.
There was more snow on Kilimanjaro than I have ever seen before and the normal arid dustbowl of Amboseli was a garden bursting into acres of white carpet. For anyone that knows this area, the combination of whites provokes a degree of visual disquietude. It was quite a remarkable sight that was all down to the freak weather.
The biblical rainfall had discouraged almost any other visitors and we had the amphitheatre to ourselves. We also had a film permit which allowed us to go off road – albeit the ground was very saturated and we were getting stuck regularly – we needed two vehicles to be safe.
The bigger problem was that there were very few elephants in the park – the rain had pushed them out of the park and into the forests below Kilimanjaro. I knew, however, that in the vicinity of the KWS Rangers’ HQ, there are always a good number of big elephants hanging around as they feel safe. It was here that we spent much of our time this March – despite it being a 90 minute drive from our base.
As soon as I saw the white meadows, I knew we had the chance of an image that offered a story of both lyrical grace and beauty – especially if the cloud lifted and we were exposed for a few brief minutes to the summit of Africa’s tallest mountain. Then we just needed the elephants and this was the X factor. No elephant – no party. About 5 pm on one unforgettable evening, everything came together as a small group of elephants headed to the foothills for the night and in so doing walked right through the white meadows. Getting in the right place for the composition was a fairly intense 10 minutes – I knew that this was a moment in time and I would not forgive myself if we missed it.
I look at this picture a great deal and wonder whether it would be better if the elephants had been coming away from Kilimanjaro rather than moving towards it? We will never know, but the formation of the herd has a nice diagonal shape and it tells a story of a journey unaffected by my presence. I think the anonymity of the individual elephants helps focus on the wider context – which is really a hallmark of some sort of fantasy. Was this what The Garden of Eden looked like? Who knows, but it does have a virginal feel.

Amboseli, Kenya – 2020

“This is what Amboseli has to offer and when it does, I think it is unrivalled as a spectacle in the natural world. A battalion of elephants in one seamless, cohesive unit charging through the desert. To see this scene played out is a real privilege and one that should always get the adrenaline flowing. I find myself reaching for military metaphors, but this spectacle is accompanied by an eerie silence and the serenity of the desert is not compromised. I sense that The Desert Rats, the byname for the 7th Armoured Division, would have made more noise in their celebrated campaign against Rommel in North Africa in 1941. The photographer’s job, when encountering such a desert army of elephants, demands quick thinking on positioningand a really strong relationship and understanding with his driver. We have been in this situation a few times and one potential variable is now a constant – we use a 200mm lens. Anything shorter is too loose andgoing for more compression risks cutting off some of the army. This is not an easy image to capture and I did have a cigar that night. Maybe like General Harding or indeed General Rommel.” – David Yarrow

Amboseli, Kenya 2019

The 18 elephants in this group probably weigh as much as five London double-decker buses. I am not sure how they have managed to line up in descending height order for me, but that is exactly what happened in the dustbowl of the Amboseli dry lake one glorious evening in late August. It is a formidable group to be staring down at a single human lying on the ground in front of them.

These encounters, on this raw and elemental amphitheatre, are one of nature’s great spectacles. Unfortunately, there have been very few in the last year as the lake has been flooded.
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I have learnt that the best lens for a head on encounter is a 200mm – it allows room for some distance between me and the elephants – necessary from a safety perspective, without using too much magnification which can crush the emotion and sense of place.

Amboseli, Kenya 2014

I have long aspired to capture imagery of big elephant shadows in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is normally only feasible from the air on little bush planes and this practice is both expensive and hardly in keeping with the serenity of the subject matter. The far better alternative is to find vantage points high enough to be able to look down on the land below and perhaps capture shadows from nearby elephants.

On the edge of Amboseli National Park there is such a place. The problem then is simply that big shadows are only created for twenty minutes a day and there is absolutely no reason why elephants should choose to be anywhere near the vantage points during the best period for shadows. Amboseli is a 300,000-acre ecosystem, not a zoo.

I have been at the top of this hill perhaps twenty-five times at sunrise and finally, during the rainy season in April 2014, the opportunity came my way. The ground below was lush with greenery, but fortunately the elephants were walking in the clear and the shadows were not corrupted.

There is a great sense of place in this image – I can understand why some say that it captures the serenity of East Africa at dawn – all that is missing is that musky smell.

Amboseli, Kenya – 2020

With Tim’s passing in 2020, the responsibility of being the poster child of African elephants has passed to his 50 year-old cousin Craig. This is no downgrade as Craig’s tusks are huge – his right one in particular. ⁣
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We know our game in Amboseli and on arrival we already have the KWS and the local Masai on our side. The game is to find Craig at first light and that is not easy as he often moves 5 miles in any direction in a day. That’s a material amount of acreage in the foothills of Kilimanjaro where bush laden topography makes spotting far harder than in the desert below. ⁣
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So even with the help of 6 Masai on mopeds, we only tend to find him one day in 3. The good news is that when we do, this colossus is very chilled. With the counsel of both the KWS ranger and my guide Juma Wanyama, I can be in proximity of Craig and lying on the ground. This is probably the greatest privilege I have with animal encounters anywhere in the world, but the triangle of trust has evolved over 8 years. We all trust each other and that includes Craig. I guess we earned it. ⁣
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This portrait of Craig taken at 7:40am is the best I can do – there’s not much I would change. The heart pounded a little – it was taken with a wide angle lens and the subject was probably the world’s biggest elephant. Enough said.

Amboseli, Kenya – 2018

My instinct is that this photograph has to be printed big. To print it small seems suboptimal, rather like buying a house three miles from the sea. He is there, and he is huge – perhaps the world’s biggest elephant. Why would anyone want to scale down his enormity? For interested collectors, the only question that matters with this image is the size of the available vacant wall space.
Tim roams around a 100 km2 area inside and outside Amboseli National Park. He is tagged and well protected by the KWS rangers and we all hope and believe that when he passes, it will simply be through old age. It will still be a sad day as he is without doubt the most magnificent looking elephant in the world – half elephant, half mammoth. To be in his company and to be this close is an exhilarating and primeval experience. I have been lucky to have had many full-on encounters with alpha animals, but none beats this.
I knew what I wanted to achieve – textural intensity, a sense of scale and a ground level perspective. This combination requires nerve and the company of experienced rangers with a knowledge of Tim’s behaviour. Camera settings were also more vital than normal as I wanted the detail of a Vermeer painting. As I was lying on the ground I was already envisaging the end image being printed the size of a table tennis table.
I have now seen it that size and it’s visually spellbinding. Thank Tim and modern technology – not me!