Amboseli – 2019

To find two of the world’s remaining 20 big tusker elephants side by side was a huge privilege and I felt a responsibility to get it right. Tim and Craig are colossal mammals and dominated a formidable front line of big bulls that morning in Amboseli. To be so close to two of the biggest elephants in the world and photographing from the ground up was as intense a 30 seconds in the field as I can remember. I was fortunate with the soft light and the background – both of which were out of my control. We were packed up and celebrating back at camp by 8.30 am.

This is probably my lead shot of 2019 and I am deeply grateful to my guide – Juma Wanyama – without which it would not have been possible. Not only does he facilitate my partnership with the street smart Masai spotters whom I asked to search for Tim and Craig at first light, he has also helped develop my working relationship with the Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS) who oversee and support my work in Amboseli. It is not on paper, but I believe that the considerable sums we give back to conservation in Africa (over $1m a year) helps our cause with the KWS.

However, Juma’s key skill is his understanding of the mood of both Tim and Craig and their willingness to tolerate my presence in their space. He worked wonders to allow this epic encounter to materialise. I have total trust in Juma and I think he also knows, after eight years of working together, that I am responsible when out of the jeep. One cavalier move could be fatal.

East Tsavo National Park, Kenya – 2017

This image captured in the vastness of the raw and untamed East Tsavo National park is certainly relevant because this beautiful big tusker is probably in her final couple of years. That will reduce the number of big tuskers in Kenya and in the world to about 25 – as Kenya is the last country where the gene pool survives.

There was little skill in taking the image – I just wanted to use the highest resolution equipment available – there was so much detail to document. What made the picture was attaining the access – which was achieved with the help of conservationist Richard Moller and his trackers. Finding and getting close to this mammoth is not for those that require immediate gratification. It requires resolve and the appetite for long hours on bad roads.

Her ivory is perfect – an overused word, but on this glorious encounter, it is emphatically the right word. What a stunning mammal she is.

Amboseli, Kenya 2017

I have no other elephant shot in my files even remotely similar to this. Yellow fever trees were often found in swampy mosquito regions of Africa and early white settlers associated them with the malaria. Throw in the distinctive yellow colouring and we get to Yellow fever. More recently Rudyard Kipling drew our attention to them in the Just So Stories – in The Elephant’s Child set along the Limpopo river, he talks of the abundance of fever trees.
In early morning light the trees glow – creating an ethereal effect – especially when the trees are grouped in forest of their own. The magic came with the arrival of Tim – it could not have been better. My only issue was to think fast enough to have the right lens and composition – he was not going to wait around for me. Focus either deliberately includes or excludes and on this occasion I needed as much of this fairytale to be pin sharp as possible.
A moment in time. This picture gets stronger and stronger the bigger it is.

Amboseli, Kenya 2015

This is a simple image – but its vastness lends it a biblical character – therein lies the joy of the dry lake at Amboseli. It is an arid, raw and elemental amphitheater, without equal as a canvas on which to film in Africa. These lake crossings are rarer now as the ecosystem has changed, largely due to the influx of the Maasai and their cattle. The one constant in Africa is that there is never inertia – habitat changes and animal and human behavior changes with it. It is the random walk of life.
As a result of the poor accord between cattle and elephants, there are not many cameras that have had this awesome scene in their line of fire over the last three years and I consider myself privileged. Equally, I have put in the time and know the area as well as any film maker. Looking at my notes, I have been on this lake on 47 occasions in the last three years and this is the biggest herd that has crossed during my visits. When our look out scouts saw the opportunity, we reacted very quickly. I don’t think that my guide and friend – Juma Wanyama – has ever driven quicker from base to the lake.
I think that big pictures need either transcending content that engages across much of the print, or the use of space to create a distinct sense of place. The Crossing is a hybrid of these two dynamics – the herd offers as magnificent an animal collective as today’s natural world can offer – big tuskers in good numbers with their young. As the affiliated photographer for TUSK, the UK based conservation charity, I have witnessed some desperate sights in sub­Saharan Africa – no more so than the field operation on the rhino Hope after she had been butchered to within an inch of her life by poachers. But there are also uplifting stories and the stability of the elephants in Amboseli is one – only one elephant from a resident population of 1200 has been killed by poachers this year.
But the image is a product of not just the elephants, but also the sky. My camera metadata informs me that it was taken at 11.50 am – possibly about the worst time to photograph any­ thing near the equator – high midday suns are not a camera­ man’s friend. On this day, however, the sky was full of fluffy cloud cover and the light was not stark, but contextual. The darker rain clouds were also starting to assemble – as often happens at lunchtime at the start of the rainy season. This was good fortune, but that is also why I regard late October in Amboseli as prime season.
This is the best place in the world to photograph African elephants, as emphatically demonstrated by The Crossing. It is a timeless image that I cherish.

Amboseli on the Kenyan/Tanzanian border is one of the best canvases to work with in the world. I must have visited 15 times over the last five years and I almost always return to Nairobi with something. The amphitheater has an elemental starkness that suits my clean, ground up style of photography – the backdrops are rarely that busy in this arid dustbowl. The name Amboseli means ‘place of dust’ and that is instructive. To most lovers of East Africa, the ecosystem lacks the beauty and the glamour of other National parks such as the Serengeti and the Mara. Amboseli is just a flat and raw terrain albeit nestling below the towering Mount Kilimanjaro.
The range of animals in Amboseli also lacks breath – there are just a handful of cheetahs and lions, no leopards or rhinos, and there are no crocodiles because there are no rivers. However, what Amboseli does have is the best elephant viewing in the world. I go to Amboseli for one principal purpose – to work close to elephants as they cross the dry Lake Amboseli in search of water in the park. When a big herd crosses, it is as serene a spectacle in the natural world as I have ever come across. That is why Amboseli holds such a special place in my heart. It offers the chance to capture evocative imagery of elephants in a barren and remote wilderness. These are also not small elephants, they are some of the biggest tuskers in Africa.
10 years ago, lake crossings of large herds were common, especially at the end of the summer dry season when the surface water was scarce and the elephants traveled from the Kilimanjaro foothills across the lake for the remaining sources of water. There is no greater friend to a wildlife photographer than repeat or predictable animal behavior and late October tended to offer the best opportunity for this. With the first rains arriving there were rarely tourists around and it often felt as if I had exclusive access to write the stories for the ‘daily elephant news’. The evening skies would often have a menacing dark countenance, which compliments the scorched earth below.
But recently the elephant behavior in Amboseli has been affected by the growing number of Masai moving to the area with their cattle. This has impinged on the elephant’s way of life as cattle come with human tenders and also attract more lion. We were told as kids that elephants have great power of memory and increasingly there must be a disconnect between their memories and the current habitat. They are unsettled by change and Amboseli is changing. Cattle now dominate Amboseli and this is a story repeated throughout many of the parks in Kenya. The Masai are a powerful landowner in the country whose own needs along with their cattle are the prevailing variable in much of rural Southern Kenya.
For 3 years I had not seen a big herd cross the lake and my regular guide has started to greet me at the landings strip with eyes of resignation. He knows what I want and this means working out of the jeep, on the ground on the dry lake with a big elephant herd approaching. Since 2013, I had not had the privilege of seeing this and I have certainly put the hours in. There have been special vignettes with giraffes, zebras, wildebeest and small elephant groups but no big elephant crossings. Until October 2015, in the middle of the day, my ‘look out’ scout saw something that had the shape of a big herd starting to cross the lake – they may have been 5 miles from his vantage point, but through his binoculars his premise was con­ firmed – and the herd numbered over 25 – the biggest group the locals had seen for sometime. Being outside normal filming time, I was sitting writing at my camp when the news quickly came back to me while I was only wearing loafers and casual clothes. There was no time to change and I picked up my cameras and we drove the 7 miles in record time.
As we sped to the west side of the dry lake, I was emotionally focused but equally aware that the light was patchy with the sky dominated by localized rain cloud. I knew that this could compliment any ground content perfectly – much better to have threatening clouds at midday than a high sun. Those 20 minutes I spent that Sunday with the herd were spectacular and it was not hard to take something good. But one image ‘The Circle of Life’ stood out and the reaction from those I quickly showed it to homed in on the image’s grace and serenity. The composition has spirituality to it and in retrospect I made good quick decisions on both camera bodies and lenses. The photograph has a very good chance of passing the test of time. The detail is very pleasing and the composition is a gift that perhaps the hours of persistence deserved.

Amboseli, Kenya 2019

“To find two of the world’s remaining 20 big tusker elephants side by side was a huge privilege and I felt a responsibility to get it right. Tim and Craig are colossal mammals and dominated a formidable front line of big bulls that morning in Amboseli. To be so close to two of the biggest elephants in the world and photographing from the ground up was as intense a 30 seconds in the field as I can remember. I was fortunate with the soft light and the background – both of which were out of my control. We were packed up and celebrating back at camp by 8.30 am.
This is probably my lead shot of 2019 and I am deeply grateful to my guide – Juma Wanyama – without which it would not have been possible. Not only does he facilitate my partnership with the street smart Masai spotters whom I asked to search for Tim and Craig at first light, he hasalso helped develop my working relationship with the Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS) who oversee and support my work in Amboseli. It is not on paper, but I believe that the considerable sums we give back to conservation in Africa (over $1m a year) helps our cause with the KWS.

However, Juma’s key skill is his understanding of the mood of both Tim and Craig and their willingness to tolerate my presence in their space. He worked wonders to allow this epic encounter to materialise. I have total trust in Juma and I think he also knows, after eight years of working together, that I am responsible when out of the jeep. One cavalier move could be fatal.” – David Yarrow

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!!!