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!

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 2012

This was a pivotal split second in my photographic journey. Elephants are big animals and their enormity tends to be poorly conveyed by a camera lazily occupying a four-wheel drive – but equally to lie on the ground so as to capture a more menacing ground up angle is highly irresponsible to the point of being potentially fatal. The solution is afforded by remotes, but these have to be placed in the ground and personally checked with the lead elephant still 120 yards away. So much can go wrong – the elephants could change their path, dirt could blow into the lens or – as on this occasion – the positioning can be too good, and £7,000 of gear could be trampled on. I thought that the camera would be lost and with it this image as the lead bull came within one final step of the remote.

My savvy guide told me to keep on firing the motor drive – just with added intensity – and as he suspected, the bull was sufficiently conscious of unfamiliar noise in the dirt to stop and sidestep the camera. It all happened within ten heart-pounding seconds and when the full herd passed by, I rushed expectantly to gather the camera.

As soon as I saw this frame, I knew I had a gem of an image. The 35mm wide-angle lens was able to capture the whole elephant from foot to eye in sharp focus and the composition around it was extremely fortunate. I have tried dozens of times since then to take another remote control image, but nothing in content, light or composition touches this lucky photograph – which is now with us forever.