Jigokudani National Park, Japan 2013

The Snow Monkeys three hours west of Tokyo are accessible even in winter and it is difficult to capture fresh detail. This picture, on a bleak and cold winter’s day, probably works because everything about it is miserable to the point of being comical. The misty and dank weather matches the Snow Monkey’s mood. I had no light to play with and this is technically reflected in the lack of depth of focus. I am flattered that so many people adore this picture – maybe it says a little bit about us?

The bigger this image is printed, the more powerful it is. On a phone, it looks like an average photograph and in a magazine, it will be a little better. But as a big print it has a real sense of place – it smacks of quintessential rural Japan in the winter. The light snow fall enhances the image as much as the snow on the young monkey’s face. Meanwhile the abstract contours of the waterfall behind add to a surreal winter wonderland scene. In my preconception, I needed snow fall and on the day, it went our way.

There is a slight paradox in the ecosystem in which the snow monkeys congregate in that it looks other worldly, extreme and distant and yet it is actually so accessible. Grab a bullet train from Tokyo and door to door it is only a three-hour journey – including the climb from the entrance to the park. That means that there is no shortage of visitors on a daily basis and, as each hour passes the serenity is increasingly lost. On a weekend, as many as 500 visitors will make the trip – not ideal for my kind of photography.

The solution is to stay locally and hope that overnight snow will deter or delay other photographers or tourists. The early bird catches the worm for sure. On this occasion we were most certainly the first up the mountain and there had been six inches of snow overnight. That was perfect. There had been about a foot of snow and the route up the hill was closed due to avalanche danger.

Working in a snowfall is a fine trick – it adds that necessary narrative, but a blizzard is too much to see through if the subject to camera distance is more than a couple of feet. With the storm finally petered out, the snowfall around 9.30 am became more gentle and this allowed me to work from about 10 feet away and give as much context as possible. The snow monkey looks determined and in control – despite being dwarfed by his surroundings – it seemed apposite to call him Shackleton. His positioning at that moment in time was perfect.

Simien Mountains, Northern Ethiopia 2018

Every year as CGI capability improves, a richer and richer diet of fantasy monsters and creatures appear in movies and TV series. We drift into new worlds and escape from our own. And yet, and here is the irony, on our planet today there are animals that are almost beyond the stuff of fantasy but they are very real.

I am not sure what this large gelada baboon was thinking, but I am going to guess that he found my presence, 12,000 feet up, a little irritating. This was his patch of land and who the hell was I to be trespassing? I have travelled the world in search of fresh detail and fresh content and this March, in the Simien Mountains, was a truly special experience. Not for him I am sure, but certainly for me. We will never meet again.

Jigokudani National Park, Japan 2013