Amboseli
There is no place on earth like Amboseli. The flat landscape combined with hundreds of elephants and backdrop of Mt. Kilimanjaro make it a photographers paradise and one I am becoming increasingly addicted to.
Eric Ole Kalama
I’ve just returned from 11 days in Amboseli on a trip that far surpasses any safari I have been on before. Every day provided phenomenal photographic opportunities, be it of Craig, an elephant whose ivory is so long it sweeps the ground, huge herds of elephant crossing the dry lake bed the region is so famous for, or emerging tuskers under Mt. Kilimanjaro, it was an epic trip.
I’ve now begun the arduous challenge of working through and editing the images so we can choose those we will use for a new print collection launching early next year, something I am already excited about.
As ever, I owe every image from my time in Amboseli to Eric Ole Kalama. This was our third trip together in 12 months and he somehow manages to make each more successful than the last. I rarely have to ask him to move or change position, such is his innate ability to predict elephant behaviour and he always puts me exactly where I need to be. Often, this is within touching distance of our subjects, something I would entrust to no other person than Eric.
Here in a nutshell, is the diary of the safari.
Craig
Recognised by many around the world, Craig carries the responsibility of being Kenya’s elephant poster boy. Since the sad death of Tim, one of the world’s largest tuskers in 2019, Craig took on the mantle of this title.
Because of this, he is regularly photographed by a wide array of photographers and creating anything original is becoming increasingly difficult - but this is a fun challenge to have.
My best selling image of Craig, taken on my previous trip, currently on sale at Red Eight Gallery and on sale as an NFT on 12/10/21
One of the key elements for a good photo is simplicity. When photographing an elephant like Craig this often means having a clear horizon and nothing that distracts your eye when viewing the image. For the majority of the time we spent watching him, he was in thick bush, making a clean composition next to impossible.
Over the first weekend of my trip we spent eight hours with Craig on the Saturday and another three on the Sunday morning…and I got nothing. This was tough to take as the hours we put in felt like something should have come of it, but such is the way things go with photography sometimes.
Finding Craig is a challenge in itself, one we entrust to an expert, David. He is known for his ability to track Craig and heads off early in the morning to find him and call in the location to Eric. This may sound like cheating, but trying to find one elephant out of a population of over 1,000 in an 8,000 km2 (3,100 sq mi) ecosystem is not easy and the more hands on deck the better.
Our view of Craig for most of the day. We marked hours 4 and 7 with a beer
Beats sitting in an office
The 10 second view we had of Craig out in the open
On the Saturday Craig was already in thick acacia bush when we found him at 10 a.m. The light was harsh but with a little cloud cover there was still a chance. After watching him for an hour we had a 10 second opening as he crossed a flatter area, but things just couldn’t fall in to place as we hoped and he moved back in to the bush.
This is where he remained for seven hours, slowly driving Eric and I mad as we waited in the dry heat for him to reappear but, as is his prerogative, he never did.
As time wore on and the light got softer it became clear today was not the day, so we packed up and drove back towards camp and in doing so encountered a true case of irony…After spending all those hours waiting for ‘the’ elephant shot, we came upon a Maasai herdsmen and his cattle, beautifully backlit with the narrow cattle hooves kicking up enormous moving dust clouds. I had about three minutes before the light went but in those few moments got infinitely better images than I had of Craig, funny how days in the field go sometimes!
Eight hours with one of the world’s most famous elephants and this was by far my best image of the day
Herds
There is nowhere like Amboseli for photographing herds of elephant. The area is deeply affected by its seasons and the end of September is one of the driest times to visit. It had not rained since early June and everywhere we went we were tailed by a 20 meter cloud of dust.
This though, was the reason I was there. The elephants, drawn to the fresh water in the marshes at the heart of the park, spend each day migrating in and out of it from the adjoining conservancies and community land, offering the chance to photograph them in great long herds stretching deep in to the distance at the start and end of each day.
The best vehicle and guide with which to navigate Amboseli
Dry, dry, dry!
While this has the chance to create phenomenal imagery, it presents numerous issues. Primarily, the more elephants you are working with, the harder it is to get a clean image. It just takes one out of a herd of 40 to change direction, move out of line or lift its trunk in the air to ruin the picture.
That said, when it all comes together, it provides images that outweigh anything possible with another species.
I allocated ten straight evenings working on the images I had in mind, namely a large herd of elephant walking towards my camera, ideally with Kilimanjaro in the background and dust or beautiful grass around their feet.
By day three I had what I call an insurance shot. Meaning I had one that I liked and that could well be a print, but one that I knew I could better given the chance. Getting an insurance shot early in a trip then allows me to try and be a bit more adventurous with compositions in the next few days and infinitely relieves the pressure I put on myself. To get one three days in to an 11 day trip is a real bonus.
Following in the footsteps of giants
Just some of the kit dragged around each day…3 cameras and 5 lenses
Day seven was the day it finally all came together. Everything I had been hoping for happened, a herd of 18 elephants walking straight towards us, evenly panned out and Mt. Kilimanjaro, the world’s tallest free standing mountain, clearly visible in the background. Vitally, there were enough clouds to give the mountain scale, sitting two thirds of the way between the ground and the summit, highlighting just how high the 19,000ft peak really is. It is an image I cannot wait to release in 2022.
Celebrating just after everything came together
Before getting back to it at dawn the following morning
Bulls
Knowing that I now had a shot “in the can”, I could change tac and focus on some of Amboseli’s emerging super stars, elephants that could one day match the size of Craig or Tim and be known the world over.
One of these was a young bull by the name of Michael. At only 29 which, in elephant terms, is only really middle aged, he already has ivory that threatens to reach the earth beneath his feet. There is no doubt that given another 20 years he will be a serious super tusker. When we found him he was in musth, an annual condition amongst male elephants where their testosterone levels soar up to fifty times their usual level and they’re exceptionally eager to mate. Often bulls in this condition are more aggressive and so photographing them can be tough, they may be less accepting of you in their presence and getting within the required proximity to create a dynamic image (usually 3-10 meters), becomes a different ball game.
As well as Michael, we also met Wickstrom (pictured here) and Ulysses, two equally beautiful bulls. Image: Matt Armstrong-Ford
Our first two days attempting to get a strong image of Michael were a real challenge. He was frantically following a cow known as Elliot, a member of the ‘EB’ family, who herself has fascinatingly shaped tusks; so curved they cross over. Should they finally mate, Eric and I noted, the calf would have quite incredible tusks - a shot I’ll probably look to take in 2060…
For now though, our concern was how to photograph Michael when he was mid way through a fairly aggressive game of kiss chase with Elliot. The only way, we decided, was to wait until they had kissed. Trying anything before then would simply be too dangerous and we risked upsetting Michael and causing him distress. Our job now was simply to watch and wait for the magic to happen.
Having arrived at this conclusion on the Thursday, it took until Saturday night when most people my age would be in a pub, club or otherwise for our chance to open up. Having spent so much time with Michael over the last few days one thing that really stood out to me was his age, just two years older than me (27) and already making his mark on the Amboseli gene pool. Normally when photographing big bull elephants they are at least 20 years older than me, sometimes more, something I find remarkably humbling. Now though, here stood an emerging super tusker at a similar stage of life to me and it left me considering how often our paths may cross again in the following decades - should we both be lucky.
One of the more humbling moments of the 10 days
Field notes: When celebrating at the end of the day that you got “the shot”, know when to stop or the next day’s highly unproductive
As Saturday evening wore on, the clouds that had been around all day started to lift, revealing Kilimanjaro with just a slim slice of snow atop its flat peak. The light was strong enough to highlight each little nook and cranny clawing its way up to the peak - provoking flash backs to the time I myself was crawling my way to the top.
Our off road permit meant that we were able to manoeuvre ourselves in to a position where we could place Michael directly between us and the mountain as he repeatedly tore grass up by its roots with his trunk and ground it down with his molars. My approach here is similar to that with herds, get an insurance shot from distance, in case he moves off, and then gradually move in closer with the rewards increasing the closer we get.
Surprisingly, despite still being in musth, we gained wonderful proximity to Michael and he posed beautifully with Kilimanjaro in the background providing me with my highlight of the week and another image I look forward to releasing in 2022.
Reflecting on an unforgettable 10 days
Wrapping Up
It seemed mad to consider that after all the luck we had had we could go home with anything else, but Amboseli had other ideas. On our final morning with our flight out imminent, we got news that a melanistic serval cat had just killed a flamingo. Finding the serval was the cherry on top of a trip that had already provided so much and while it was too far away to create a meaningful image, I was able to put my camera down and enjoy a sight very few are lucky enough to witness.
The shots we came home with from Amboseli will be the bed rock of my next print collection, adding to those taken of rhino on Ol Pejeta, gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Chimpanzees in Kibale and the big cats of the Maasai Mara.
2022’s collection is some of my favourite work to date and I cannot wait to share it.
