On Patience
The Serengeti does not yield its photographs easily. You arrive expecting drama — the chase, the kill, the wide pan of a herd against the acacia — and what the savanna gives you, almost always, is stillness. A lioness in the shade. A bull elephant scratching against a rock. A martial eagle, motionless on a thermal, ten minutes from its next decision.
The First Frame
The photograph that became Golden Sentinel was the result of a four-hour wait. A pride of six was resting in tall grass two hundred meters from the road. The light was wrong, then the light was right, then the light was wrong again. At 6:42 AM, the matriarch stood, walked to the top of a small termite mound, and turned her head toward the rising sun.
"You do not chase the photograph. You arrange yourself, you wait, and you let the wild come to you."
What I Brought Back
Twelve days. Sixty rolls of film. Four photographs that I will keep. The rest — the misses, the soft frames, the moments where I was a half-second too slow — those belong to the field, and the field is welcome to them.
The Serengeti teaches you, slowly, that the photograph is the smallest part of what you came for.