The Matriarch

It was near the very end of my stay in Africa that I took the photograph that would become, The Matriarch and interestingly, it was the image that would become the genesis for my series, Portraits of Africa.  The end of my trip in effect, sparked the beginning of new journey in the editing process when I returned home.  Unlike most of the photos that formed the series, I had almost no inkling at the time that I took the shot that it was in any way significant or special.  The shot was taken on the last day of my Botswana safari in September.  We were on the move and frankly, I was bone tired and ready to return home.  It was a hot, scorchingly hot, day and the sun was already high overhead.  The light was terrible, flat and bright, with sharp, harsh shadows.  It was just before Noon and the elephants were huddled under the tree seeking shade.  I longed to find some shade.  I longed even more for a bite to eat and a long, cool drink to wash it down with.


To be honest, I wasn't even that interested in elephants.  I was smitten with the big cats and all during my safaris I was constantly on the look out for lions and leopards and cheetahs.  The elephants, eh, sure they were part of the storied "Big Five", but I wasn't that enamoured with them.  I'd even take rhinos and Cape Buffalo ahead of the elephants if I had to draw up a list. But these elephants were nicely gathered under a tree and something attracted me to the composition.  I loved the umbrella shape of the tree.  And it was the only large tree in the vicinity.  And the alpha female was front and centre, positioning herself between the Land Cruiser and her large extended family.  There were lovely shapes in front of me.  The first two shots were a waste, because there was a bush in the foreground in the centre of the frame.  I asked the driver to creep forward.  I took nineteen shots in all, but the sixth shot was the one.  I don't know why, but for some reason she reminded me of Meryl Streep.  She had gravitas and obvious intelligence and a certain elegance about her.  I liked her.  I wanted to take her picture.


Unbeknownst to me at the time, but I had shot the Cape Buffalo that would become "Dagga Boy" two hours earlier when I was already beginning to become worried about the light.  And three hours later I would shoot the swimming elephant that would become, "The Crossing".  In other words, I shot fully one quarter of my series in the span of five hours on a two month safari when I considered the light to be "bad".  By this time in the trip my MacBook Pro laptop was pretty much fried, the motherboard having given up the ghost.  So at the end of the day I tucked my card into my luggage and promptly forgot about it.  A few weeks later I was pretty sure I had lost it, but I wasn't that concerned because, hey, the light was so bad.  Although it was 670 shots and an entire day on safari.  


I found the card when I finally got around to unpacking all my luggage from the trip.  The card was tucked into a side pocket in my backpack.  It was the last of the pictures I edited from the trip and it brought the total number of images taken to just under fifteen thousand.  I winced when the images came up on my computer monitor because the colour was so flat and de-saturated.  I almost immediately made the decision to try them as black and white images.  And just as quickly I found myself falling in love with elephants.  With the elephants I saw personality in the pictures, felt there were stories being told.  I loved the photos in black and white and all of a sudden colour became a distraction.


By this time I had posted several hundred images on Facebook and shown many other images to friends.  The elephants were the last pictures to be added.  Different people responded to different photographs, and there were several dozen that got mentioned specifically when the albums were viewed. But the picture of the elephant herd under the tree was one that almost all people responded to, and when gender was taken into account, it was no contest.  Women would look at all of  the three hundred photos I had edited from the trip, turn to me and say, "I love the elephants under the tree".  I had no idea that so many people were fascinated by elephants.


As I mentioned in my last post, The Stories Behind the Pictures, I had enormous difficulty editing fifteen thousand photos into a dozen images that would work as a series.  The Matriarch, in her own way, solved the problem for me.  Four friends, all of them women, put me on notice that they wanted prints.  Had been saying so for several months in fact.  So I paid a visit to Hieu at The Lab with my file tucked into my pocket and said, "Print it as big as it will go, " which turned out to be 30 x 40.  I am of the school of thought that says a picture really isn't a photograph until its been printed and you can hold it in your hand and hang it on a wall. Its concrete then, a real, tangible thing.  You've created something.  The Matriarch, well, at 30 x 40, she kicked my ass.  The Matriarch spurred me to go back to my Africa edits and ask the question, which eleven other images would work in black and white and work as body.  


So, in true safari tradition, I raise my glass and offer a toast, "To the Matriarch. Long may she reign!"

"Elephants live in a structured social order. The social lives of male and female elephants are very different. The females spend their entire lives in tightly knit family groups made up of mothers, daughters, sisters, and aunts. These groups are led by the eldest female, or matriarch. Adult males, on the other hand, live mostly solitary lives.

The social circle of the female elephant does not end with the small family unit. In addition to encountering the local males that live on the fringes of one or more groups, the female's life also involves interaction with other families, clans, and subpopulations. Most immediate family groups range from five to fifteen adults, as well as a number of immature males and females. When a group gets too big, a few of the elder daughters will break off and form their own small group. They remain very aware of which local herds are relatives and which are not." 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant 

Portraits of Africa, the Stories Behind the Pictures

Portraits of Africa, the Stories Behind the Pictures

My latest black and white series, Portraits of Africa, was shot over the course of two back-to-back photo safaris that stretched over the months of August and September in 2010.  During the course of my travels, I shot most extensively in South Africa and Botswana, but made several excursions into Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. My principal camera bodies were a Nikon D700 and D3s, and most of the pictures featured in the series were captured with the Nikon 200-400mm f/4 and the Nikon 600mm f/4.  This was a trip that I had been planning for years, but for one reason or another did not get around to until I was fifty.  

Upon returning to Vancouver with nearly 15,000 photos, I was faced with the daunting task of cataloguing and editing my photographic record.  Neither of which are tasks for which I have either proficiency nor fondness. It was a process (for lack of a better term) which initially took several weeks and then stretched out over nearly two years as I found that within the overall body of work, I had images that fell into many different genres and themes and I had no clear idea initially how to shape the work.  Portraits of Africa is a distillation of images that I came to consider the best portraits of the animals that I observed and were those images that worked best in black and white.  Separate from this work, but no less worthy or equal in my eyes, are hundreds of images of the birds of Africa, a similar number of landscapes and close-ups of flowers, and many images of the villages, towns, cities and peoples of Africa.  Over the next fourteen posts I'll share with you the stories leading up to each photograph.


http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150997243526405.473784.706271404&type=1&l=1cfd36292d 

A typical day of shooting in Africa while on safari consists of rolling out of your tent in the dark at least an hour before sunrise, about 5:00 am, then grabbing a quick cup of coffee and bolting down a bowl of porridge that bubbles in a cast iron pot over a crackling wood fire.  As caffeine enters your system, the sky begins to brighten.  Returning to your tent, you grab all your gear and head for the vehicles. You then climb, or stumble groggily as the case may be, into the back of a Land Cruiser and set out with your local African guide, or tracker, your driver and the fervent hope that you'll get to a good water hole or game track before the sun has yet risen, or at least too high in the sky.  

As we made our way to our first spot of the day, there was usually a lot of conversation as the guides traded tips on where the local game animals were mostly likely to be, perhaps near a fresh kill for example. Working as a guide or a tracker is a highly sought after career throughout Africa.  In addition to a regular stipend, guides and trackers depend on fleshing out their income with tips.  The more animals you can show a visitor, and especially a photographer, while they are on safari, the greater the likelihood that your tip will be a generous one.  In an effort to maximize their earnings, the local guides generally share information with each other about the locations of the most highly sought after big game animals, or what has become generally known in Africa as the "Big Five", the Elephant, the Rhino, the Lion, the Leopard and the Cape Buffalo (needless to say, the "Big Five" was a list first complied by those shooting with guns and not cameras).  I was extraordinarily lucky during my safaris to partner with a number of highly regarded and very gifted local trackers, guides and drivers.  I could never have taken these images without their skills and assistance.  

Once you are in place, you simply wait in the Land Cruiser for the animals to come to you.  And for the sun to rise.  I scheduled my trips to coincide with the end of the dry season, as the landscape has significantly less vegetation (distracting in photos), far fewer flies, and with less water available, the animals tend to go every morning and every evening towards specific, reliable watering places. And by choosing a safari company geared towards photographers, you do have the luxury of staking out a spot for hours at a time.  The interesting thing about the Land Cruiser is that the animals have become so acclimatized to them that they no longer associate the vehicles with people.  It's just a thing.  Like a rock or a tree.  So while it helps to have great long telephoto lenses with you on safari, there were occasions when the lions and leopards and elephants passed so close, that if I had taken all leave of my senses I could have leaned out of the Land Cruiser and touched them...


From a technical point, I started the day with ISO's as high as 3200 and with the Nikon D3s, I was very comfortable shooting that fast.  And even much later in the morning, many of the animals stay in the shadows of the vegetation, so shooting at 1600 ISO was not uncommon.


If you spot a particularly elusive animal, such as a leopard, your guide and driver will give you and your shooting partners first crack at some good shots and then pass along the information.  Within a few minutes you can count on other Land Cruisers appearing out of the scrub brush and bushes.  If there's a pride of lions around a kill, you might see as many as a half a dozen vehicles in an area that's crowded with tourists.  And this kind of crowding makes getting a great shot exceedingly difficult as the ends of your frame gets squeezed.  But can't complain too loudly, because if you go for half a day without seeing anything, you are exceedingly grateful for a tip from someone else!  So, the the further you venture, the fewer the people.  

By ten o'clock most of the herd animals have drunk their fill and headed out to graze.  The sun is now climbing well into the sky and you have peeled off several layers of clothes. The early morning chill has been driven off by a determined sun.  The predators will have headed for shade, as much of the hunting takes place at dusk and dawn, but also to trail the herds.  Nothing in Africa passes up an opportunity to eat...

...so the photographers then head to base camp for a real breakfast.  But first you start to download your pictures and start some preliminary rough editing, flagging those images you think have potential.  After comparing notes at breakfast, you return to your tent to do some more editing.

At Noon on safari, the early and late breakfasts are followed by a rather sumptuous lunch, after which you reconnoitre with your guides and plan the afternoon shoot.  The conversations are all about the animals and the wildlife and who saw what and where might we find what else.  You check all your battery-powered gear and attach all manner of things to solar panel chargers and the camp generator, camera batteries and laptops taking precedence.  Once again, you gather your gear, then get back into your Land Cruiser and head out again by two o'clock.  Generally speaking, as a photographer, you stay out until there is no longer enough light to shoot.  

But it being a safari, and safaris having a rich colonial history and much British influence, you may break at four for tea and biscuits, or beer and beef jerky.  Then again at approximately six o'clock when the sun is setting, you stop for "sun downers", which is any cocktail of your choice, but traditionalists usually start with at least one gin and tonic.  The spot for sundowners is often chosen for the beauty of its sunsets, and all the Land Cruisers in the immediate vicinity will congregate in the same spot, sort of an African tail gate cocktail party if you will.  And again, the conversations are all about who spotted what where and who got what shot.  After drinks it's time to head back to the main camp for dinner.

The first thing you do when back at camp -- it's now about seven -- is download your cameras (the second time that day) and then head for the shower, which is a canvas bag filled with about fifteen gallons of water which has been heated in a fifty gallon drum over another smoky wood fire.  After a day in the bush you will be covered from head to toe in fine red dust.  And a bag full of warm water soon becomes the most sensual hedonistic pleasure you can imagine indulging in.

After showering, the camp will have gathered around a large campfire, quaffing yet more cocktails and waiting to be seated for dinner at eight.  You may have noticed that when on safari food is a recurring theme...

After dinner, the day's shooting will be much discussed and ambitious plans for the coming day expressed.  People retire to camp chairs around the fire, hopefully upwind of the smoke, and from various lockers, bags and other personal stashes, will appear all manner of whiskies, ports and the occasional Cuban cigar.  For a moment you forget that you are days and perhaps weeks into the bush, dozens if not a hundred miles away from anything recognizable as a modern city. The fire barks and the wood splits and crackles and spits sparks skyward until they are lost, mingling with the stars overhead.  The night sky is black and the flames create dancing shadows that fuel your imagination with wondrous creatures.

In the darkness you can hear the lions and hyenas arguing, and a cacophony of growling, grunting, eery howls, guttural coughing, and all of it punctuated at odd moments by the shrill scream or cry of some unknown beast, and you're not quite sure if its exultantly triumphant or in the last throes of death.  By eleven or so you will be one of the few hardy souls left and your weary body will begin to crave the narrow cot in your tent, knowing full well that it will start all over again in six or so hours and you fall asleep to the sounds of the African night.

Vince "Dagga Boy" Hemingson