tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30101084329163065432024-03-15T18:10:23.426-07:00NICK BRANDT : BEHIND THE PHOTONICK BRANDT : BEHIND THE PHOTOAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08067677778758368592noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3010108432916306543.post-1649923291267438772016-08-18T19:23:00.003-07:002016-08-18T19:25:58.750-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJu17mNFGkTUVVXfTry8OeHeO5_oWxgyEGyiqNaoGrfwan326uUAj3fM8MGdTG4Iti0a1-f9GJ18Eu2W48QrEFMzK4hGgY6ueBr9HUyBvc85_LaGzmMTTSzFXZYWJv549BV3E-VFyeQJc/s1600/ALLEYWAY-WITH-CHIMPANZEE-30in.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJu17mNFGkTUVVXfTry8OeHeO5_oWxgyEGyiqNaoGrfwan326uUAj3fM8MGdTG4Iti0a1-f9GJ18Eu2W48QrEFMzK4hGgY6ueBr9HUyBvc85_LaGzmMTTSzFXZYWJv549BV3E-VFyeQJc/s400/ALLEYWAY-WITH-CHIMPANZEE-30in.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">#14 : ALLEYWAY WITH CHIMPANZEE, 2014</span></b></div>
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The transformative power of context, part 2:</div>
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The portrait of the chimpanzee in a river bed was taken back in 2003, but as with all the animal portraits in Inherit the Dust, it was never released. I had rejected the original portrait because I had hoped for more of an emotional connection with the chimp - that he might be looking at me. </div>
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But here in the alleyway location, with his head bowed, he appears, in my mind, to be lamenting the loss of the world that he once knew, and the denuded world that is now there in its place. The photo of the chimp becomes much stronger, I believe, due to the context in which it is now placed. </div>
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As always, the panel of the chimp portrait was placed on location (NOT dropped in via Photoshop) next to a semi-stagnant stream of fetid sewage (where perhaps a creek with clear forest water once ran?)</div>
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Technical :</div>
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Shot on medium format black and white film with a Mamiya RZ67 Pro II, the final panoramic image is constructed of several negatives to capture the wide field of vision, which were pieced together in photoshop.</div>
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The photo is published INHERIT THE DUST.</div>
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The reproduction in the book is 13x15 inches (32cm x 38 cm). </div>
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The book is $65 but currently just $45 on Amazon at <a href="http://goo.gl/qB06yW"><span style="color: #021eaa; line-height: normal;">http://goo.gl/qB06yW</span></a>.</div>
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Signed copies are available at <a href="http://goo.gl/uYGEsp"><span style="color: #021eaa; line-height: normal;">http://goo.gl/uYGEsp</span></a> at photoeye for $65.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08067677778758368592noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3010108432916306543.post-42951958231740002682016-04-12T15:29:00.003-07:002016-08-08T17:33:47.885-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBYX5FPBeuRbawHaFIFEV93kKth4DEbvRHajLUR9NoxTQUDsD1AwBW_g3x_tzh-eC9_lEbRUns9mZgKRSY_dLM5d3i54OyMTo0_0zb1S2PckqCdC0mcnrG6lnzJd2DssezvZqpzO-jkMU/s1600/UNDERPASS-WITH-ELEPHANTS-3800px.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBYX5FPBeuRbawHaFIFEV93kKth4DEbvRHajLUR9NoxTQUDsD1AwBW_g3x_tzh-eC9_lEbRUns9mZgKRSY_dLM5d3i54OyMTo0_0zb1S2PckqCdC0mcnrG6lnzJd2DssezvZqpzO-jkMU/s400/UNDERPASS-WITH-ELEPHANTS-3800px.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b> #1<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4</span> : UNDERPASS WITH ELEPHANTS, 2015 (Lean Back, Your Life is On Track)</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The transformative power of context. What do I mean? Read on....</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I took the good but unremarkable photo of an elephant mother and her calves a few years ago, but didn’t think it special enough to release. But when revisiting it for <i>Inherit the Dust</i>, I realised how much more emotional and impactful it could be in its new incarnation. Placing the photo as a life-size panel at life size in this setting, the elephants look trapped between the monumental concrete pillars, uncertain of where to turn. The elephants also appear to be, for me at least, connected to the humans to the right of them.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When I chose this location, I never expected that these people would also be part of the photograph. They are all homeless, even the mothers with very young children and babies, who sleep beneath this underpass encircled by a central Nairobi roundabout.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It’s hard to see clearly from this tiny image online, but most of those boys, some as young as 6 or 7 years old, were high on glue from the bottles<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span>hanging from their faces. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The poisoned icing on the cake in relation to the homeless people is the cruelly juxtaposed billboard beyond, featuring a well-to-do middle class African man leaning back in a chair in his garden, with the tag line beneath: <i>Lean Back, Your Life is On Track</i>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My plan had always been that, throughout the series, the animals in the panels would effectively be ghosts in the landscape. With these animals killed or driven from their habitat, the people now living within these landscapes would be oblivious to the presence of the animals that used to live there.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">However, in the final photo of the series, I wanted just one person, a child, to see the animals in the panel whilst all around, no-one else did. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But I never for a second imagined that this tiny boy on the right would wander into frame, fascinated by these giant elephants, and touch them with what appears to be a stick held in his hand. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I would like to think that the image of babies here being the only ones to see the panels avoids the dangerous trap of easy sentimentality. My reason for it being babies is this - I think we are all born with a instinctual connection to nature, and as we grow up, many of us lose that connection, influenced, seduced and distracted by societal pressure, teen pressure, etc. Hopefully most of us will find our way back, but many will not.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Technical : </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Shot on medium format black and white film with a Mamiya RZ67 Pro II, the final panoramic image is constructed of several negatives to capture the wide fi<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">el</span>d of vision, which were pieced together in photoshop.<br /> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The photo is published <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">in the book, </span>INHERIT THE DUST.<br /> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The reproduction in the book is 13x27 inches (32cm x 67cm). The book is $40 on Amazon at http://goo.gl/qB06yW.<br /> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Signed copies are available at http://goo.gl/uYGEsp at photoeye for $65.<br /> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I would urge you to please buy the giant book, as these website images cannot begin to capture everything going on in the photos (the print at its best size is 120 inches / 300 cm long.) </span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08067677778758368592noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3010108432916306543.post-2213003994550836802016-03-20T09:37:00.002-07:002016-08-08T17:34:10.387-07:00<div style="text-align: center;">
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<b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk-_S7nJB5HOGTlrq5RzZFcvb_NdztPdl3Kn89lJF_wEgK7Lc8vx-Ng1z_MzcckA7hclGWfPyv4C4DkC3gRsMcTc8-csM1Jj11rEA7wzqaUdBIiIgEuBGw4iIOw4BEmbxs5x8VLUoiaSQ/s1600/WASTELAND-WITH-ELEPHANT-3800px.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk-_S7nJB5HOGTlrq5RzZFcvb_NdztPdl3Kn89lJF_wEgK7Lc8vx-Ng1z_MzcckA7hclGWfPyv4C4DkC3gRsMcTc8-csM1Jj11rEA7wzqaUdBIiIgEuBGw4iIOw4BEmbxs5x8VLUoiaSQ/s400/WASTELAND-WITH-ELEPHANT-3800px.jpg" width="400" /></a></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b> </b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b> #13 : WASTELAND WITH ELEPHANT, 2015</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">An elephant strides across the savannah towards camera. But where a sea of grass once was, all is human garbage.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />The original photo of the elephant is a previously unreleased shot taken in 2008. A beautiful bull with the unlikely name of Little Male. He was speared the year after this photo was taken, but survived, and is hopefully still alive in the Amboseli ecosystem in southern Kenya.<br /> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A few hundred kms to the north is this dumpsite on the edge of the city of Nakuru. Elephants would have walked these hills several decades ago, walked across these plains and hills now strewn with garbage.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The people in the photo all live on the edges of the dumpsite, and spend their days scouring through the garbage for anything that they can use or sell. When the garbage trucks arrive, many will search through the garbage for food they can eat right there. I</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">t’s not just the animals that are the victims of environmental degradation and devastation, but humans also.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />As with all the photos in this series, the life size photo of the elephant was printed at my studio in California, and then glued to a giant aluminum and plywood assembled on location. Multiple sandbags had to be used to raise up the panel so that the horizon line in the original photo lined up with the horizon line on the location.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I shot this and a few other panels close by over the course of a week, waiting for the right stormy clouds and accompanying light. One advantage of being there so long is that the local people became completely used to us being there, and just got on with their lives. I wanted it that way - for the people to be oblivious to the presence of the panels and the animals featured in them, who are now no more than ghosts in the landscape.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />But not all is doom and gloom. Once up a time, we in the West had these animals where we lived. We blew it, wiped them out, but we still have a chance to protect and preserve the places and those animals where they still live, and at the same time help support local communities, through wide scale employment in nature tourism and wildlife preservation.<br />Go to biglife.org to learn about the work that Big Life Foundation, the organization I co-founded in 2010, is doing in this regard.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />Technical : </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Shot on medium format black and white film with a Mamiya RZ67 Pro II, the final panoramic image is constructed of several negatives to capture the wide fi<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">el</span>d of vision, which were pieced together in photoshop.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />The photo is published in INHERIT THE DUST (Feb 2016).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />The reproduction in the book is 13x27 inches (32cm x 67cm). The book is currently $42 on Amazon <span style="color: purple;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Nick-Brandt-Inherit-Dust/dp/0692520546/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8" target="_blank">here</a></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />Signed copies are available <span style="color: purple;"><a href="http://www.photoeye.com/bookstore/citation.cfm?Catalog=DS643" target="_blank">here</a></span> at photoeye for $65.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />I would urge you to please buy the giant book, as these website images cannot begin to capture everything going on in the photos (the print at its best size is 120 inches / 300 cm long.)</span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08067677778758368592noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3010108432916306543.post-66578434908542966692015-08-28T19:12:00.001-07:002015-08-28T19:12:06.307-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3wZn72liM0M44pP17ajz9MIB8gzEyVN7bQdbZ8mf28j9XzHcAwfNkMPA3G7ybGhZW6zv1bi5HCg0ZS98ZJucqhgHLKclCoTtwNKUr3pYXNc8g9BhQ5O10px5QAeUU6EPiLoRocn1cwe0/s1600/Rangers+Holding+Tusks+of+Killed+Elephants+18inW.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3wZn72liM0M44pP17ajz9MIB8gzEyVN7bQdbZ8mf28j9XzHcAwfNkMPA3G7ybGhZW6zv1bi5HCg0ZS98ZJucqhgHLKclCoTtwNKUr3pYXNc8g9BhQ5O10px5QAeUU6EPiLoRocn1cwe0/s400/Rangers+Holding+Tusks+of+Killed+Elephants+18inW.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>#12 : </b></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>LINE OF RANGERS HOLDING TUSKS KILLED AT THE HANDS OF MAN, AMBOSELI 2011</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I wish that I had never had to take this photo. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I wish that it had never been possible to take this photo.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The photo was taken as a deliberate visual echo of <i>Elephants Walking Through Grass</i>, a very different world - a vision of paradise and plenty - taken only a couple of miles away three years earlier.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">But instead of a herd of elephants striding across the grassy plains of Africa, here we see only their remains: the tusks of 22 elephants killed at the hands of man within the Amboseli/Tsavo Ecosystem.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The tusks of the elephant at the front? I find it hard to visualize the living elephant that possessed them. I’ve never seen elephants with tusks anything like that size, and now, I likely never will. They are all gone, dead, mostly killed by man, for their ivory.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">So I think it’s safe to say there is no elephant left alive on the continent of Africa with tusks that size. Those two gargantuan tusks would probably fetch in excess of half a million dollars in China today. Perhaps more, as investors start to gamble on the elephants’ extinction, as the numbers of elephants in the wild plummets and tusks such as these become such a rarity.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">However, everyone, please know that there is hope ---</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The rangers holding the tusks are some of the 300 rangers employed by Big Life Foundation, the organization that I co-founded in 2010 to protect the animals and ecosystem of this region.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Today, these rangers protect the elephants and other animals of this unique and extraordinary ecosystem across a 2 million acre area, straddling Kenya and Tanzania.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Since Big Life was founded, the incidence of poaching has dramatically dropped in the ecosystems that the rangers patrol, one of the unfortunately few success stories in conservation currently in Africa.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">But it is not easy to maintain this success. We need financial support. We need to expand into areas where the elephants and other animals are still being annihilated. So please, go to <a href="http://www.biglife.org/"><span style="font: 12.0px Arial; letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #0327a2; text-decoration: underline;">www.biglife.org</span></a> to learn more, and donate today!</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Technical :</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #141823;">The tusks were stored in Kenya Wildlife Service’s ivory strongroom. In July 2011, they permitted me to borrow them.</span><span style="font: 12.0px Arial; letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #151515;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Shot as always on medium format black and white film, the photograph is published in “Across The Ravaged Land”, available on Amazon.com, etc.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08067677778758368592noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3010108432916306543.post-66063623039887435302015-07-06T19:00:00.000-07:002015-08-28T19:16:32.955-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZElh5gVj9ZH9P7KSGlAFrlZOgnPPa0WXGGwg5EnRscNniF0pbiNnlxs2CNy6hmGM877UffjE862wE2jRDwHM-nWH2x-MHvB8rG24S6EUU5LUHWOp31ZiLWytfEiVAMB-JjqNhIEOqCp4/s1600/Elephants+Walking+Through+Grass+18inW.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZElh5gVj9ZH9P7KSGlAFrlZOgnPPa0WXGGwg5EnRscNniF0pbiNnlxs2CNy6hmGM877UffjE862wE2jRDwHM-nWH2x-MHvB8rG24S6EUU5LUHWOp31ZiLWytfEiVAMB-JjqNhIEOqCp4/s400/Elephants+Walking+Through+Grass+18inW.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">#11 : </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">ELEPHANTS WALKING THROUGH GRASS, AMBOSELI 2008</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Fail again. Fail better. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Those are the immortal words of Samuel Becket. And the philosophy that best sums up my years-long attempts to get the 'perfect' photograph of a line of elephants crossing the African plains. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I tried countless times over several years, never achieving, to my satisfaction, the line as I imagined it - simultaneous ideal choreography, light, and location. So I kept trying, what was ultimately hundreds of times.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">So this photograph is my best attempt at failing better. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The herd in the photo is being led by a wonderful matriarch named Marianna (by Amboseli Elephant Research). Photographed in 2008, she was 44 years old at the time. The following year, Marianna was killed by poachers.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Along with Igor, the elephant in Elephant Drinking, Marianna’s death was one of the reasons that I was motivated to co-found Big Life Foundation, which helps protect and preserve the wild animals of East Africa, and Marianna's home (To learn more about Big Life, please go to</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> <a href="http://www.biglife.org/"><span style="font: 10.0px 'Open Sans'; letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #0327a2; text-decoration: underline;">www.biglife.org</span></a>.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The photo was also the inspiration behind the somber photo taken three years later, Line of Rangers Holding Tusks Killed at the Hands of Man, Amboseli, 2011. I’ll write about that photo next week.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Technical : As usual, the photo was shot on medium format black and white film. Also, as usual, this photo should be seen at its actual print size of 75 inches (190 cm) in length.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The photo is published in “A Shadow Falls” and “On This Earth, A Shadow Falls” (available on Amazon).</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">SIGNED copies of both are available at <a href="http://www.photoeye.com/"><span style="font: 10.0px 'Open Sans'; letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #0327a2; text-decoration: underline;">www.photoeye.com</span></a>.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08067677778758368592noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3010108432916306543.post-6075264893608632422015-07-06T18:54:00.001-07:002015-07-06T18:55:22.281-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx2V3GxsqVvSpgAQ6l9-_g95xl7PRwza6Wg-3wt4RfpLeqoksAzkQ75-A96gh5c0lmuvZUOaIQFaI-G1pQ1OXoVNRjiA2S6nlQcnqzH15Dbsyji7YZK24DEfeCNS0v80-DGvgUuncMplY/s1600/Calcified+Bat+II+12inW+BTP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx2V3GxsqVvSpgAQ6l9-_g95xl7PRwza6Wg-3wt4RfpLeqoksAzkQ75-A96gh5c0lmuvZUOaIQFaI-G1pQ1OXoVNRjiA2S6nlQcnqzH15Dbsyji7YZK24DEfeCNS0v80-DGvgUuncMplY/s400/Calcified+Bat+II+12inW+BTP.jpg" width="323" /></span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>#10:<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>PETRIFIED BAT, LAKE NATRON, 2012</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The photographer sighed wearily, part 2. Yes, the photo is meant to be this way up. The bat is hanging upside down, as you will see from the sky being at the bottom of the frame.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">To take a portrait of an animal alive again in death, in the place where it lived and died. The portrait of an animal that I would never have been able to get close enough to otherwise. This was part of what obsessed me when I first unexpectedly found petrified birds and bats washed up along the shoreline of Lake Natron in Tanzania.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I visited the lake whilst traveling through one the more stark areas of East Africa taking photos for the last book, Across The Ravaged Land, in my trilogy. It was dry season, so the waterline had receded revealing these petrified creatures along the shoreline. I thought they were extraordinary - every last tiny detail perfectly preserved down to the tip of the bat's tongue, the minute hairs on his face. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Each day, me, my guide, and a few local Maasai would walk up and down the lake's shoreline, scouring for birds and bats. It was like a morbid treasure hunt.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">No-one knows for certain exactly how the animals die, but it appears that the extreme reflective nature of the lake’s surface confuses them, just like a plate glass window, causing them to crash into the lake. The water has an extremely high soda content, so high that it would strip the ink off my Kodak film boxes within a few seconds. The soda and salt causes the creatures to petrify, perfectly preserved, as they dry. (I have referred to the creatures as calcified in previous titles/descriptions, but “petrified” is the correct description).</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">We have found entire flocks of 100 dead small finches washed up on shore in a 50 yard stretch of shoreline. So clearly, they all died at once. Which suggests that the notion that they accidentally all flew into the glassy reflective surface of the water is a very plausible theory. All in all, not a great-sounding way to die.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">All the creatures are rock hard when found, but are not stone, as reported in many articles. You cannot turn their heads, manipulate their wings, etc.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I took these creatures as I found them on the shoreline, and then placed them in ‘living’ positions, bringing them back to ‘life’, as it were. Reanimated, alive again in death.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In the instance of the bat, I placed a series of acacia thorns, the main tree around the lake, around it - photographing its portrait far closer than I ever could if it were living.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Shot as always on medium format black and white film, the photograph is published in “Across The Ravaged Land”, available on Amazon.com (SIGNED copies available from <a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.photoeye.com%2F&h=rAQF1VQCK&enc=AZOOhU0FP4TTlce7GWEQYsZwFzIDveDQizsvmTzkKtHNeocmZ3T7qFd8tfOGJT_UAPEB1uI3e2Q5EroCx33L6-Q0T1MPnki-MdX0Q7E3RZ4N9HSoeGzXackqJSR7l-bs3ZGr8d-zYVt8pOFfjVSplrUG&s=1"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">www.photoeye.com</span></a>).</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08067677778758368592noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3010108432916306543.post-61375536588150648902014-10-23T23:56:00.000-07:002014-10-23T23:59:12.975-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhewx7tLaJCTSeGSN4ADBt8-bLbXEZwqtXHcyA8W20FkZHYN8id8WAbhGFZUqLy5Qy4Th4I7soW2GmMRFNuXIAZkPt-K4IfY55d6Tpa4JZTqLpo91bw3MFLg2Rfd27U75Jeb6vqVBRH9BQ/s1600/Abandoned+Ostrich+Egg+BTP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhewx7tLaJCTSeGSN4ADBt8-bLbXEZwqtXHcyA8W20FkZHYN8id8WAbhGFZUqLy5Qy4Th4I7soW2GmMRFNuXIAZkPt-K4IfY55d6Tpa4JZTqLpo91bw3MFLg2Rfd27U75Jeb6vqVBRH9BQ/s1600/Abandoned+Ostrich+Egg+BTP.jpg" height="400" width="352" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 10px/normal 'Open Sans'; letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">#9 : </span></b></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>ABANDONED OSTRICH EGG, AMBOSELI 2007</b></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It was the most curious sight. There, at the edge of the vast dried Amboseli lake bed, lay a lone, abandoned ostrich egg. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">For me, the sight was quite compelling. I’ve seen the very occasional abandoned ostrich egg, but never in a place like this. I waited for the sun to lower in the sky, and then took this shot.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">As the final image of A Shadow Falls, the second book in the trilogy, is this an image of hope or of despair? An image of the end, or the hope of a new beginning.....</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The photo is also published in “On This Earth, A Shadow Falls” (available on Amazon at :</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Nick-Brandt-Earth-Shadow-Falls/dp/1938922441/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404234852&sr=1-1&keywords=on+this+earth+a+shadow+falls"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">www.amazon.com/Nick-Brandt-Earth-Shadow-Falls/dp/1938922441/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404234852&sr=1-1&keywords=on+this+earth+a+shadow+falls</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and on amazon.co.uk at :</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nick-Brandt-Earth-Shadow-Falls/dp/1938922441/ref=dp_ob_title_bk"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">www.amazon.co.uk/Nick-Brandt-Earth-Shadow-Falls/dp/1938922441/ref=dp_ob_title_bk</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">SIGNED copies of the 4th edition printing of this book are also available at <span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #0e22a2; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.photoeye.com%2Fbookstore%2Fcitation.cfm%3Fcatalog%3DZE223&h=IAQEkjVNx&enc=AZNv0LYafqhyF2RYEj_eKYlTl63nujiA4-uMb27ViTcUTFkAS94-bQdNJCQr8CG1txbO72mc2wvdihT_nbPQGaDWVbsBqSjf6CPQO9EM8rYEkQ1fFxF4V0OhosFdxuhOwQYsmhLr_RKCXyY5h5V5R_Ju&s=1">http://www.photoeye.com/bookstore/citation.cfm?catalog=ZE223</a></span></span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08067677778758368592noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3010108432916306543.post-83371804509928427412014-08-31T17:14:00.003-07:002014-10-23T23:57:34.892-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWdsBVWPTS7DqwEJCTPhXm6uSM4VPG4UFWiKbzOZKlsc4wgR-djVHNRt6AuboH5EN417_4xRx8hph99Cx1AmyfoSfxJzs0d9vXbM5G6O30YIkNkuhsTIGD3D5HCJ__lztNOumddcmDIVc/s1600/Elephant+With+Exploding+Dust+BTP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWdsBVWPTS7DqwEJCTPhXm6uSM4VPG4UFWiKbzOZKlsc4wgR-djVHNRt6AuboH5EN417_4xRx8hph99Cx1AmyfoSfxJzs0d9vXbM5G6O30YIkNkuhsTIGD3D5HCJ__lztNOumddcmDIVc/s1600/Elephant+With+Exploding+Dust+BTP.jpg" height="400" width="397" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>#8 : ELEPHANT WITH EXPLODING DUST, AMBOSELI, 2004<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">From the least inspiring of origins : A lesson in keeping your - or more to the point, my - mind open. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">It was a cloudless sunny afternoon, the kind I always regard as un-photographable, when I always feel that there is no point even pulling my camera out of the case. I have convinced myself that I can only shoot with cloudy sky backdrops, that cloudless blue skies are ugly and devoid of atmosphere. However, in this instance I was (gladly) wrong.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">This big bull elephant came ambling by, very relaxed. In spite of that, I couldn’t see any point in photographing him in such terrible midday overhead sunlight, and against such a boring backdrop of clear sky. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But Ninian, my guide, insisted that since we were doing nothing, I should stop being such a pessimistic git and try taking a photograph of the elephant. So we followed him across the bare pans. And as he walked, he dusted himself. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For that split second moment, the effect was quite beautiful. The dust effectively became the clouds in the sky that I always crave. In fact, you could view the photograph from the perspective that the elephant actually looks like a giant walking through the clouds. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This photograph is an anomaly within my work in one other respect. It is a photograph of an animal in action. Typically, I have no interest in taking photographs such as this. I prefer to photograph animals in a state of Being, taking their portraits in an attempt to capture a sense of their personalities, their spirit. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So in two regards, I broke my ‘rules’ here. And I am glad that I did. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So the photographic moral of the story: don’t be a pessimistic git. (One that I continue to have not learned, it has to be admitted).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Technical : As usual, the photo was shot on medium format black and white film, without zoom or telephoto.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">The photo is published in “On This Earth, A Shadow Falls” (available on Amazon at this new link : </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Nick-Brandt-Earth-Shadow-Falls/dp/1938922441/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404234852&sr=1-1&keywords=on+this+earth+a+shadow+falls" style="color: #0e22a2;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #0e22a2; text-decoration: underline;">www.amazon.com/Nick-Brandt-Earth-Shadow-Falls/dp/1938922441/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404234852&sr=1-1&keywords=on+this+earth+a+shadow+falls</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The reprint is available on amazon.co.uk at :</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nick-Brandt-Earth-Shadow-Falls/dp/1938922441/ref=dp_ob_title_bk">www.amazon.co.uk/Nick-Brandt-Earth-Shadow-Falls/dp/1938922441/ref=dp_ob_title_bk</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">SIGNED copies of this 4th edition printing of the book are also available now at <a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.photoeye.com%2Fbookstore%2Fcitation.cfm%3Fcatalog%3DZE223&h=IAQEkjVNx&enc=AZNv0LYafqhyF2RYEj_eKYlTl63nujiA4-uMb27ViTcUTFkAS94-bQdNJCQr8CG1txbO72mc2wvdihT_nbPQGaDWVbsBqSjf6CPQO9EM8rYEkQ1fFxF4V0OhosFdxuhOwQYsmhLr_RKCXyY5h5V5R_Ju&s=1"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">http://www.photoeye.com/bookstore/citation.cfm?catalog=ZE223</span></a></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08067677778758368592noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3010108432916306543.post-143651720391212462014-08-04T19:52:00.000-07:002014-08-04T20:12:55.132-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYsB8aO__4-xyhuhtkjjOeLcaoq8tCQTZE4oSHmou94VROPDa_nbu06U-DOm39ujFWnDMJ5trstva6QddjuxEtwDzzw6uoXR7L4tO117eaG0a__EK008ZMr2oz0fSzcxM9ZTlNsoGhQn8/s1600/Cheetah+&+Cubs+Lying+on+Rock+BTP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYsB8aO__4-xyhuhtkjjOeLcaoq8tCQTZE4oSHmou94VROPDa_nbu06U-DOm39ujFWnDMJ5trstva6QddjuxEtwDzzw6uoXR7L4tO117eaG0a__EK008ZMr2oz0fSzcxM9ZTlNsoGhQn8/s1600/Cheetah+&+Cubs+Lying+on+Rock+BTP.jpg" height="400" width="325" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #000000;">#7 : </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">CHEETAH AND CUBS LYING ON ROCK, SERENGETI, 2007</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The Importance of Clouds. Discuss. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I love photographing in East Africa. But I like my clouds specially imported from Northern Europe - somber, gloomy, melancholic. Now, truth be told, the clouds in this photo are pretty obviously African - a classic stormy East African build up of cloudy drama.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But imagine this photo with clear blue skies. Boring. It would not have made it off my contact sheet into the scanner. But with all this dramatic cloud dominating the negative space, this photo became a keeper. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Of course, the (tiresome) cynics amongst you will say, well, you could have just added in the clouds afterwards. Yep, you’re right, I could have. But really, how disappointing. And I always find - and you will hear me say this repeatedly - if you are patient enough, what nature eventually gives you is way better and more surprising than what you might have manufactured in Photoshop. So I stick with Nature.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Talking of that, the Frustration of Waiting: Discuss.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Trying to get good photos here in this particular part of the world - an area of the Serengeti - is pretty much as hard as it gets. The kopjes, the rocky outcrops here - are spectacular, but waiting for all the elements to align - the animal in the right place at the right time in the right light - is incredibly frustrating. Days, weeks go by without getting a good shot. Or any shot. The cats are sleeping, or the sky is too blue, or the animals have just eaten, or they’re too high on the rocks, etc etc etc. It feels like one (I) will never get a good photo again. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s a case of swinging hoops, all swinging out of sync, and you wait for that one statistically unlikely, very brief moment when, for a split second, the hoops all swing in unison. And when they finally do, it almost seems...easy. Until it feels impossible again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The cheetahs - well, this was one of the last times I saw many cheetahs here in this area that used to be well-known for them. I have not successfully photographed a cheetah since 2008. There are now just an estimated 9,000-12,000 left on the entire African continent. There are fewer and fewer places that they can survive as man encroaches ever more rapidly on wildlife habitat, their ability to hunt compromised.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I hope that these three cubs survived and are currently out there somewhere, moving through the Serengeti grass, living their lives to the full.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Technical : as always, shot on medium format black and white film with a Pentax 67II, no telephoto or zoom.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">By the way, viewing the photo at this size on the computer screen sucks. (But I could say that about all the photos). You need to see them as the large prints that they were intended to be. But in the absence of that, the books are a good interim compromise (how’s that for a sales pitch). So, if you wish to treat yourself to aforementioned good interim compromise....</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The photo is published in “A Shadow Falls” (available on Amazon.com), and in “On This Earth, A Shadow Falls” (available for $112 on Amazon at this new link : </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Nick-Brandt-Earth-Shadow-Falls/dp/1938922441/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404234852&sr=1-1&keywords=on+this+earth+a+shadow+falls"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #0e22a2; text-decoration: underline;">www.amazon.com/Nick-Brandt-Earth-Shadow-Falls/dp/1938922441/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404234852&sr=1-1&keywords=on+this+earth+a+shadow+falls</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">SIGNED copies of this 4th edition printing of the book are also available now at </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #0e22a2; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.photoeye.com%2Fbookstore%2Fcitation.cfm%3Fcatalog%3DZE223&h=IAQEkjVNx&enc=AZNv0LYafqhyF2RYEj_eKYlTl63nujiA4-uMb27ViTcUTFkAS94-bQdNJCQr8CG1txbO72mc2wvdihT_nbPQGaDWVbsBqSjf6CPQO9EM8rYEkQ1fFxF4V0OhosFdxuhOwQYsmhLr_RKCXyY5h5V5R_Ju&s=1">http://www.photoeye.com/bookstore/citation.cfm?catalog=ZE223</a></span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08067677778758368592noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3010108432916306543.post-29663109790787736332014-07-16T17:56:00.004-07:002014-07-16T17:59:42.584-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq48KjjeHbpnKohyphenhyphenGGtQRhsGBx6vppP9A9t4mylNO5v7Et3_jNJSIM8W6kd2sX9uxhfwYb65JqFH_kErc_KvnXMWvtm-1YFpI51Gf6NbRocMru_X73ivjUO7uQahEJ4Xwv_YKjagnLvLU/s1600/Wildebeest+Arc+BTP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq48KjjeHbpnKohyphenhyphenGGtQRhsGBx6vppP9A9t4mylNO5v7Et3_jNJSIM8W6kd2sX9uxhfwYb65JqFH_kErc_KvnXMWvtm-1YFpI51Gf6NbRocMru_X73ivjUO7uQahEJ4Xwv_YKjagnLvLU/s1600/Wildebeest+Arc+BTP.jpg" height="261" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #141723;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 10px/normal 'Open Sans';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b style="font-family: Arial;">#6 : </b></span> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>WILDEBEEST ARC, MAASAI MARA, 2006<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Death by Tourist. (Read on and you will understand what I mean by that.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I have always found the river crossings of wildebeest and zebra, in their search for fresh grass on the other side of the river, incredibly moving and courageous. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">For this photo, we waited for a couple of days as the wildebeest gathered on the opposite bank, looking like, at any minute, they were finally going to (literally) make the leap. But as is so often the way, something would unnerve or distract them, and they would retreat. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Sometimes on these waits, it’s the zebras that finally decide to make the first jump, as if they grow impatient with the wildebeests’ group indecision, and decide, “oh, fer chrissakes, well, we’re going”, at which point the wildebeest group-think, “oh, yeah, okay, we’ll come too”).</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Frequently at these crossings, you find yourself tensely watching as the crocodiles close in on a chosen wildebeest swimming across the river. Will it make it in time? Closer the crocodiles swim....closer....closer...and as the wildebeest makes it to the other shore with crocodile just a few feet away, we simultaneously sigh with relief, cheer and applaud.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">But..sometimes, tourist vehicles with ignorant guides and tourists will position themselves on the river bank right at the wildebeest exit points - in order to get a better / more dramatic view. In so doing, they block the wildebeests' exit, forcing them to panic, tumble back down the bank and try to cross back to the other side. In so doing, some drown, exhausted. It is especially heartbreaking when mother and calf are separated. The calf is doomed at this point.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Tourism is a vital component in the survival of these creatures and these ecosystems, but it has to be responsible tourism. But this is not it. So if you are on safari with some idiot ‘guide’ trying this stunt, please tell them to back off and educate them that they are likely causing the death(s) of wildebeests.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(By the way, that did not happen during the crossing depicted in this photo. And everyone who did the swim across in this particular shot made it, as I recall.)</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The photo is published in “A Shadow Falls” (available again after a long time out of print, available on Amazon), and in “On This Earth, A Shadow Falls” (available again on $112 on Amazon at this new link <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Nick-Brandt-Earth-Shadow-Falls/dp/1938922441/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404234852&sr=1-1&keywords=on+this+earth+a+shadow+falls"><span style="font: normal normal normal 10px/normal 'Open Sans'; text-decoration: underline;">here</span></a>. </span>SIGNED copies available at <a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.photoeye.com%2F&h=rAQF1VQCK&enc=AZOOhU0FP4TTlce7GWEQYsZwFzIDveDQizsvmTzkKtHNeocmZ3T7qFd8tfOGJT_UAPEB1uI3e2Q5EroCx33L6-Q0T1MPnki-MdX0Q7E3RZ4N9HSoeGzXackqJSR7l-bs3ZGr8d-zYVt8pOFfjVSplrUG&s=1"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;">www.photoeye.com</span></a>.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08067677778758368592noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3010108432916306543.post-3950362294051917392014-07-01T10:27:00.003-07:002014-07-02T18:48:19.580-07:00<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>#5 : GORILLA ON ROCK, PARC DES VOLCANS, 2008</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">If only all my subjects were as accommodating as this silverback gorilla in Rwanda.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In March 2008, I trekked up to the gorilla groups in Rwanda for six days in a row, to try and take their portraits. You’re only allowed one hour a day with them, so the pressure is on. The rangers take you in groups of eight, but I bought all eight permits so that I could be alone with the gorillas for that precious hour, free to move around them to get the right angle with no-one in the way or in shot. An expensive way of doing things, to put it mildly. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">But for the first five days, the gorillas just rubbed my nose in it, spending every minute of each of those short hours sitting waist deep in wild celery, contentedly munching on the stuff, bathed in ugly bright sunlight. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">More than ever, I needed cloud cover. Hard sunlight, which I am no fan of in my photos, looks especially terrible on gorillas, transforming their liquid eyes into impenetrable dark sockets. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">As mentioned before, I am always looking to take a portrait of an animal in exactly the way I would shoot the portrait of a human being. It wouldn’t be a good portrait of a human to see them waist deep in wild celery (and eating it). Same rules apply for portraits of gorillas.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">But then, on the last day, with just 20 minutes of the trip to go, this beautiful giant silverback male walked down into a small river bed, and stood on a rock, appearing to pose.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I clambered down into the river bed to join him. He just stayed there, allowing me to photograph him from head to toe. I frantically reloaded my camera (ten shots per roll with medium format 6x7 film), expecting him to move at any second, but nope, he stayed right where he was, posing away. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Afterwards, the park rangers said that they had never seen a gorilla do anything like that. They were generally always deep in the forest’s vegetation. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">So I considered myself very fortunate to have gotten this photo. Once home, this frame was the one that most moved me, but blowing it up large - the print is 42x55 inches (107x140 cm) - I discovered that shooting in such a dark setting, aperture wide open, with such shallow depth of field, that one of his eyes was a little out of focus. I realized that because of my poor focusing, the gorilla’s two front legs dominating the frame were pin sharp. With their luxuriant glossy fur, this made the photo work better than if I had gotten the focusing conventionally correct.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The photo is published in “A Shadow Falls” (available again after a long time out of print, available on Amazon), and in “On This Earth, A Shadow Falls” (available again at the end of July, pre-order for $112 on Amazon at this new link <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Nick-Brandt-Earth-Shadow-Falls/dp/1938922441/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404234852&sr=1-1&keywords=on+this+earth+a+shadow+falls"><span style="color: blue; letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #0e22a2; text-decoration: underline;">here</span></a>)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">SIGNED copies of the new printing are also available now at <a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.photoeye.com%2F&h=LAQFUSIUY&enc=AZP6hRxPj5rH2n1slWjoYFhdTA94qOoZ2LFHxLnGqvo3tlAmSJOoqbZifuCfpDByBaUZBHBU0kMwWiEHyzdOGuCoLw7XQZi-sPrufLX-3ftD6oQ9CKXrFrL9QyDxcRE_ADH9GAXKukoY6luJ6CuXoZzv&s=1"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #0e22a2; text-decoration: underline;">www.photoeye.com</span></a>)</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08067677778758368592noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3010108432916306543.post-68368042415492911262014-06-15T11:54:00.002-07:002014-06-15T12:07:46.859-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">#4 : PETRIFIED FISH EAGLE, LAKE NATRON, 2012</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">To take a portrait of an animal alive again in death, in the place where it lived and died. The portrait of an animal that I would never have been able to get close enough to otherwise. This was part of what obsessed me when I first unexpectedly found petrified birds and bats washed up along the shoreline of Lake Natron in Tanzania.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I visited the lake whilst traveling through one the more stark areas of East Africa taking photos for the last book, Across The Ravaged Land, in my trilogy. It was dry season, so the waterline had receded revealing these petrified creatures along the shoreline. I thought they were extraordinary - every last tiny detail perfectly preserved down to the tip of a bat's tongue, the minute hairs on his face. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Each day, me, my guide, and a few local Maasai would walk up and down the lake's shoreline, scouring for birds and bats. It was like a morbid treasure hunt, with the entire fish eagle being the most surprising and revelatory find. His outspread wings, as if opening them to dry them in the sun, were fixed in exactly that position when he died.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">No-one knows for certain exactly how the animals die, but it appears that the extreme reflective nature of the lake’s surface confuses them, just like a plate glass window, causing them to crash into the lake. The water has an extremely high soda content, so high that it would strip the ink off my Kodak film boxes within a few seconds. The soda and salt causes the creatures to petrify, perfectly preserved, as they dry. (I have referred to the creatures as calcified in previous titles/descriptions, but “petrified” is the correct description).</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">We have found entire flocks of 100 dead small finches washed up on shore in a 50 yard stretch of shoreline. So clearly, they all died at once. Which suggests that the notion that they accidentally all flew into the glassy reflective surface of the water is a very plausible theory. All in all, not a great-sounding way to die.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">All the creatures are rock hard when found, but are not stone, as reported in many articles. You cannot turn their heads, manipulate their wings, etc.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I took these creatures as I found them on the shoreline, and then placed them in ‘living’ positions, bringing them back to ‘life’, as it were. Reanimated, alive again in death.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In the instance of the fish eagle, we placed him on a strong branch pushed into the shallow water of Lake Natron - photographing his portrait far closer than I ever could if he were living.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Shot as always on medium format black and white film, the photograph is published in “Across The Ravaged Land”, available on Amazon.com (SIGNED copies available from <a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.photoeye.com%2F&h=rAQF1VQCK&enc=AZOOhU0FP4TTlce7GWEQYsZwFzIDveDQizsvmTzkKtHNeocmZ3T7qFd8tfOGJT_UAPEB1uI3e2Q5EroCx33L6-Q0T1MPnki-MdX0Q7E3RZ4N9HSoeGzXackqJSR7l-bs3ZGr8d-zYVt8pOFfjVSplrUG&s=1"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">www.photoeye.com</span></a>).</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08067677778758368592noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3010108432916306543.post-22055534661499207832014-06-02T16:14:00.003-07:002014-06-02T16:25:00.794-07:00<br />
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<b><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>#3 : LION BEFORE STORM - SITTING PROFILE, MASAI MARA, 2006.</b></span></b></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I try to photograph wild animals in the same way that I would photograph a human being. The difference is that I have to wait for the animals to present themselves, to ‘pose’, for their portrait. In this way, I am attempting to show the animals as sentient creatures not so different to us (although frequently they are better than us...but I digress).<br />
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Just as a portrait photographer might be captivated by a striking, characterful face on the street, so I'm drawn to a particular animal that I want to photograph.<br />
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So it was with this lion. I spent seventeen straight days with him. Waiting. But all he did was sleep - hour after hour, day after day -under a boring cloudless blue sky.<br />
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Finally, on the evening of the eighteenth day, a monumental storm rolled in. Just ahead of the storm came an incredibly powerful wind. The moment that the wind hit the lion, like a freight train, he sat up, facing into the wind, smelling the game on the air. After all these days spent in each other’s company, he was oblivious to me taking photos so close to him.<br />
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Shot as always on medium format black and white film without telephoto or zoom, the photo has shifting planes of focus that occur in camera at time of shooting, using a very crude poor-man’s version of a tilt shift lens. Some think they can achieve this in Photoshop, but that’s a physical impossibility - this ‘effect’ can only be achieved in camera.<br />
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Meanwhile, it is necessary to mention that the lion population of Africa is plummeting. There are now just an estimated 20,000 lions left across the entire continent, a drop of 75% in just 20 years.<br />
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In the Amboseli ecosystem, where Big Life Foundation operates, the organization I co-founded to help protect the wild animals of that part of the world, so far we are succeeding in maintaining the current lion population, through a compensation fund for the local communities when they lose livestock to predators. Go to <a href="http://www.biglife.org/"><span style="color: #170098; letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">www.biglife.org</span></a> to learn more.<br />
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The photo is published in “A Shadow Falls” (available again after a long time out of print, available on Amazon), and in “On This Earth, A Shadow Falls” (available again in July. SIGNED copies of the new printing are available now at www.photoeye.com)</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08067677778758368592noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3010108432916306543.post-4657927963964371492014-06-02T15:50:00.003-07:002014-06-02T16:09:37.924-07:00<br />
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<b>#2 : RANGER WITH TUSKS OF ELEPHANTS KILLED AT THE HANDS OF MAN, AMBOSELI, 2011</b></div>
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I find it hard to imagine the living elephant that possessed these tusks. I’ve never seen elephants with tusks anything like this size, and now, I never will. They are all gone, dead, mostly killed by man.</div>
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Even with one part of each tusk embedded in his skull, this elephant would still surely have had to lift his monumental head to prevent them from dragging like excavators through the earth.</div>
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Those two gargantuan tusks, that bounty, would likely fetch in excess of half a million dollars in China today.</div>
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The elephant was killed by poachers in Tsavo in southern Kenya in 2004. His tusks were stored in Kenya Wildlife Service’s ivory strongroom. In July 2011, they permitted me to borrow these and many other tusks of elephants killed at the hands of man for the ranger series. These photos feature rangers belonging to Big Life Foundation, the organization that I co-founded to help protect and preserve the wild animals of East Africa. Please go www.biglife.org to learn more.</div>
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Photographed as always on medium format black and white film, I waited several days for the normal clear blue skies to disappear, waiting for the right somber cloud cover to take the photos.</div>
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The photograph is featured in “Across The Ravaged Land”, available on Amazon.com (SIGNED copies available from <a href="http://www.photoeye.com/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">www.photoeye.com</a>)</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08067677778758368592noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3010108432916306543.post-67685562101256199372014-06-01T22:11:00.001-07:002014-06-02T16:19:44.884-07:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTd0OrTGFVg6-_2Gf7bZvQ2da3A96PF0M4FyeJPb60yXfmyxRSu6_e3Hl8FaB2YR7WFzqYW3ZS2lK2LtsieidSdBberHOSu9Eb5nFkodKuv6TRWPNtnJUVmOW3ZEng__rvcb0vWBqhae8/s1600/Elephant+Drinking.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTd0OrTGFVg6-_2Gf7bZvQ2da3A96PF0M4FyeJPb60yXfmyxRSu6_e3Hl8FaB2YR7WFzqYW3ZS2lK2LtsieidSdBberHOSu9Eb5nFkodKuv6TRWPNtnJUVmOW3ZEng__rvcb0vWBqhae8/s1600/Elephant+Drinking.jpg" height="640" width="499" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>#1 : ELEPHANT DRINKING, AMBOSELI, 2007. KILLED BY POACHERS, 2009.</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">His name was Igor (as named at birth by Cynthia Moss of Amboseli Elephant Research). For forty-nine years, he wandered the plains of the Amboseli ecosystem in East Africa. A gentle soul like most elephants, he was so relaxed that in 2007, he allowed me to come within a few feet of him to take his portrait.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Two years later, it was perhaps this level of trust that allowed poachers to get close enough to kill him and hack out the tusks from his face.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And so it was that in late 2010, Igor became the unfortunate poster child of Big Life Foundation, the organization that I co-founded to help protect and preserve the widl animals of East Africa, and Igor's home, the Amboseli ecosystem, Big Life's pilot initiative project. (To learn more about Big Life, please go to <a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.biglife.org%2F&h=AAQFjuYyM&enc=AZNi8t6EaVIpBmcLUJvxGkjR79R-OpY1vdF00gn8pspRO-JTxDV5yq1EJTe0R48PrFGAQBaNws9uaAh0uvfrKLNTuuOnbdnnUoKfBajRuCbjKyyqUXmAewiGr8oeTLnniu4ArMP8dlPszP1gesPSYRjW&s=1"><span style="color: #170098; letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">www.biglife.org.</span></a>)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In terms of the technical side of the photo, as many of you know I only shoot medium format black and white film on a Pentax 67II without zoom or telephoto lenses. I have overheard people looking at this print, saying they are convinced that I shot the photo in a studio. It's actually this quality that I like about the photo. When I first viewed the contact sheet, I thought that the background looked like a scenic backdrop on a sound stage, with Igor lit by a soft spotlight off to one side.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(This photograph is published in "On This Earth, A Shadow Falls:. It will be back in print in July 2014, but until then, SIGNED copies are available at <a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.photoeye.com%2F&h=0AQGx9KAv&enc=AZOHCFwIsdkxMcKi75EZrGqlr0wUbmbB9Jz2FAGbNYLIGmT3O1j6-ZwIVII4wNxzl-RR5tHe2Ym1gobifBMwT2IG-JMhweh90hNHNrhxltSMBL0QWwr6qqOD2aiakqG_ipVBmUtZhbY0U3IP6ZN1IepB&s=1"><span style="color: #170098; letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">www.photoeye.com</span></a>).</span></div>
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</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08067677778758368592noreply@blogger.com2