The Story Behind the Photograph
Kilimanjaro hides. Anyone who has been to Amboseli knows the joke: the mountain is there a few hours around dawn, then pulls its cloud blanket up and is gone for the day. For three mornings we left camp in the dark to be in position, and for three mornings the summit stayed wrapped. The fourth morning, the blanket slipped.
The whole massif stood out pink and enormous in the first light, snows and all, and — because Amboseli is generous when it finally decides to be — a line of elephants chose that exact half hour to cross the plain in front of it. I shot until the light went white and the clouds came back. By breakfast the mountain had vanished again, and it did not reappear for the rest of the week. Four mornings for thirty minutes. Worth every one.
About Kilimanjaro and Amboseli
Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in Africa, a freestanding volcanic giant rising nearly four miles above sea level just across the Tanzanian border from Kenya's Amboseli ecosystem. Its glaciers — the famous snows — have shrunk dramatically over the last century, making photographs of the white summit quiet historical documents as much as art. The plains below support one of Africa's best-studied elephant populations, protected within Amboseli National Park, where elephant families have been followed by researchers continuously since the 1970s.
The classic Amboseli photograph — animals before the mountain — is classic because it is true: the elephants really do walk those sight lines, following swamp water across the dry lake bed, indifferent to the scenery behind them.
Photographer's Notes
Long lens from a distance to stack the perspective and keep the mountain huge behind the herd, exposed for the pink alpenglow on the snows. The dust kicked up by the herd caught the dawn light and warmed the whole lower frame. This print was matted in dark brown and framed in dark oak, and at the shows it sold to more people going to Africa than coming back — a photograph doing its proper job. It belongs beside A Helping Hand, made on the same safari.