London - There have been many photographs taken that capture the astonishing beauty and natural majesty of Africa, but perhaps not one as breathtaking as this.
Simply called Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, the remarkable picture is a composite of 50 photographs selected from a total of 2 200 taken by American photographer Stephen Wilkes over 26 hours in the middle of March last year.
Although the photograph looks like a time-lapse image, every moment was manually captured by Wilkes as he studied the scene. The result of his patience and stamina — he didn’t sleep during the process — is truly magical as day turns to night, from the right of the picture towards the setting sun on the left.
“I had watched the watering hole for three days before,” he says, “and seen the ebb and flow of the different creatures and the way they had come towards the water. Of course, when it came to the day of the shoot, I had no idea what was going to happen.”
Luck was with him, as he captured some of Africa’s most iconic creatures — wildebeest, hyenas, hippos, elephants, zebras and even some mongooses if you look closely enough.
“These are all truly wild animals, and the variety is almost Biblical,” Wilkes says. “At one point, I was half-expecting Noah to turn up with his ark!”
The image, part of a series taken for National Geographic magazine, was captured during the migration season and a drought, so Wilkes knew the watering hole would attract plenty of visitors. And they all got on surprisingly well. “Many people imagine that the animals would be fighting over the water, and that I might have been able to capture predators tearing into their prey, but it was nothing like that,” he reveals.
In fact, it was Wilkes and his assistant who were perhaps most under threat. If you look closely at the water to the left of the picture, you can see the bulbous backs of some hippos. “When we arrived, these hippos really started talking to each other about us, and clearly thought we were trouble,” says Wilkes.
“Although I knew hippos were dangerous, I didn’t realise quite how dangerous — 90 percent of people who are chased by a hippo end up dead.”
Wilkes says the animals had no particular structure to their day, and would come and go randomly. The moment he treasures most is the line of elephants in the middle of the picture, who turned up just in time, before sunset, while Wilkes and assistant were backing up their photos to a computer.
“Even though elephants don’t move quickly, we certainly had to,” he says. “And I’m glad we did, because they really help to bring the whole picture together.”
Daily Mail