Thinking Wild Photo
Series · Elephants

King of the Road

On a reserve road, the usual hierarchy of traffic becomes very simple: the elephant has the right of way. This sequence follows one bull as he takes the track at his own pace, alternately striding, dusting, and filling the frame.

Black and white strips the encounter down to posture, texture, dust, and the quiet certainty of an animal that never needs to announce who owns the road.

Greater Kruger EcosystemSouth Africa11 photographs

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Black-and-white photograph of a tusked African elephant walking toward the camera on a winding reserve road.
Title piece
Black-and-white photograph of a bull elephant emerging through a cloud of dust on a reserve road.
01
Black-and-white photograph of a tusked bull elephant walking toward the camera with his trunk curled upward.
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Black-and-white full-body portrait of a bull elephant approaching along a dirt road with his trunk lowered.
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Black-and-white photograph of a bull elephant walking head-on with the tip of his trunk curled to one side.
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Wide black-and-white photograph of a bull elephant walking along a reserve road bordered by bushveld.
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Vehicles stop. We wait. He does not hurry. That is part of the pleasure of these encounters: the reminder that the road is not ours simply because we use it. For a few minutes, we are traffic in his landscape.

Black-and-white portrait of a bull elephant approaching on a dirt road with his trunk hanging forward.
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Black-and-white photograph of a bull elephant surrounded by dust as he walks toward the camera.
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Close black-and-white frontal portrait of a bull elephant with his trunk crossing in front of his body.
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Black-and-white photograph of a bull elephant striding down the road with the tip of his trunk curled outward.
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Black-and-white photograph of a bull elephant throwing dust over his body while standing on a reserve road.
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