Life on Earth

I would always contend that photography is about the soul of the photographer first and foremost. Without an emotional investment, there may be little to feed off. But photography is also about maths and an understanding of magnification and distance compression.

The riddle of how to photograph a horizontally long subject matter at a perpendicular angle is not easy to solve. This is true whether the subject matter be a line of military tanks in the desert or a line of elephants. However, I do know what does not work - stepping back to fit everything in then using a degree of magnification - this results in a lack of immersion and a great deal of wasted space in the frame. The scale is poorly conveyed as is the sense of place. That is why we don’t really see a horse race shot well from the perpendicular unless the leading horses are singled out rather than the whole field.

I shot this image on a 20mm wide angle lens - that’s almost a fisheye and I think we nailed it. Here are the giants of the planet looking like ants and the “big sky” reminds us of the fact that we are just “bit players” in a far bigger story. I was only 20 yards from the middle of the group and the lens allowed for 22 elephants to be sharp in the image. The negative space of the sky works as it’s big enough to really inform. A telephoto lens would not do this.

Life on earth is quite remarkable if we take a step back and think of the bigger picture. I think the perspective in the image encourages our own perspective of what life is all about. It makes us think.

David Yarrow