Crown of Light

Maasai Mara, Kenya 2023

Early morning. The light was warm and changing fast. The kind of backlight that lasts a few minutes and then it is gone. He was walking through tall grass and the line to him kept opening and closing. I was in the vehicle working for a position where the sun would be behind him and the grass would not block his face. A few moments, that was all I had.

The light hit his mane from behind and turned the whole edge of him into a glow. He looked like he was wearing a crown — that is where the title came from. The dew on the grass in front caught the same light and broke into bright circles between me and him. The bokeh almost takes over the image. I think it should. The light is what this photograph is about.

This image belongs to The Heart of the Wild. You wake up before sunrise every morning hoping today is the photograph that changes everything. Most mornings the light is wrong or the animal is somewhere else or the gap closes before you get there. This was one of the mornings it did not close.

I work for eye contact more than anything else. Hours of waiting and then a second, and most of the time the second never comes. Black and white is always my main choice but in this frame it was more than a choice. Color would have killed it. The warm sun, the green of the grass, all fighting each other for attention. In B&W there is only the glow, the face, the dark behind him.