The Vantage

Maasai Mara, Kenya 2023

I like to photograph animals in the state of being. I do not chase the dramatic moments. I wait for the quiet ones. This cheetah was resting on top of a termite mound, calm, unconcerned, watching the plain around her without intent. I wanted that calm to be the whole subject of the image.

The composition is almost all sky. She sits at the bottom of the frame on a narrow strip of earth with everything above her left open. Negative space is not emptiness. It is how I tell the viewer what the subject is doing — here, breathing and being still. A tighter crop would have said something different. Pulling back and letting the sky take the frame said calm. That was the decision, and it was the right one.

I was in the vehicle, working quietly, not trying to make her react. Cheetahs are alert animals but she had settled into her vantage and was not going anywhere for a while. That gave me time to think about the frame instead of chasing it. Time to think about a frame is a luxury in wildlife work. I used it here.

This image belongs to The Heart of the Wild. Most of what I shot over those two weeks did not survive the edit. If a photograph did not make me feel something, it was just documentation. This one stayed because of what it does not show. The whole plain is out there, the whole drama of the Mara, and I chose to show none of it. Just her. Just the sky. Just the quiet.