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New Stripes, by Frans Lanting |
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| Some times an image can present itself where you least expect it. I was working in Kenya’s Masai Mara one day and had driven my vehicle under a shade tree to take a break from the harsh noon sun, while keeping an eye on a group of zebras grazing near a waterhole.
To bide my time, I read an essay in my mammals field guide about the co-evolution of grasses and grazers on the African savannas. It explained how grazing animals adapted themselves to the defensive strategies of grasses when global climates got cooler and drier starting around 35 million years ago. That’s when forests gave way to new open habitats worldwide, and African savannas came into their own. Grasses spread and grazing mammals proliferated. In response to grazing pressure, grasses formed more abrasive silica inside their leaves. That led to grazers developing high-crowned teeth and big guts to digest the coarse grass. It made me think about zebras differently. When I looked again at the herd nearby, I began to focus on their body forms and their connection to grass. Once I had the idea for this image, I maneuvered my vehicle into a position where multiple zebras could be shown with a shallow depth of field. I put a camera with a 400mm lens on a door mount, kept the aperture wide open to dissolve foreground and background, and waited for a cloud to pass before the sun, which softened the bright midday light. I incorporated the out-of-focus but still recognizable shape of a lone acacia tree in the distance, which told another story about co-evolution: Only a very tall animal could have pruned its classic umbrella form. No giraffe came along to browse on it, but the tree alone was enough. It was the finishing touch on an image that shows how changing your point of view can add surprise to a familiar subject, and how zebras can look different without changing their stripes. |
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