time I was in Tanzania, the preconception
was to work around lions, and I ended up
with fairly generic images, but we got a
great crocodile shot. I had been waiting
a long time for one. I believe that success
is 99 percent failure. By getting it wrong,
you eventually learn how to get it right.
OP: What made the crocodile shot
successful?
DY: I quite like photographing ani-
mals head-on, getting the animal’s eyes
being parallel with my eye line. That
just doesn’t work with a crocodile. You
have to choose whether to get the teeth or
eyes in focus on a big crocodile because
the distance is the best part of two and a
half feet between them. It’s difficult to
get both those things in focus unless you
are working in such extraordinary light
that you have that depth of field. I believe
that if the first thing a person sees in the
photograph, i.e., the foreground, isn’t
the focal point, there has to be a lot of
compensating components in the picture
to make it work. If that first thing your
eye sees is out of focus, I think you’ve
got a problem unless there’s something
that’s so spectacular that brings it all back
in together.
I’m obsessed about tension points.
With the crocodile, I was having prob-
lems because I was attempting to go for
both eyes. So the idea became to shoot
perpendicular. That conveyed the length.
So we looked for a river where I could
shoot from the other bank and found a
part of the Grumeti where I could do that.
Because the whole 12 feet of the croco-
dile are all the same distance, to me it’s
all in focus so there’s a huge amount of
textural detail in the image, and because
the background is all in the shade, the
crocodile stood out. I used a 200mm for
the shot.
OP: Let’s talk about your image
“Africa” taken in Amboseli in 2018,
which both you and the art market
consider a career highlight. Did
you preconceive having this big-
tusked elephant in the extreme
foreground with Mt. Kilimanjaro
in the background?
DY: No, that’s difficult, albeit that ele-
phant, called Tim, is always within a
radius of about 40 kilometers and Kili-
manjaro is over 19,000 feet, so it should
always be in sight; it’s just a question as
to whether you can get it in the back-
ground or not. A lot of things coalesced
that day. I hired some Maasai guys to
locate Tim because he’s not collared any
longer. When we first located him about 4
p.m., it was quite a difficult thing to just
leave him alone for one hour until the
light got a little lower and hope he was
still in the same place. Fortunately, he
was. The person that deserves the credit
is the ranger because the ranger knows
Tim and knows me. I had to get that low
perspective, and you can’t get that from
shooting from a Jeep. It’s about triangular
trust because I’m on the ground, and I
have the biggest elephant in the world
charging me. But they do give you three
chances. Getting out of the vehicle and
having him coming toward me, I’d not
have done it if I didn’t trust the ranger.
That was with a 58mm on a Nikon D850.OP: When do you decide to go with
a remote rather than putting your
eye behind the lens?
DY: The genesis of the remote stuff was
a lioness photo I did in 2011. We scented
the cameras with Old Spice aftershave
that the Maasai wear, a holdover from
British colonial rule. I don’t know if it
works, and I don’t do it anymore. In the
old days, we used to put cameras in metal
boxes. I don’t do that any longer, either,
because it’s a pain in the neck to set up
and too heavy to lug around. What we
discovered was that if a lion comes up
to the camera and grabs it, they won’t
destroy it; they might take it and dam-
age it, but after two minutes, they’ll get
bored and drop it so we can retrieve it
and get the card back. Hyenas, however,
will destroy a camera.
A lot of film crews set up their remote
systems so they can see what’s happening
through the computer. I don’t have time
to do that. We’re setting these things upwith about three seconds to get out and
then back in the jeep.OP: You’re not setting up cameras
with motion detectors?
DY: No. I have huge admiration for people
who set up cameras in the Himalayas and
get a snow leopard, but I’d argue that this
is the difference between reportage and art.
You have no control over the composition
and the light. If it happens, it happens.OP: What’s the backstory for your
“78 Degrees North” image?
DY: One of the great American pho-
tographers, Diane Arbus, said, “A photo-
graph is a secret about a secret. The more
it tells you, the less you know.” I think
there’s a lot of validity in that. We live in
an age where we’re quite keen to story
off ourselves rather than being told this
is the story. Anything that offers a degree
of interpretation, where the interpretation
can be left to the viewer’s mind, tends to
work as an opening premise. That picture
can mean all sorts of things. It can be a
message about solitude. It could be a
story about the diversity of our planet.
It could be used for an advert.
Because it’s reductive, because there’s
so little in it, it actually helps the image.
As soon as I took it, I knew it was a big
shot. I just never thought people would
be paying 100 grand for it. It sold out so
quickly in part because it’s so unusual.
I’ve got conviction on a lot of things,
but I don’t think I have an ego, and I do
believe that luck plays a big role and that
was a lucky shot. The fact that he’s going
up an incline and walking away from me
makes the picture.OP: Perhaps a better word is fortu-
nate rather than luck. You put your-
self in a place for things to come
together, and you had the skill and
the vision to translate it into an
image at the decisive moment.
DY: I work a lot with the golfer Gary
Player. There’s a quote attributed to
him, “The more I practice, the luckier
I get.” OPSee more of David Yarrow’s work at
davidyarrow.photography.Opposite top: The Breakfast Club.
South Georgia, 2018.
Opposite bottom: 10,000 BC.
Tanzania, 2019.
outdoorphotographer.com November 2019 45