National Geographic Masters of Photography

Getting Something Different

T

hroughout my career, I’ve worked with scientists that are studying
the species that I’m working on. Many of the species I work
with are extremely secretive, so I need to work hand in hand with the
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its movements, where it sleeps, where it lives, where it eats. One of the
ways that I do that is to follow the scientists when they are capturing the
animals for collared studies of big cats. ...

Now, the scientists will dart the [animal], and these situations are very
tense. It’s high drama because the animal is the most important thing
there. We have to worry about its health. But my job in these situations is
to get a photograph instantaneously when the animal is darted and then try
to get an image of science and biology that is an interesting photograph
that we can put in the pages of National Geographic.

It’s very important in images such as this that your eye can move around
the frame. We have our subject, the tigress, that’s lying on the ground