Balls

David Yarrow:

"As is typical with my hippo work, this photograph was the last frame in the sequence before the animal charged at me and safety dictated it was time to go. I now have a degree of hippo-phobia.


Running away from an angry hippo with a camera and reasonable sized lens is not a comfortable experience, since the impulse is to run instead of turning around to check whether it's merely a mock charge. 99.99% of the time hippo is bluffing, but these moments aren't about calculation.

The validation of the risky approach shows in this photograph. I needed to be at eye level and have the whole face in the frame, since this is the most prehistoric face of any animal on the planet. The camera should act as an amplifier to the distinctive features of the subject, which is certainly the face with a hippo. The soft, early morning light has the best potential to glorify its textural extravagance, which is why we had some early starts in Ruaha National Park in Tanzania".