Welcome
In my short time on this planet, my lens has borne witness to extraordinary change. My subjects are all iconic species or individuals, the greatest of our planet’s living creatures, and as my appreciation of both nature’s virtues and our planets visage has matured, so has the reality of the pressures they face.
The 11th Hour Exhibition, hosted by Dubai International Airport, is my artistic declaration to the two choices we as fellow animals on this planet can make right now.
One choice is of ultimate loss, including our own kind, based on ignorance, greed and inaction. The other is of hope founded on corrective course and enlightenment.
It is for each and every one of us to decide how the hours of the clock will run down …
In 1996 I was privileged to discover the world famous flying great white sharks of South Africa and this image became the most famous shark photograph in the world. It is an image showcasing the world’s most famous predator exhibiting the most spectacular behavior seen by this species in its 50 million year existence on our planet.
For the next 22 years the world was fascinated by these incredible animals and photographs of them in full flight.
But suddenly between 2012-2014 we noticed a decline in their numbers, slow at first but then rapid. In 2018 I took this photograph, The Final Act, it was to be the last time the famous great whites of Seal Island would ever fly.
Overfishing, archaic shark nets, finning and habitat change had wiped out in 22 years what had taken 50 million years to create.
As with the Ocean I have held court with the Kings and Queens of the land. I have sat in the shadow of the last 30 or so great tuskers that roam Africa.
And respected the boundaries set by their fearless leaders, the last of the great tusked matriarchs who defend their herds against all threats.
Poaching and trafficking in Ivory has all but wiped them out.
Once abundant, now almost forgotten, the mighty rhino hangs on by a thread.
I have lain awake in my tent in the depths of the great Kalahari as outside a magnificent black manned lion’s roar has symbolized the call of a continent.
And have been transfixed as the gaze of his queen has arrested my step.
Each year it becomes more difficult to hold court with these icons of our continent for the trade in their bones and self-aggrandizing trophies has decimated their populations.
At the furthest reaches of our planet I have lay under the 12ft wingspan of our planet’s greatest nomads, the A380’s of the wild, the Magnificent Wandering Albatross who circumnavigates our planet in under a month. Sadly however, they have not learnt to recognize a baited hook and 15 out of the 22 species are threatened with extinction.
But all is not yet lost, magnificence, beauty and wonder still hang on … just.
I have recently felt the salty kiss of giants, as their moist breath caresses my skin as around me, one hundred 60ft long humpback whales exhale, before raising their flukes and sinking down into the depths from which they came. The same inky depths we nearly wiped them out from just a century before but now due to protection they once again flourish.
There are still places where abundance calls home and the wonders of our planet do exist,
Where a million footprints appear and disappear with each day’s passing tide.
And where the wood cutters axe and poacher’s gun haven’t yet felled the icons of our natural world.
The 11th Hour is upon us. I have truly seen what we have lost but I have also seen what is still so worth saving.
Moments in time reflects an instant in my career that eclipses all others.
It is where upon the fall of a shutter, the hands of time stood still, and the iconic wild subjects and places I was privileged to photograph, basked in all their glory for both posterity and contemplation.
Amboseli National Park, Kenya 2020.
Incredulously, I stare at the almost forgotten sight of dozens upon dozens of elephants crossing the dry lakes that nestle into the foothills of Mt Kilimanjaro. I can only but dream of their return elsewhere on our magnificent continent.
The Serengeti, Tanzania 2018
I was so privileged to spend many moments with Bob Junior, possibly the most famous wild lion in all of Africa. For over a decade he held sway over prime territory, defending it in tooth and claw. As with all great leaders, time, however, never stands still, and in this capture, he contemplatively gazes out, wondering from whence the next challenge shall come.
Bird Island, South Africa 2021.
After thirty years, and more than 3,500 days in their company, I swim one last time with the Great White Shark in South African waters as it appears to existentially transcend the elements of both ocean and air.
St Andrews Bay, South Georgia Island 2017.
As if transported to another planet, I cannot quite comprehend that such a profusion of life still exists on mine. For mile upon mile, young King Penguins are rim-lit, like beacons of hope for a more enlightened future.
Magdalena Bay, Mexico 2022.
Throughout my life photographing the icons of our Planet, I have always been aware of the incredible balance to be found in nature. Both predator and prey counter the other’s strengths and weaknesses, keeping a perpetual ecological harmony.
Dassen Island, South Africa 2021
In the early 1990’s, when I first started working off the South African Coast, it was rare to see a humpback whale. The day I took this photograph in 2021, I saw well over two hundred.
The fact that whales, the largest mammals to have ever lived, can rise from the ashes of near extinction when given a chance, is surely hope that where there is will, the same can be achieved for other species.
Chitake Springs, Zimbabwe 2021
Through experience, destiny and genetics, the female pathfinder is the chosen leader of the buffalo herd. Like ghosts of her former self, the rest of the herd await the outcome of her contemplation. Below her, both lions and the temptation of water await.
Namiri Plains, The Serengeti, Tanzania 2022.
So much is at stake for the King to ponder. If the rains cease to fall, the grass will die, the great migration will vanish, and the call of an icon will no longer resonate across a continent.
God bless the rains, and those in politics and industry that hold the likelihood of their future in their hands, down in Africa.
Amboseli National Park, Kenya 2018
Fearless, wise and tolerant within the boundaries she sets, this magnificent matriarch acknowledges my humble presence with a simple sniff of her trunk.
