slow-encounter

Stream

A thread of water in a slab of rock. The pride visits twice.

The picture opens close. A cub on a low cushion of grass, head up, ears forward, the body almost lost in the warm-coloured cover; behind it, only the line of a sibling's back, just resolving. The encounter has decided to start at the smallest animal it can find first.

Closer, in the vertical. One sibling's face pressed against the other's shoulder, both heads framed tight — the intimate portrait the encounter has been quietly making since the first frame.

Stream — frame 11 — Vertical — head on shoulder, the cubs close.

Stream — frame 02 — The cub at the flank — contact.

A second contact. The cub pushes into the lioness's flank, paws around her leg, head pressed against her body — a private piece of geometry the camera is allowed to watch but not to enter.

Pure play. The cub rolls onto its back in the stalks, paws up, head turned to the camera. The afternoon has admitted what it is willing to admit; nothing in the picture asks anything of anyone.

Stream — frame 09 — On its back — paws up in the grass.

Stream — frame 18 — At the channel — the first drink.

The first visit to the stream. A lioness at the rock channel, front paws on wet stone, head dropped to the water; a faint reflection beneath her muzzle. The geometry the encounter has been arranging for is finally photographable: an animal, a thread of water, a flat slab of rock.

A small cub stands alone on the rock slab beside the channel — the youngest animal in the encounter set against the oldest piece of architecture in it. A frame the place itself has been waiting for.

Stream — frame 20 — Cub on the rock — small on the slab.

Stream — frame 15 — Lioness walking, a small cub trailing.

The walk out. A lioness moves across the open plain, head turned slightly back, a small cub trailing behind her on the dirt. The encounter has stopped being about the stream and become the day.

Stream — frame 28 — On the rock — a truck close behind.

The second visit ends on the rock. The lioness lies on the flat slab; a green safari vehicle close behind her, the licence plate readable. The truck has arrived inside the encounter; she has not arrived at any frame she had not already decided to be in.

The last frame. Vertical — the lioness stands on the slab in profile, two safari vehicles arranged on either side of her in the distance. The stream is no longer in any of these frames; the picture has decided the stream was the room, and the room is now empty.

Stream — frame 29 — Vertical — the closing, two trucks behind.

Colophon

A small private piece of architecture — a stream cut into rock — visited twice in a long evening. The first visit is a drink and a long stretch of cubs in cover; the second is a slow walk back, a family composed across the rock, and then the trucks. The Topi pride.

Camera: Canon EOS R5 Mark II · Canon EOS R6
Lens: Sigma 500mm f/4 DG OS HSM Sports · Canon RF 70–200mm f/2.8 L IS USM Z

Stream

Brothers

Roadside

Buffalo