Meet the individuals of the Maasai Mara.
Each character has their own personal story, unique history, and uncertain future. They have distinctive personalities, close bonds, feared enemies, and emotions as strong as your own.
By highlighting these personal stories, showing animals to be emotional individuals rather than just an anonymous statistic in a wider population, I hope to promote a desire to protect and care for this precious wildlife. I hope that being understanding and compassionate of the challenges faced by an individual will feel even more tangible and easy to relate to than when thinking of a population as a whole.
This collection of photographs was captured while spending a month in Mara North Conservancy in Kenya in 2022. Spending time following specific individuals every day, their unique characteristics, personalities, behavioural patterns, and displays of emotion became increasingly apparent. It isn’t just the markings that differentiate one lion from the next for example, it is the way an individual behaves and how he or she interacts with other lions in the pride.
In one such display of emotion in the days after Lola (one of the Marsh Pride lionesses) loses one of her litter of two cubs, there is a noticeable closeness among the Marsh Pride, spending more time than usual rubbing heads and keeping the final remaining cub close.
Similarly, Mara North is not just home to ‘cheetah’. It is home to “Kweli”, first time mother to three 11 month old cubs. She is a strong, attentive and determined individual, singularly focused on finding the next meal for her hungry cubs and preparing them for their departure from her in the not too distant future.
Through these photos and stories I hope to give you a sense of the individual personalities of the animals I spent time with; the Marsh Pride’s playfulness and affectionate side, Edwin’s calm and trusting nature, and Kweli’s grit. Wherever possible, I use a shorter lens to create a much more intimate feel to the photographs, putting you right there next to the subject. I seek unique, inimitable moments, beautiful light, and above all a photograph that reveals an aspect of the subject’s character.
10% of all proceeds will be going to Mara Predator Conservation Programme (MPCP) and Conservancy Guardians to support the amazing work that they do in the Mara. Their vital research has proven that human activities have a significant impact on wildlife, illustrated perfectly by the finding that cheetahs raise fewer cubs on average inside the Masai Mara National Reserve compared to outside of it. This is not how it should be. We have a duty to travel responsibly, and support efforts to conserve and manage wildlife in the great wilderness that is the Maasai Mara Ecosystem.
“Scratch”
“Kindred Spirit”
“Crane I Help You?”
“Nomad”
“Dawn”
