How to Snap Photos of a Lion

Written By: Michele Collet  |  Posted: Saturday, June 25th, 2011

            Amid sweltering heat, buzzing tsetse flies, baboon droppings and pee - not to mention sitting in the middle of a dirty, 25-meter-square watering hole in the Rift Valley for months on end - photographer Greg du Toit went through a lot to get these photographs. Bitten by flies from above and various parasites from below, he had a frog's eye view of all the animals that came to the watering hole in his quest for a shot of lions drinking. Greg has an incredible story to tell about his efforts to get the perfect shot.

            It started with a simple wish: to photograph lions at a watering hole. And since he knew where both the water and the lions were, it seemed like something he could do fairly quickly. Instead it turned into an eight month labor of Hercules. Greg first built a trench as a hide, but the olive baboons who used it as a bathroom every night finally drove him out; the smell and the heat together were too much. "After two months, the pungent smell left by the baboons combined with the numerous Tsetse flies and searing heat meant I had come to that familiar place whereby my photographic mind leaves the realms of sanity and enters a more psychotic obsessive dimension," says Greg.

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