En matière de photographie, chaque professionnel a son domaine de prédilection. Pour David Yarrow, la magie opère lorsqu’il focalise son objectif sur les petits et grands animaux : girafes, lions, ours et éléphants se dévoilent dans les clichés de l’artiste, partagés sur Instagram pour le plus grand plaisir des internautes.
Né à Glasgow en 1966, David Yarrow est devenu un photographe reconnu et acclamé pour ses clichés de la vie sauvage. Aujourd’hui ambassadeur Nikon , il continue de parcourir le monde pour immortaliser paysages, cultures et animaux dans des photographies magnifiques qui lui valent d’être exposées dans différentes galeries à travers le monde. Pour découvrir plus amplement son travail, rendez-vous vite sur son site internet , sa page Facebook ou son compte Instagram .
This is a hard-earned and timeless photograph – It has soul and a sense of place to it and I am proud to be responsible for its creation. There are many quiet days or weeks in the field, where there is nothing magical to capture and no transcending images with which to return. In my own crusade, this single image makes up for a great many of such days. ‘Heaven Can Wait’ has a biblical countenance – it is also primal and raw. The dramatic sky appears to be in communication with the only sign of life on the flat dustpan below. Indeed there is diagonal connectivity across the whole image as the dust tracks of the giraffe lead the eye to the animal, which then takes the eye to the talkative sky. The image conveys the arid and elemental habitat that is Lake Amboseli at the end of the dry season and the implicit contradiction of life on its inhospitable canvas. . To take this image, I employed three of my key rules for filming in East Africa but then broke a fourth. The first two rules of working against the light and then employing a wide angle rather than telephoto lens were instinctive, but the third rule of working as close to the ground as possible was practically challenging in that we were chasing the lone giraffe in a jeep driving at 30 miles an hour on a crusty dry lake. The trick was to shoot blind from an outstretched hand leaning downwards to the ground from the jeep. This was – I knew – a low-percentage shot. . We encountered the isolated giraffe late one afternoon on the dry lake, and it immediately seemed core to the prevailing mood to emphasise the dust being licked up by the giraffe’s hoofs. Amboseli is about dust and its capture should make the picture, not be ancillary to it. This meant not only shooting into the late light but also shooting from behind the giraffe. This was at odds with a fairly standard rule of mine to be positioned ahead or at least parallel to a moving subject – but given all the other factors involved; it appeared that breaking this rule would be the most effective way to tell the story. We are in the wild, not a studio, and it is often better to just go with the flow, think spontaneously and break rules.
Une publication partagée par David Yarrow Photography© (@davidyarrow) le 16 Mars 2017 à 14h41 PDT
This powerful image of a large bull bison was captured this week in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. It is as good as I can do and probably my most impactful animal portrait for some time. The bison is an emblematic North American animal that roamed the continent millions of years before man. When fully grown, it is a massive beast that deserves our respect and recognition. When I was researching bison last week, I quickly understood two things – firstly that some rogue bulls carry a serious threat if their space is invaded and secondly that the adult face is both prehistoric and enormous. The bison is all about the face and I sensed that any picture that didn’t recognise this, would miss my goals. My instincts were that the image also needed a sense of “Yellowstone in the winter” and this, combined with the need for proximity, all pointed to a ground level, remote control approach. To work with ground level radio controlled cameras and a prime wide angle is very much my signature style, but it is easier with elephants in Amboseli, than bison in Yellowstone. This is partly because this oldest of American National Parks is heavily regulated by young and overly keen wardens and partly because the snow is very deep in places. This is not an easy location – 95% of Yellowstone is out of bounds in February. It is the most geothermally active park in the world, throw avalanches, wolves and bears into the mix and we have a primordial soup of creation. I failed about 15 times with my camera positioning and I tweaked my lens/camera combination constantly. It was most frustrating and I was generally grumpy. But yesterday afternoon about 2 pm, it all came together. The trees and the sky are most helpful additives – but what a face and what a back structure. I haven’t seen this sort of image before of a big bison. I would like to thank Tom Murphy, one of America’s most acclaimed nature photographers, for assisting me on this assignment. We are both excited to see a life size print of “The American Idol”.
Une publication partagée par David Yarrow Photography© (@davidyarrow) le 23 Févr. 2017 à 12h00 PST
