African wildlife stars in stunning photo collections
Image: Readers who have visited the current BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at London’s Natural History Museum will already be familiar with the work of Andy Biggs, whose stunning landscape shot of Namibia’s Skeleton Coast won the “Wild Places” category in this year’s competition.
Following on from that success, the Texan photographer this week releases two collections bringing together some of his most distinctive images of African wildlife.
“Timeless Africa” consists of 15 black and white photographs, mostly taken in Tanzania, featuring stately portraits of leopards, lions, zebras, giraffes and hippos.
“Colors of Africa” meanwhile offers a selection of 15 prints that dramatically accentuate the contrasting hues, tones and rich colours of the African landscape and the animals that inhabit it.
The 30 images were whittled down from more than 50,000 taken by Andy, who has been leading photographic safaris in East Africa since quitting his previous life as a software consultant in 2001. He says his photography is driven by a desire to capture the “timelessness, hope and remoteness” of the continent.
Biggs admits a preference for the black and white collection, highlighting one image of a procession of four elephants crossing a sparse Serengeti plain under a transient canopy of clouds as a particular favourite.
“My goal was to be near them without stressing them out, so we casually waited at a distance and tried to find a time when the background was just right, and the separation between them worked to our favour,” Andy tells Zoogle News. “I strive for graphically simple images, which isn’t very easy to find in nature.”
Andy says there is no secret to taking great wildlife photos but adds, “It helps when you go out to capture ‘the essence’ of whatever your subject is, whether a person, object or wildlife.”
Click here for more about Andy’s work, or read his blog at www.theglobalphotographer.com.
