Story Behind the Shot: Zebra in Ruaha National Park, Tanzania

I was in Ruaha National Park in Tanzania, a rugged Park of arid rolling hills dotted with bulbous baobab trees. It was early afternoon and the blazing sun was high in the sky. The light was harsh, but given that I only had 24 hours in the Park, I wanted to make the most of it and went on a game drive. My attention was grabbed by groups of Plain’s zebras – they looked as if they had been painted by hand – and I wanted to get a nice portrait shot to highlight this striking pattern. Getting close enough to the zebras to get the shot I wanted proved a challenge, however, as they definitely weren’t keen on sticking around. And then we came upon this one. As we neared it that stopped for a split second, looked directly at me, and then turned and ran off in a cloud of dust.

I only made one shot in that split second, and looked at my LCD screen to see if I had what I wanted, and it looked as if I had – although with the head filling the frame in such a tight crop I was lucky I hadn’t lopped any of it off. I was using a 400mm lens on my Canon 5D Mk II at f/5.6 and a speedy 1/3200 second exposure.

I didn’t think this was a great shot at the time – I was just happy I had managed to get a portrait of the zebra looking face on. But when I started playing with the image later in Lightroom, first converting it to black and white and then bumping up the contrast, I realized the harsh light actually lent itself well to a high key image. I effectively blew out the overexposed background and deepened the blacks of the zerba’s stripes. I selectively overexposed some areas of the background so as to remove any distractions that detracted from the shot. Nothing you couldn’t do in the darkroom. I ended up with an image I liked for its bold simplicity stripped of everything but the essential elements. I also liked the shadow of the zebra in the background as it provided a hint of depth.

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