Behind the Picture: When the Light Fades

About those three lions.

The description I wrote for this image, "When the Light Fades" lives on my website and on the back of the print. It's a real description of a real moment, but it's also writerly and a little precious, the way fine art writing tends to get. I want to tell you the actual version. The one I've told my friends.

I was the kid who watched The Lion King on repeat. Pride Rock, golden light, the circle of life, lions on top of rocks. It stayed with me. When I finally booked my first solo safari, just me and a guide, I had a shot list. At the top, underlined basically: lions on rocks.

I was nervous. It was my first safari without a group, and I felt the pressure of knowing exactly what I wanted to come home with. My guide knew too.

So we spent the whole trip constantly scanning for any lions on any rock.

We found them. Plenty of them. The problem is that lions are very, very lazy. They nap on top of kopjes all day, but their bodies blend into the rock, and the back of a sleeping lion doesn't really make a photograph. We'd find one, wait, wait some more, move the jeep, wait again. Nothing visually.

Then these three. Siblings, asleep on a kopje, the light already starting to go. And one of them began to wake up. Then another. My guide and I were silently coordinating, inching the jeep into different positions, trying to get the angle right. And then, they settled into this.

He turned back to me. "Did you get it?"

Yes.

It wasn't the moment that made me fall in love with Africa. That had already happened, in a way I'll tell you about another time. But it was the moment that made my childhood feel full circle.

More soon,
Christina

When the Light Fades is available as a fine art print.