The Wild Sees You
A year ago, I was a guest in a world that doesn’t belong to us.
It was my first time pointing a lens at something wild. Really wild. Not a bird on a branch or a deer on a trail, but apex predators whose eyes have seen more than I ever will. We were somewhere in Tanzania, dust in the air, adrenaline in the blood, and silence between every click of the shutter. Every frame was a first—an attempt at honoring the moment without getting in the way.
The cheetah was the first to find me. I say it that way because it felt like I was the one being watched. She stood still, tail twitching, scanning the horizon like it owed her something. It wasn’t a hunt. Not yet. It was something closer to meditation—until it wasn’t. One second she was still, the next she was smoke in the wind. I didn’t get the chase. I didn’t need to. The stare alone was enough to make me question whether I deserved to be there.
Then came the lioness. Close. Closer than I expected. I have a photo of her face filling the entire frame, eyes half-shut, annoyed, regal, maybe bored. That was the moment I realized how little you matter out here. The wild doesn’t exist for us. It existed before us and it will continue long after. But if you’re quiet enough, still enough, you get let in. Not welcomed—just tolerated. And that’s enough.
But the image that haunts me—if I can call it that—is the reflection of the lion. It was early morning, the kind of still that feels loud. The water was perfectly calm, the sky bruised purple and gold, and the lion stood at the edge, looking not at himself but through himself. Maybe that’s projection. Maybe that’s what I was doing. Staring at a reflection and seeing something I hadn’t expected to find in Africa: myself.
This wasn’t just a trip. It was a homecoming I didn’t know I needed. My first time behind the camera in the bush, and yet every shot felt like something I’d been waiting to take since I was six, staring at lions in a picture book, or watching The Lion King on repeat until the tape wore out.
These are not just photographs. They’re the start of something. A conversation with the wild. One I plan to keep having.
