A white lion is halfway to a black-and-white photograph before you press anything. Sitting chest-deep in seeding grass, he held this profile long enough for me to work the frame properly — mane, brow, the heavy line of the jaw. In mono the grass turns to static around him and the head reads like carved stone.

Profile in Grey
Pumba Game Reserve, Eastern Cape, South Africa · December 2022
1D X Mark II, 400 millimetres, f 5.6, 1/1000 of a second, ISO 320