Michael Wilkins
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Black-and-white profile of a white lion sitting in tall flowering grass, facing right, mane thick around his neck.

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

A white lion barely needs the conversion.

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.