He was lying up in thick scrub in the middle of the day and I nearly drove past him. What makes the frame is the screen of branches — you are looking through something at an animal that has already found you, which is much closer to how it actually feels out there than a clean portrait ever is. Monochrome because the tangle was a mess of greens that pulled the eye everywhere except his face.

Through the Thicket
Pumba Game Reserve, South Africa · December 2022
1D X Mark II, 400 millimetres, f 5.6, 1/500 of a second, ISO 800