Michael Wilkins
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Black and white photograph of a zebra in profile against a black background, its mane standing upright in a stiff brush, stripes running in hard bands down its neck and shoulder.

Stripes, Side On

Pumba Game Reserve, South Africa · December 2022

1D X Mark II, 234 millimetres, f 5, 1/500 of a second, ISO 100

No colour to lose. A zebra is already finished in black and white.

A zebra is the one animal that arrives pre-edited. Turn the colour off and nothing is missing — the stripes do the whole job, and the mane sits up like a brush along the top of the neck. I underexposed hard so the background went to nothing and the pattern had to carry the frame on its own. Shot side-on deliberately: three-quarter angles bend the stripes and soften the graphic.