Stanley's Camp

Elephants are huge, I mean really huge, and they are not necessarily gentle giants. This one however, let me make photographs all around it. I felt a little like the story of the six blind men who touched an elephant and each one only understood that one part of the animal. It was this close-up of his eye that drew me in here. It changed the perspective of this amazing animal and I began to identify that mammalian characteristic that we, mammals share, hair. His eyelashes are amazing. Using active cropping to force the viewer to stay within my frame I abstracted the face into just lines, shapes, and textures. The viewer might have to ask himself, “Would I identify this as an elephant if I didn’t get to read the description?”