Adventures & Appendectomies? ‣ Diverse Daily

I should have been on a flight to the Yukon on Wednesday. I was meant, by now, to be sitting on a river with bears. I was, instead, lying on an operating table getting an emergency appendectomy. Don’t let anyone tell you the life of a photographer isn’t full of adventure. Oh, the romance of it all!

Timing couldn’t have been worse. Or better, really. My appendix could have ruptured while I was in Zimbabwe last week, or while sitting on the Nakina River with a helicopter as my only means of extraction. I’m disappointed to the point of tears that I’m not with the bears, but so grateful that the worst of this was really just the pain of it (and that the ambulance didn’t use its sirens, which feels a little like they weren’t taking this seriously).

Still, I’m missing my work—and the bears—and I don’t do well sitting around doing nothing, which is what I’m doing now. Well, not exactly nothing. At least I have you to talk to, and a new book to finish. And painkillers, which should make the new book a lot more fun to read.

I’ll make this short, but it’s been a while. I spent all of July and the first week of August in Zambia and Zimbabwe, focused on new work, guiding some wonderful clients, and falling in love all over again with what I do, where I do it, and the animals I do it with. I spent some beautiful time with leopards, lions, painted wolves, and elephants, ate meals under impossibly starry skies, and was gone so long I started to feel like this could all just be my everyday life.
I spent a lot of time looking for animals, waiting for the light, and hoping they would do something in that light. I grew even more amazed at the ability of my guides to find what we were looking for, often with no more than a partial track or the yelp of a jackal. And sometimes, in rare moments when it all came together, I made some photographs that thrill me.

Here’s a few of those that make me particularly happy. Enjoy.