Species: Male african lion | Location: Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, Tanzania, United Republic of
After getting some information by another guide, our safari guide found this fabulous, mighty, beautiful beast and drove me right next to him. I aimed at him with my camera. The lion first stared at me for a few seconds, then looked away with a mild expression, totally composed and self confident. I was stunned by such quiet power and beauty, and then took the photo.
About The Photographer
Since childhood I was fascinated by the spectacular aspects nature and landscapes could display. This was accompanied by a marked interest in visual arts, particularly great masters of Romanticism and Impressionism, like Turner, Constable, Bierstadt, Cole, Friedrich, Corot, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Van Gogh, etc..
Self-taught in photography, I owe my first pictorial emotions to photo albums made by my ancestors between 1890 and 1920. These were essentially about their wide private property in Conches, with the manor house and its outbuildings. I was fascinated by the transformation of the landscape through time. The beauty of the area, a genuine botanical park at the time, exercised on me a great wonder.
I then had, during my teen years, the opportunity to discover the practice of monochromatic photography, especially by developing film in the darkroom. A few years later came the discovery of paragliding, rekindling my interest in landscape photography, adding thereby an extra dimension: aerial view. This made me discover new angles and and gorgeous mountainscapes.
Since then, I have discovered, much more recently, fabulous mountainscape photographers such as, of course, the great Ansel Adams, but also Samuel Bitton, Enrico Fossati and so many more...
I'm fond of pictures that make you want to enter the photo, the ones that have the "I wanna be there" effect. Emotion is more important to me than any theory. I want to keep an instinctive and sensitive approach to photography. I like working on my pictures to bring out all their potential.