A Real Morning in Africa: Betting on the Moment Instead of Shooting the Safe Frames

One morning in Africa, we were driving around looking for lions. It was our final morning before heading to the airport, so there was a quiet urgency to make the last hours count. Eventually, we found three lions walking down a track. The sun was rising fast: no softness, no grace period.

To illustrate: This is how we first found them—three lions walking in a tight line down the track. The moment I saw this, I knew the potential: if they kept this direction, and we moved a few hundred meters ahead, they would eventually walk toward us down the slope with the rising sun behind them. That was the shot I gambled on.

We could’ve stayed with them and taken a sequence of predictable frames. But the direction they were heading offered something better. If we drove a few hundred meters in front of them, the road ahead would dip from higher ground, putting us below the lions. That meant a stronger angle, a cleaner background, and the rising sun lighting them in perfect golden backlight.

That was the frame worth chasing. We drove ahead, set up, and waited.

When the lions finally appeared, the scene didn’t match the vision. One had slipped into the thicket. The other two spread apart. What I got was a single lion walking down the road, with the second barely visible far behind.

To illustrate: This is what unfolded. One lion drifted into the thicket, the other two split apart, and only a single lion came down the road toward us, with the second far in the background. Not the frame I had envisioned—just a functional shot for the sake of illustrating the story. But the gamble was still the right call.

It wasn’t the hero shot i hoped for. It wasn’t the three-lion lineup I had in mind. But the decision was still correct.

Choosing the possibility of a great moment will always beat settling for safe snapshots.

Sometimes it works exactly as imagined. Sometimes it doesn’t.

But the best images of your career come from the times you commit to the idea, not the times you play it safe. Next time it might work out in my favor, that's one of the joys of wildlife photography.