Meet The Pro: Federico Veronesi

Join host Toby Jermyn in episode three of the Pangolin Podcast as he delves into the fascinating journey of Federico Veronesi, an award-winning wildlife photographer and safari guide. Federico shares his experiences and showcases some of his most iconic images, revealing behind-the-scenes stories filled with excitement, challenges, and deep connections to African wildlife.

Here is the link to the images chosen by Federico for the episode:
https://pangolin.smugmug.com/SmugMug-Website/Website-Pages/Federico-Veronesi

Discover his passion for capturing moments in the wild and the emotional impact of his stunning black-and-white photography. This episode also features inspiration from legendary photographer Nick Brandt. Tune in to explore the heart of Africa through the lens of a master photographer.

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Chapters

• 3:14 1st Image: Leopard Mother and Cub
• 11:28 2nd Image: Mother Caracal and Cub
• 17:08 3rd Image: Serengeti Lions
• 23:45 4th Image: Great Tusker Tolstoy
• 31:43 Inspirational Image: Lion with Monolith By Nick Brandt

Transcript

0:02

Hello, and welcome to episode three of the Pangolin Podcast. I'm your host, Toby German. Thank you very much for joining me. In each episode, I've invited a professional wildlife photographer to imagine themselves in a remote location. And along with their camera gear, they're allowed to bring five photographs to hang on the wall of their humble dwelling. Four of these must be their own, and the final image is one they admire by another photographer. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see the images as we talk. But for audio listeners on other platforms, there's a link in the description to a gallery to follow along. Thank you to everyone who's watched and commented on our first two episodes. The feedback has been fantastic and we are delighted with the response. Also, thank you for your suggestions of other photographers to interview. We've got some exciting news on that already, so make sure you stick around to the end to find out who's already said yes on today's show. I saw the female getting up. I dropped the camera, took the pictures, p pa, pa, pa, pa, and then they were down. I didn't even realize what had happened. It was so sudden, and so it was so quick. My guest today was born in Milan, Italy, and developed a passion for African wildlife and photography from an early age. Much influenced by his family of keen photographers and naturalists. His first trip to Kenya at just six years old, left a profound impact setting the stage for his lifelong dedication to the continent's wild places. Especially Kenya, which he now calls home. He is an award-winning wildlife photographer and regarded as one of the top photo safari guides on the continent. And somehow he's managed to find time to publish three stunning books of his work. Federico Verese, welcome to the Pangolin Podcast. Thank you very much, topi. And uh, nice seeing you. Nice chatting to you. Uh, it's good to see you. Good to see you too. And, uh, how is Kenya treating you today? I. Very good, very good. I'm just back from, uh, two. Long Safari is between Kenya and Tanzania, so all good. Excellent. Now, um, I asked you to choose, uh, four images that you've taken of your own and then one by a photographer that you admire, a photograph you wish you'd taken. Um, tell me how easy was it to choose those four images? It was, it was quite a task, but, but two reasons. One is that I never fully, fully, uh, happy and loving any of my work and very difficult to, to, to please. That's one. And two is also because through the years, actually more than 20 years for photographing in Africa, I've taken quite a few. So I had to make some choices and I tried to pick. One image from, uh, different phases of my photographic life. Brilliant. I mean, that's, that's what I love as well is because you've carefully chosen the images and we're gonna go through them chronologically. So telling different parts of your life as a, as a wildlife photographer in your time in Kenya and, and the country surroundings. So, uh, should we get started? Okay. So your first image, this was taken quite some time ago. Tell us about your, your first image, Federico. So my first image I've picked is one of my earliest dates from 2002, and it features a leopard mother. A cab walking up a dry brunch against, um, very, very dramatic blue hour poster, sunset Sky. It's been taken on a slide, so it's at the time when digital photography was not so widespread, maybe it was just starting, I'm not sure, but it was. I wasn't into it, uh, for a few more years. So it's a Fuji, uh, Fuji Vanous slide. That's what I will use to use 50 ISO. If you think about what we are doing today with 3000 ISO 6,000 iso, that was taken with a 50. Then it's, it's a wide angle shot. Basically. I spent the whole day with this mother leopard and her tiny cup. She had a kill. On the other side of that tree, we are in Buffalo Springs National Reserve, which is a beautiful part of a larger ecosystem, which also includes Samburu National Reserve and Shaba National Reserve in Northern Kenya. Uh, it's a place I love and it's one of the, uh, it's a photograph that reminds me a lot of my early days in Kenya. I had just moved to Kenya, uh, from Italy. Uh, soon after finishing university I was working in an NGO in Nairobi. Uh, so every weekend. I would take my car and drive out to one of the parks. And in particular, Samburu was one of my, uh, favorite Samburu, Buffalo Springs, one of my favorite destinations. The reason why I picked this photograph is I love the fact that it's a wide angle. So at that point, when I saw that sky, I realized that I needed to put together that. Beautiful shape of the tree, the symmetrical shape of the tree with the leopard line on the branch and with the sky. So I had to be close to the tree to project the, the tree into the sky. And uh, fortunately at that moment, the cup walked up to the mother. So I remember that moment when with the slides you didn't really know until. A few days later, whether you had, what, what had you done with the pictures, if you had to mess it all up, or, uh, had it come out? So, uh, fortunately this one sort of came out and it's, it's still one of my favorite, and it reminds me of those days. So this is one of those moments just at the end of the day, everybody else had gone home and still a bit of light, but often those are my favorite moments, both photographically and as an experience being out there. And you men, you mentioned that you, you arrived from Italy after university and you started working for, for an NGO. What, what were you doing in, in Nairobi? I was, I had, I studied economics. Uh, so I was working as a regional coordinator for an NGO working in development projects in Kenya and Somalia. So it's one of the reasons why, uh, I, I'm, I don't regret doing economics because at least it took me, uh, to Kenya. It gave me the possibility to find a job. Uh, in Kenya. It's very funny. It's very funny because the last episode we interviewed Janine, who came from Germany with a finance background and came to work in development and now is into wildlife photography. So, so maybe this is, this is the pattern you need to do. That's study economics. The economics, it will, it will lead you to adventure. Nobody studying economics in their home country would've thought this. Exactly. And, and at that point, at what point did you say to yourself. Okay. I've got the economics background, but, but now I, I'm ready to take the plunge and I'm gonna go and do photography. I'm gonna guide, I'm gonna commit myself to, to nature conservation. Telling the stories of Africa. When, when was that moment when you went, I, I can do this. It took me a few years, of course, when I moved to Kenya for the first couple of years, two, three years, I was, uh, as I said, going out on my own all the time. So I had to know the country and I had to develop a portfolio of images that eventually I could, uh, present myself, uh, with to the rest of the world. So it took a few years and the more time, the more I went out on sofar, the more time I spent, I realized that. Uh, it wasn't enough anymore. I remember maybe leaving cheetahs, maybe ready to go on a hunt and I would have to go, or the leopard mother is with the car and uh, she might come out in the evening, but I had to drive back. So when that element of desire became overwhelming, I had realized that it was the time to do it. And I thought, okay, if I don't do it now, I'm probably not gonna do it, uh, ever at one point. And BA and back in, back in 2002, the internet was still in its infancy. Social media didn't really exist. How did you find people and, and, and promote yourself back in those days? It's interesting also because by the time I actually did my plunge into photography full time, it was 2007. Okay. If you remember what happened at the end of 2007 in Kenya, we had a major post-election violence, which basically, uh, halted, uh, tourism for the following eight to 12 months. However, I, that, that wasn't too bad. I had set up my tents in the Mara at the time, and, uh, I just went on my own on, on Safari all the time. And as I was doing that, two things I did, I. Developed my own website and I started posting every day an image on my website. Mm-hmm. That I had taken on that same day. So it was kind of like a, a primitive version of, uh, of a social media, but it was off Facebook, but it was done on my own website, and that's with that. At the time, it wasn't like now where you go on Instagram and you see exactly which leopards cups, which che cups with what is happening in the Ma Mario all the time. At that time, I, I was basically the only source for a lot of people. To find out what was happening in the Mara in terms of the cut. There were actually quite famous because there was the, the big cat aria just had just taken place. So a lot of people were informed about those cuts, but they, they didn't have anyone to update them on what was happening. So that idea, uh, helped me be known a little bit. But by the end of 2008, when Kenya basically settled. Their problems, uh, political problems quite rapidly. But by March it was more or less all, all sorted, and I started getting some inquiries for people, uh, mostly Italian photographers, people loving photography from Italy. Then immediately I went from basically one guest in 2008 to being basically fully, uh, fully booked for the whole of 2009, almost nonstop. Safari. So that's, that's basically how, how it started, I think this combination of elements. And you were living in a tent in the Maasai Mara. Yeah. Living the dream, some might say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, uh, how was that, how was living, how was living in, in the Mara? I mean, day in, day out? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was, it was fantastic. It was, uh, at that time, 2008, the Mario was almost tempt. So there was like, not only I, I was in the marga, but I had almost the ma entirely to uh, to myself, very few, very few people. That was a problem if, if, if I was getting stuck, which I was a lot, I was never a good, uh, safari driver. Uh, so I spent a lot of time in the mud, uh, waiting for, hoping for somebody to get me out. And when there's not a lot of people, it can be quite, uh, quite a process. Long ways. So, but it, it was fantastic. And for me, the, the big thing was to follow the, to follow the cats. Following the leopards, following the lions, seeing them day by day. It was really, really amazing. It was amazing. So big, big cats are, uh, your, the portfolio, the images you've chosen, uh, which leads us neatly onto the next image. Tell us about your second image. Well, the second image, it's, it's not actually a big cut, and that's probably why I picked it, because it features one of the small cuts of Africa by far the most elusive and difficult to to photograph. It's a picture of a mother Carle with a carb lying down in the grass. And basically, I could have picked so many from this, from the time that I spent with the, with these incredible creatures in the Mara in 2009, early 2010. And uh, what strikes me with this image is the difference in the looks in the rise. The mother being so focused and haunting and hypnotizing, whereas the cab's eyes are wide open and. Looking at me with curiosity, the typical Cs, curiosity and fascination with the world. So that's why I picked this one, but I could have picked a lot. And just the fact of having the possibility to follow for multiple days up to weeks at a time. Wow. Uh, a couple of ICALs, a mother with a cup in the wild. Even now it's something. Almost unthinkable. At the time, it was totally unthinkable because it's, I don't think it had ever been done before. So I see this moment as kind of the culmination of my time in the mile, like having that possibility. As you notice, it was taken in November, so it was a quiet time that the dry season turned into rainy season. So it's those seasons of changes and basically what happened in October of 2009 by just driving around from a distance I saw. An animal, which I couldn't immediately recognize. And so I looked through the binoculars and I couldn't believe my eyes. It was a caral that had just jumped on a termite mound in the distance and immediately after another one. So up to that moment, I had never seen a carer in my life and very few people had actually seen one, especially in the marle and normally the sightings. The reports were always off, very fleeting sightings. So I looked at the binoculars and I couldn't believe it. These, there were two carers, then they jumped off in the long dress and disappeared. I was with some guests and I remember saying, but hold on, they have to be somewhere. It's not like they can vanish. So I drove closer to the area and, uh, I couldn't see them, but I stopped and pulled out the binoculars, wait, wait, looks, can the grasslands? And in they were similar to the picture that we see. They were just tucked into a clump of grass, almost completely invisible. Only the tufts of the ears, the eyes looking at me. And so like, wow, this, here they are. And so basically from that moment on, I. This, the story of following this mother Caral with a cup, uh, began, I started going back to the area day after day after day, driving around hand endlessly. And fortunately I could see them regularly seeing the behavior, seeing the interactions as the mother was not shy. So the cup I. My reflection was not shy either. And at times he was coming to the car, almost inspecting the car, and I just couldn't believe my eyes really. They are stunning, stunning animals. And to be able to spend that much time with them to get used to you and like other animals, I'm sure they got used to the sound of your car, you know? Oh, something and, and felt comfortable. What a lovely, lovely thing to have happened. Absolutely. And the interesting thing, as you were saying, uh, at one point another vehicle came down the truck. They had been playing next to the vehicle, very relaxed. Another vehicle comes down, they heard the noise, they went back in the hood. Wow. So by the time the car came, they, they, they basically saw nothing. They moved on. As soon as the other car had moved on, they came back out. So it was clear that they were. Fine with one car, only looking at them stationary, but movement was still, uh, causing them and that was really a pri privilege to have. You know, obviously I, I see a lot of images. I see very few images of carles. And obviously back in the day there weren't as many pro wildlife photographers roaming the Maasai Mara, would you say that this image helped grow your reputation? Absolutely, yes, it's my first major breakthrough. Having followed this family for such a long time, collecting a portfolio of images of characters in the wild that did not exist before. So with this in mind, I approached the BBC Wildlife Magazine and offered them the images and the article, and they accepted it, even went on the cover of the magazine. So it was definitely one of the things that. Uh, helped, uh, raise my profile and to be more known. Let's say there's often an image that people become famous for and you go, oh, it's Caral. Oh, yeah, Federico. He, he does caral. Exactly, yeah. You run, you run the risk of being, oh, it's Federico, the, the Caral guy. Oh yeah. Him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's true. It's true. The good thing is that up to still now, we, uh. In the Serengeti, it's uh, on our saris, we still see a lot of characters. So I can keep up with that, with that reputation of, uh, the Charact man. Yeah. There we go. Okay. Brilliant. That's awesome. So before we move on to, to the next image, we're gonna have a quick break and then when we come back, we're gonna move on to, to Federico's next image. We'll see you in a minute. Welcome back to the Pangolin Podcast with me, Toby German, and my guest today, Federico Verese. Now Federico, would you like to tell the viewers and listeners about your third image? Sure. So as, uh, third images, we have, uh, a photograph taken in the Serengeti National Park featuring two lions, a male and a female. Standing side by side on a rocky outcrop, which is a typical feature of the Serengeti. And what fascinates me about this image is the fact that the two lions are perfectly aligned, almost forming one body, and they're both looking in the same direction with the wind in the main. Of the mail. This one I can say I had no doubt on picking this one 'cause it's really one of my, uh, super favorite images and it's black and white. It's an element that we hadn't introduced before. The first two images were color images. It's ended up on the cover of my second book, which is called One Life. And the reason why I picked it is because it brings the viewer. The subjects into a very, very direct connection because the viewer can relate to the emotions conveyed by the image. I've had a lot of people commenting and acquiring the print with that idea of seeing themselves and maybe their loved ones, uh, into this image somehow. It's something that I look for a lot. Connect. The, the animals with the viewer and make them feel the same emotions. And hopefully this will have an impact on people's commitment to conservation, to preserving something that they share so much with. And that's one of the roles of photography, in my opinion, bringing, highlighting how the emotions that our emotions are connected. And it's, it's interesting actually, because now thinking about it, the first three images. Have all been pairs of animals. We had, we had the, the leopard and her cub. We've had the caral and her cub, but it is that connection between two animals as well, which actually makes it very much more relatable. Let me ask you, which line was there first? Was it the male and the female joined the male, or was it the other way round? It's, and as, as they were joining, did you have a medal? Go on. Go on. Just a bit further, just a bit further. It was funny because we always think, hi, in photography, you have to wait so much time. You have to be patient. And at that time there was nothing of the sort I, we just pulled up, just drove around the rock. And then just at that moment, uh, the lioness woke up, she walked to the legend. The male immediately followed her, and for a few seconds they were lined up like that. And then. They came down. So this is one of those things I just, I saw the female cast in upper, dropped the camera, took the pictures, pa, pa, pa, pa, and then they were down. I didn't even realize what had happened. It was so sudden. It's so, it was so quick and that's, that's what fascinates me so much about photography. The fact that a moment like this one, can we say perfect alignment, but it literally was not even a second. But the photograph makes it eternal. I didn't even realize how good the poses had been until I saw the pictures later. The moral there is like, always be ready. Don't take anything for granted. And what would you say, we talked about the emotion. What's the emotion that you think people see? I. Here that they relate to in this, this photograph. I think looking, looking at the future together, looking ahead together, this is the idea. Two lives becoming one. That's why I actually had it on the cover of my second book, which is called One Life. So that's connection that's, uh, coming together for. And looking at the future together. But you know, in photography everyone can see what they want. But this is how I see it. I get it, I get it, I see it. There's, there's a, there's a solidarity, isn't there? Facing the world together. And I, I love the fact that they're also facing into the wind as well. It gives them impression into the wind. They're facing it head on together. And there's, there's so many nuanced moments. This photograph, I think it's very, very special. So you were known in your early days as being. The Mara specialist working in the Maro. For those who don't know, the Maasai Mara is in essence the top northern tip of the Serengeti. Yeah. And so the animals, this is where the migration moves through. You know, the wildebeest moved from the Serengeti into the MA and back down again. So when did you start, you know, migrating down to the, to the Serengeti? What drew you down there? Well, I, my actually, my, I first started going to the Serengeti for my very first time in 2005 when I was still working, uh, in Nairobi. And I drove through the Serengeti with my car from Nairobi. So a long journey. I went, uh, to the central Serengeti Seren area. I was, I remember being a little disappointed with the, uh, with the sighting. I couldn't see much. And then I came at the, at the end of the trip, I drove through these A aspects. Endless planes and rocky outfits. I was welcomed by a male lion sitting majestic majestically on one of these rocks and, uh, with the man in the wind. And I'm like, wow, this, this is happened now this is, this is the Serengeti, the one, you know, the one you hear about the iconic place. Here I am. And so from that moment in 2013 is when I started going every year to the Serengeti four. Extensive periods of time. People don't realize that the Serengeti is, I mean, it's vast. I mean, it's, it's, it's 10 times the size of the Maasai Mara, but even though they're connected, they are very separate. Do you, you have a favorite, can I ask that? Wow. That's a tough one because, uh, the Mara is the place that has kind of where everything started from, and so I'm connected to it. But the total sense of wilderness endlessness that you feel in the Serengeti. Is, uh, it's not there in the market for the size in the Serge. You can be out on the on game drive for days without still, without seeing a single vehicle next to you, and you're surrounded by lions cheetahs. So each one has its time. When the migration is in the mar, it's unbelievable. But rainy season in the mar, the skies in the Mara Serengeti in the rainy season are just unbelievable and. So, uh, it's very hard to pick one. That was a very diplomatic answer that before you get banned from, banned from one or the other. Exactly. Exactly. Let's move on to our fourth image of the day. I mean, it's an extraordinary image and lots of stories to tell about this. Tell us about your fourth image. Alright, with the fourth image, I wanted to introduce my other great passion besides the Serengeti and the cats. The elephants. So the image features are great Tusker. Great taskers are those special individual elephants with particularly long tusks. They're not a different species at all. They're just normal elephants, just with the genetics. Of extremely long tasks. Unfortunately, these elephants have become quite rare in the last 100 years because of being the primary target of poachers hunters, uh, ivory traders for all these years. So they're quite rare. Uh, to find. This is in particular, this image, uh, has been taken in Aze National Park in southern Kenya. Aze is particularly known for its population of elephants. We have about a population of about 1,600 elephants, and this one in particular is a fantastic bull that are followed for many years, whose name is Tolstoy. Story, tol story, right? Er elephants are named by a, a research project that has been going on since 70. So more than 50 years of operations in Azale means that the project basically knows each individual elephant considering the lifespan of elephants, which is 50, 60, 65 years, they've basically seen every living elephant being born. So they know each line lineage of each elephant. And what I love about this image is that Toto is walking across one of the most characteristic areas of Amli, which is the dry amli lake. It's a dry lake that only fills up in the wet season, then it dries up again, and when it's dry, animals walk back and forth across the lake. To get to the water at the heart of the National Park. So having a great tasker like Tolstoy in this setting was really something that I couldn't even believe my eyes when it happened. It doesn't happen a lot. And basically the photograph gave the title to my latest book, which is entirely dedicated to Elephant and the Great taskers, which is called Walk the Earth. And the technique I used to take this photograph was wide angle. Telephone coming closer, photographing, uh, with the camera, pointing to the ground to emphasize the cracked soil of the dry lake, which conveys the drama and the sense of drought, sense of this harshness and this particularly dry place. That was the idea of the book and the photograph. So there, there, there are two things about this image, which I wanted to talk to you about. Firstly, this is the, um, the second black and white image that you've done. Yeah. Your photography especially, you know, the more recent photography is very much, you know, around black and white, the fine art, um Yeah. Aspects of it. Um, I wanted to talk to you about that as well, but, but it's also the, the low angle. That you took Firstly, can you just explain to us how you managed to get the low anger? I mean, you weren't lying down flat on your belly for, as an example, but you know, to take this photograph I thought would've been the last thing you ever did. Um, so what was the technique and then what was the thinking? Did you know you were going to convert this to black and white when you took it? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for raising the black and white. Black and white is, has become my almost favorite medium because it makes the images timeless, which is something that I, uh, try to achieve. You know, as we said before, with the lions, making them eternal, making them timeless and black and white helps a lot with that. So this image, when I'm on the dry lake with cloudy sky elephants. 99%. I know it's going to be a black and white image. The low angle came from since 2010. I've had the left side doors of my vehicle removed. To photograph, low angle to lie down, uh, on the seats of the vehicle or, uh, on the floor. But in my case, because I was driving across the seats of the vehicle and putting the camera down before the cameras started having flipping LCD screens, I used to use the right angle viewer, which was something like a small periscope that you would attach to the ca to the viewfinder of the camera. And it would enable you to look at the viewfinder, but looking down, instead of looking straight to the camera now, it's much easier because we have the LCD uh, opening up. Yeah. So with the LCD opening up, I flipped it open, and that's, that's, that was it. But the key was the open door. So I, I suppose anybody trying to emulate a photograph like this, you know, without their own vehicle, with the doors off and things like that, you could look at. A, a monopod monopod, holding it down nice and low. LCD screen at a 45 degree angle. Almost like the, the old, uh, the old mirror that you were using before. Exactly. Exactly. And, uh, and, and hope for the best. Exactly. Also, if you have very long arms, you can also stretch out physically. That's what I do now if I don't have open doors, because not always you can have the open doors. I just extend myself, uh, as much as possible outside of the vehicle to get as close as possible to the ground. Um, so my final question before we move on, Federico, is when I was looking at this image, I zoomed in because I wasn't sure if, if Tolstoy's left, tusk was touching the ground, whether I couldn't quite see properly, but then I noticed that it's, it's worn down. What's the story behind that? Well, with uh, Tolstoy, neither of Tolstoy's tusks are, as they originally were, the right tusk. Broke sometime before 2010 when he was still quite young in a fight with another bull. And the left task was almost touching the ground already back then when he was about 39 years old. And then what happened is that, uh, the Kenya one left service, which is the entity that manages all wildlife and national parks in Kenya, fear that is tusk scraping the ground. Living marching on the ground might lead poachers to him. Remember, at the time, in 2012 13, we were in at the peak of a quite strong poaching crisis against African elephants, so they decided to trim his left tus to the same length as the right tus, which was quite, quite short back then. But elephants tasks keep growing. Throughout their lives. So by the time this picture was taken in 2021, both these tusks right and left had grown back to reach almost the ground. But you can still see the fact that it's an unnatural streaming of the tusk. Tolstoy is still with us. Tolstoy is still wandering. The, the planes of Ambasel, unfortunately not, unfortunately not Tol story left as in 2022 and, uh, unfortunately felt victim to, uh, a case of human wildlife conflict of he was spending a lot of time outside the park raiding crops, which is one of the biggest challenges elephants are facing at the moment in Kenya. They need space, you know, the animals. Need to wander around and especially if you, if you, if you have, uh, crops near the places where they live with nice fruits and vegetables, uh, elephants are drawn to. Yeah. And, uh, some are particularly stubborn. Uh, Toto was really stubborn, so he was also, uh, well advanced in his age and after the poison that hit him after a couple of weeks, he couldn't make it, and then he died. Unfortunately, unfortunately, it's a sad reality, isn't it? Well, um, I'm afraid on that rather moving moment. We're gonna, we're gonna take another break right now, and then when we come back, Federico is going to reveal the guest image by another photographer that perhaps he'd wish he'd taken. So, we'll see you in a minute. Welcome back to the final part of this Pangolin podcast with me, Toby German and Federico Esei. Now during the break, Federico and I had a chat and he has very generously agreed that we will give away a signed copy of his latest book, walk the Earth, which features Tolstoy on the cover. So. To make this a fair giveaway, I'm going to put up a QR code now, which you can scan with your phones. If you are listening anywhere else, then you can find a link in the description down below. It'll take you through to a page where we have one simple question. About an image that we've already shared, which is going to see if you were paying attention or not, and you can answer this question. And for all those people who answer the question correctly, we will do a lucky draw and we will send you a signed copy of the book, straight from Federico. Very simple, one question, put your details in and we'll do a lucky draw to see who went a copy of the book. Okay, Federico, we are now at the final image. This is an image that you didn't take. So can you tell us who took this image and tell us a little bit about it and tell us why you chose this particular, what inspires you about this image? Well, this was, uh, another difficult pick, but. I decided to pick this image by Nick Brut, an English photographer living in the us. It's a black and white image of a lion sitting on a monolith shaped rock and overlooking the savanna with a thunderstorm behind, and there's quite a few reasons behind. Me choosing this particular photograph first, I wanted to pick a photograph from him, uh, because I feel that he opened up a lot of, uh, doors for me, for me in a way, creative doors, and there were quite a few elements in his photography that captivated me the low angle. It was one of the things that he was probably among the first to introduce. So getting low to convey majesty to the, uh, to the subjects, to the animals, and getting close as well, and then finishing it off with this extremely poetic post-processing in black and white. So the finished images have this timelessness and this image has been taken in one of the locations that we've talked about before, the Serengeti and. I drive by that rock. This monolith standing up above the savanna and he got lion in on it. I never saw a lion there. So every time I, every time I drive by, I am like, and there's two things that are interesting with, uh, with, with Nick brand in general, but with this photo, we can use it as an example, is my whole life photographically. I'm like, wow, there's no lion there. But then it, between myself, I think, but if I take a lion, it'll be exactly the same image. So it's, I am kind of all with his work. I'm always torn between, you know, how good it is and wanting to, to do something similar, but at the same time not wanting to do. Something similar also because he has a big storm in the background, which balances the picture perfectly. So besides the rock and the lion that are perfect within themselves, but the storm in the background and getting all these elements together is unbelievable. And uh, and that makes it, uh, so special for me. I'm very glad that you chose, um, Nick's image. Um, we are big fans of, of Nick Brown. We're very big fans of his, his conservation work that he does with the Big Life Foundation. We touched on. The human animal conflict in the Amba area and big life focuses on trying to reduce that, trying to reduce poaching and instances like that across the Serengeti and the Amali region as well. So if you want to learn more about Nick, I'm going to leave links to his work, which is outstanding, truly inspirational. And Nick, if you are watching this, then we would love you to come on the podcast as well. We've actually had. A lot of people in the comments suggesting people who should, who should join and come onto the show. Federico, you were, you were on there. Somebody asked you to be on here. We'd already organized this, but there we go. Hannah Lochner has agreed to do this. Steve Perry is going to join Mark Kine, try Anfield. So we're very excited and we want to thank everybody. For all the lovely comments that we've had and the, the support that we've had so far. Um, I think that we're going to continue doing lots more of these going forward. Um, but for now, Federico, as is tradition, now that we're on the third episode, we're gonna call it a tradition. We ask our guests their remote location, where they're gonna take their images, where they're gonna be working from. Could be anywhere in the world where you're gonna end up photographing in perpetuity. Federico, this is the most difficult question. Where would you put. Your camp. That's a tough one. That's a tough one. Certainly I can say Africa. I can say East Africa. Uh, so I'm closing in and now that's the choice begins. Let's mention a place that, uh, we haven't touched on the, on the podcast yet. At SVO Salvo s Park, home of Elephants, being surrounded by elephants, lions in salvo would not be a bat. Way to end, uh, to end my life. So let's bring VO in there. Go svo. That's where your humble dwelling is going to be. And uh, I will leave links in the description down below so you can follow Federico on his socials and you can go to his website to look at his books. But for now, on that note, I think that's all from us. Um, it is been an absolute pleasure, Federico, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Thank you so much. Thank you, TAPPI. Thank you very much for listening to episode three. If you don't want to miss episode four, make sure you subscribe to the channel. And while you're there, please give us a thumbs up. Leave a comment, write a review. Your feedback means a lot to us. Suggest more photographers tell us who else you think we should have on the show. Finally, don't forget to sign up to the Pangolin Photo Safaris Friday Focus newsletter. You can do that by heading over to pangolin photo.com, or you can scan the QR code on your screen now. Personally, I look forward to seeing you on a Pangolin photo safari soon, and all that's left for me to do is say that the Pangolin podcast was hosted by me, Toby German, and produced and edited by Bella Folk. Thank you.