Posted in Africa, Elephants, Nature, Travel

Your Daily Elephant: Keeping Cool

And eating in the shade.

photograph by Cheryl Merrill
photograph by Cheryl Merrill
Posted in Africa, Elephants, Nature, Photography, Travel

Your Daily Elephant

With a twig caught in his ear hair.

photograph by Cheryl Merrill
photograph by Cheryl Merrill
Posted in Africa, Elephants, Nature, Photography, Travel

Your Daily Elephant

More than filling the frame of a photograph.  Okavango Delta, Botswana.

photograph by Cheryl Merrill
photograph by Cheryl Merrill

 

Posted in Africa, Elephants, Nature, Photography, Travel

Tracks and Tails: Your Daily Elephant

This is another one of those photographs where there’s a lot to see if you take the time to look.  An elephant takes the left fork in a road, leaves behind footprints in the sand, reveals the thick, cracked pad on the bottom of his foot.  See the depth in the wrinkles on his straight leg versus the ones where his leg is bent?  Isn’t it odd how his two legs make one lumpy shadow and how, if you look carefully, how the tire tracks have their own little shadows?  And did you notice the bootprints in the road, over the tire tracks?  There’s a timeline here, too.  The elephant is headed northwest, and it’s morning, his shadow tells us so.  One tire track is still sharp; it was made earlier in the day.  Then birds walked over it, and elephants, and humans.  The grass is withered and dry, so it must be winter wherever this photograph was taken in Africa.  And by now you’ve noticed everything, even the luxurious hair on the end of his tail.

photograph by Cheryl Merrill
photograph by Cheryl Merrill
Posted in Africa, Elephants, Nature, Photography, Travel

Your Daily Elephants in Morning Light

Doing what elephants do 20 our of 24 hours – eat the landscape.

photograph by Cheryl Merrill
photograph by Cheryl Merrill
Posted in Africa, Elephants, Nature, Photography, Travel

Your Daily Elephants in Watercolor

A different perspective.

photograph by Cheryl Merrill
photograph by Cheryl Merrill
Posted in Africa, Elephants, Nature, Photography, Travel

Your Daily Elephant: Tusk & Palm Tree

Landscapes are made even more amazing by the landscapes of the bodies of the creatures who move through them.

photograph by Cheryl Merrill
photograph by Cheryl Merrill
Posted in Africa, Elephants, Nature, Photography, Travel

A Moment Caught, Then Left Behind

Photographs are moments caught, then left behind.  In this photograph, at that moment, there’s so much going on.  An elephant strolls by, eating a branch from a thorn bush while he wraps a stalk of grass in his trunk.  Do you see his broad toenail, his scalloped ear with its large veins?  Do you see the small round pebble on the top of his head, the flecks of leaves cascading down his forehead to his trunk?  Do you notice the perfect fan palm in the background, the outline of a nipple upon his chest?  Or is your attention focused solely on his gleaming white tusks and your furiously beating heart?

photograph by Cheryl Merrill
photograph by Cheryl Merrill
Posted in Africa, Elephants, Nature, Photography, Travel

Face to Face with Your Daily Elephant

An eye tucked behind a massive trunk.  A body as tall as trees.

photograph by Cheryl Merrill
photograph by Cheryl Merrill
Posted in Africa, Elephants, Nature, Photography, Travel

Your Daily Elephant: Eyelashes

Each of the more than 200 lashes around my eye is shed every three to five months on average. Has anyone ever done research on the shed rate of elephant eyelashes?

photograph by Cheryl Merrill
photograph by Cheryl Merrill

I could.  Or I could watch the sunlight on his five-inch eyelashes forever.