Posted in Africa, Elephants, Nature, Photography, Travel

Your Daily Elephant

Can you tell this young mother is mad at us?  Luckily, she went one way and we went the other.  Savuti, Botswana.

Photograph by Cheryl Merrill
Photograph by Cheryl Merrill

 

 

Posted in Africa, Elephants, Nature, Photography, Travel

Your Daily Elephant

A continuing photographic series.  Always pack your lunch.  Moremi Game Reserve, Botswana.

photograph by Cheryl Merrill
photograph by Cheryl Merrill

 

 

Posted in Africa, Elephants, Nature, Photography

Your Daily Elephant

An ongoing photographic series.  It’s safer when you’re under mom.  Chobe National Park, Botswana.

photograph by Cheryl Merrill
photograph by Cheryl Merrill

 

Posted in Africa, Elephants, Nature, Nonfiction, Photography, Travel

Camouflage

Camouflage is the art of hiding in plain sight. Of standing perfectly still, keeping silent, blending in, getting lost in the background, resembling something else. It’s an art practiced to conceal feelings, disguise intent, blind danger. Sometimes it’s a necessary skill for survival. Even elephants know how to disappear.

photograph by Cheryl Merrill
photograph by Cheryl Merrill

 

Posted in Africa, Elephants, Nature, Photography, Travel

Your Daily Elephant

Continuing a series of photographs on elephants.  Sunset in Etosha National Park, Namibia.

photograph by Cheryl Merrill
photograph by Cheryl Merrill

 

 

Posted in Africa, Elephants, Nature, Photography, Travel

Your Daily Elephant

Continuing series of photographs of elephants.  Big male, collared and studied by Ian Douglas-Hamilton in the Samburu area of Kenya.  So handsome his name is Apollo.

photograph by Cheryl Merrill
photograph by Cheryl Merrill

 

Posted in Africa, Elephants, Nature, Photography

Your Daily Elephant

Continuing a photographic series in the daily lives of elephants.  And playing with the watercolor mode in Photoshop.  These elephants are part of the endangered Presidential Elephants of Zimbabwe.  Endangered by the very government that decreed them “Presidential.”

photograph by Cheryl Merrill
photograph by Cheryl Merrill

 

Posted in Africa, Nature, Photography, Travel

Doors

photograph by Cheryl Merrill
photograph by Cheryl Merrill

 

A door closes behind me.  Another one opens before me.  My life: doors and side-doors, opening, closing, rooms I do not recognize, rooms that are familiar.  Outdoors, indoors.  Locked doors.  Doors ajar.  Double doors.  Doors that squeak.  Doors unhinged.  Silent doors.

Latch, unlatch.  Doors easy to open, doors impossible to shut.  Solid doors, hollow doors.  Doors that blow open, doors that slam shut.

Big doors.  Small doors.  Ornate doors, plain ones.  Doors that open in.  Doors that open out.

Yours is the door upon which I now knock.  This day east of you, I would carry west, and lay upon your doorstep: a world without windows, without doors.

 

Posted in Africa, Elephants, Nature, Photography, Travel

Your Daily Elephant

A photographic series in the daily lives of elephants.  Large bull coming up from the Savuti River, carrying a waterline. Botswana.

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

Your Daily Elephant

A photographic series on the daily lives of elephants.  Passing us by, lovely eye.  South Luangwa National Park, Zambia.

photograph by Cheryl Merrill
photograph by Cheryl Merrill