A Century of Photographing Lions in National Geographic

Male lions, for all their bluster and may, principally rely upon females to do the looking. So when an eight-year-old male named Hildur picked up the scent of blood early one night, he leapt to his toes. “He probably hadn’t eaten in two weeks,” remembers Michael Nichols, a former employees photographer and editor-at-large at National Geographic. “He took off running for five miles until he got to this pride that had killed something.”

As Hildur swiftly handed by way of the day’s fading gentle, his ribs sharply seen towards his tawny torso, Nichols—hanging out the passenger window of a automobile pushed by his spouse, Reba Peck—snapped {photograph} after {photograph}. One of these photographs made it right into a 34-page function in National Geographic. Published in 2013 with textual content by David Quammen, the story gave readers an intimate glimpse into the brief, typically brutal—however sometimes triumphant—lives of Serengeti lions.

Nichols and his editors chosen images for the story that weren’t solely aesthetically interesting and technically refined, however that additionally revealed one thing in regards to the newest science on lions and their key roles in ecosystems. “This wasn’t an exercise in just photographing,” Nichols says. “We were fully intent on telling you what lions are all about, based on what had been learned from the research.”