All Essays

(N: images herewith screen grabs from video, so diminished resolution and clarity) Seen from almost the summit, the crater lake, known as Segara Anak  or Anak Laut (Child of the Sea), due to the color of its water, as blue as the sea (laut) This lake is approximately 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) above sea level and estimated to be about 200 metres (660 ft) deep Mount Rinjani was tough. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It was the pace more than anything. Hiking with a grou

They say you manifest dreams by writing them down. That the simple act of putting thoughts into words makes them real, giving them a life beyond the mind’s endless loops of “what ifs.” Ideas are like seeds—left unspoken, they remain potential. Spoken, written, acted upon, they take root. So here it is. I want to live in a motorhome. For years, I’ve flirted with the idea. The notion of having my own space, my own bed, my own familiar surroundings—yet never being tied down. No

My earliest memories of caravan life take me back a long way—to the late ’60s, when our annual family holidays took us from the north of England to sunny South of France. My grandfather, the late great W.F. Dobson, was a true itinerant, having lived in over 30 homes in his lifetime. He always kept a large parked caravan somewhere along the Riviera. So from 1969, when I was just six, until 1974, Dad would drive us across France—destination: Nice, Cannes, or wherever Grandad ha

Rhino Horn. Asians think it's a cure for headaches and hangovers. Rhino slaughter is on the increase and on their conscience, but the Asian mafia paying poor Mozambicans to go shoot Rhino and hack off their horns, don't give a damn. They just want the money. Kruger Park rangers, have a lot of walking to do. Through bush filled with snakes and other biting things. With rifles ready, they stroll the long elephant grass, searching for snares and steel jaw traps and poachers.

You are deep in Elephant country. You are on foot. You feel alive, because your senses are in overdrive. Elephants with young can be unpredictable and dangerous. As a photo-journalist doing a story on the South African borderline you've heard there is an 'informal' border crossing hidden deep in the bush. So you are on foot because you are going 'local'. Following local trails that crisscross the tall elephant grass that contains, wild African elephants. You heart is racing.

It's a Sunday morning, and you are up on a hill. But this is not just any Sunday, you know, a back home kind of Sunday. Or any kind of hill for that matter. This is a Kosi Sunday and the hill overlooks the Kosi river estuary which spills into the Indian Ocean. The hill is on the south eastern edge of Africa looking towards Madagascar some 400km out across the horizon line. Your Landcruiser is parked behind you, standing up to her runner boards in red grass. A species of v

Part 1. South Africa’s 3500km long and convoluted border line, which straddles the Indian Ocean from Kosi Bay on the East coast to Alexander Bay on South Africa’s cold Atlantic West coast, wanders diverse landscapes, cuts through socially complex and disparate communities, and demarcates where the developed super power economy of South Africa ends and the ‘rest of Africa’ begins. I'd purposely started my borderline story for French GEO in Alexander Bay, the most northw

Now this image, created at 30th/sec at F2.8 gives me lots of satisfaction, and feels to me like it needs celebrating, over and above anything that I might have set up, or rendered out of CGI or God forbid stroked out of Mid-Journey. Why do I make this claim? Well because it came from a click. Not a series. But one. Click. In a fraction of a second. I had to identify the scenes potential. Fast. The longer u linger the more conspicuous u become. I use old school manual focus le