INTERVIEW: wildlife like you’ve never seen it before

It all started in a football stadium in Mexico, watched on by a rapturous crowd. Now, 30 years later, David Yarrow’s fine art comes from the most remote regions on the planet.

“I had been given instructions as to what to do in this situation. Run and I die. So I soon found myself talking to this brown bear in the depths of Alaska.”

David Yarrow is accustomed to the unusual. For a man who has been held at gunpoint in South Sudan and tracked the world’s most incredible mammals off-the-beaten-path – the familiar weight of a camera always by his side – a close encounter with the largest land-based predator on Earth was just another day in the office.

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And as I sit in mine on a dreich Monday morning in the Capital, writing the questions for the imminent interview, I can’t help but wonder how. How are his images so unique, despite the fact that every Joe Bloggs with an SLR has pursued many of his subjects since the day film was invented? And how does he capture the character and soul of an animal with such discernible intimacy?

FIND THE EDGE

“To take images that attract people’s attention,” says David, “you need to offer fresh content – things that they haven’t seen before. You aren’t going to get a groundbreaking image of a sheep in New Zealand. The draw to Africa and the polar extremes is that there are truly remote and unspoiled areas, which is something that can be said less and less. To depict life on the edge, be it people or wildlife, you must enter the unknown.”

No photo demonstrates this better than Mankind. After two days on a shocking road in the desolate territories of South Sudan, followed by hours of walking in 42°C heat and wading through four feet of water known to house the odd Nile crocodile, David reached the Dinka cattle camp. No other filmmaker had managed to get to this location. The picture tells a new story with every look, both biblical and haunting – “it is heavenly on one glance and Dante’s Hell on the other,” he says. It rapidly sold out, each image selling at $60,000.

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While primarily a photographer, David is also a businessman – unapologetically so. And the abundance of photogenic wildlife and culture in Africa, much of which is endangered, coupled with the landscape’s leniency to be shot in monochrome – his speciality – means it sells better than any other continent in the world.

Commercial acumen runs through David’s veins. After graduating from Edinburgh University, he pursued a career in finance in London and New York – with great success. In 1993 he was appointed director of equities at Natwest Securities where he worked until leaving to found his London-based hedge fund Clareville Capital in 1996. Looking at his profession now, which entails crawling through thick bush and being exposed to katabatic Arctic winds, you’d be forgiven for assuming these roles are light-years apart, as I did.

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“I take issue with that because I think they’re very, very similar,” David counters. “What I did in investment management was research, which requires time, the understanding of a situation better than other people and technical precision. The main difference is that in photography you use your heart and soul a little more.”

BREAKING NEW GROUND

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Although now distinguished for his black and white images of wildlife and cultures, as well as his work with the conservation charity Tusk, it wasn’t always this way for the Glasgow-born photographer. Quite the opposite, in fact. His name hurtled onto the scene at the World Cup Finals in Mexico in 1986, with a photo that most of the living population will have seen. Despite being only 20 years old and admittedly amateurish, he captured an iconic shot of Maradona holding the winning trophy aloft as thousands of Argentine fans stormed the pitch.

“That camera can’t have cost more than £200,” David jokes, “but it taught me a valuable lesson: the art of getting close to your subject. This is where many wildlife photographers fall foul, thinking that they aren’t going to get close to the animal, so they buy a long telescopic lens and take pictures from a vehicle. Doing this does two things; it immediately removes the character and detail, and invariably the photographer is higher than the animal, providing an artificial encounter.”

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It is here that David separates himself from the crowd, constantly teetering on the forefront of what has been tried and tested. Behind every photo you see on this page are hours and hours of scrupulous homework and logistical preparations in order to get the camera as close to the animal as possible. The results are clear to see.

“There’s a lot of trial and error,” he explains, “and we do a huge amount of experimenting with aftershave in terms of scenting the camera to attract the animals. A lot of what we do is certainly groundbreaking and I work closely with people in the field to make sure I am doing the smartest things.

“The position of the camera is determined by predictive analysis. For example, with Lion King, it was placed in the water in the middle of the day when the lions were asleep. As lazy animals they repeat behaviour, so having watched them the previous night we knew that there was every chance they would cross in the same place.”

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I then steer the conversation to my personal favourite: Heaven Can Wait – featured as the main slider – taken in Amboseli, Kenya. “I tend to be a miserable bastard when it comes to my own stuff,” David says candidly, “but equally I know when I have a good picture, and this is one.

“I was in a harness, hanging out of the car, reaching out so that the camera was very close to the ground as we hurtled along at 30mph. And I wanted to shoot into the sun as I saw that effect of the giraffe kicking up dusk. It’s usually counterintuitive to take a photo of an animal running away from you, but everything just came together.”

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My pre-interview ‘hows’ are swiftly swatted aside – David’s work is unique because his work ethic is unique. Portraying life on the edge requires a deep appreciation for your surroundings – where to go, when to go, and with what aim. Timing, research and understanding are key, something David has in spades. Which, it transpires, when caught between an Alaskan brown bear and her cubs, are very useful skills to posses.

For more of David’s work, see davidyarrow.photography

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