![]() ![]() The soda and salt causes the creatures to petrify, perfectly preserved, as they dry. The water has an extremely high soda content, so high that it would strip the ink off my Kodak film boxes within a few seconds. No-one knows for certain exactly how the animals die, but it appears that the extreme reflective nature of the lake’s surface confuses them, just like a plate glass window, causing them to crash into the lake. ![]() His outspread wings, as if opening them to dry them in the sun, were fixed in exactly that position when he died. It was like a morbid treasure hunt, with the entire fish eagle being the most surprising and revelatory find. I thought they were extraordinary - every last tiny detail perfectly preserved down to the tip of a bat's tongue, the minute hairs on his face.Įach day, me, my guide, and a few local Maasai would walk up and down the lake's shoreline, scouring for birds and bats. It was dry season, so the waterline had receded revealing these petrified creatures along the shoreline. I visited the lake whilst traveling through one the more stark areas of East Africa taking photos for the last book, Across The Ravaged Land, in my trilogy. This was part of what obsessed me when I first unexpectedly found petrified birds and bats washed up along the shoreline of Lake Natron in Tanzania. The portrait of an animal that I would never have been able to get close enough to otherwise. "To take a portrait of an animal alive again in death, in the place where it lived and died. ![]() Petrified Fish Eagle, Lake Natron, 2012 - Nick Brandt Brandt has graciously given us permission to reproduce them on photo-eye Blog. In early May, Nick Brandt began posting the stories behind his beautiful and evocative portraits of African animals to his Facebook page. ![]()
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