Issue No.22 - International Edition Polo De’Marco Magazine - International Edition | Page 49

5. Talking about preservation - do you believe lions are
endangered? And what can we do about it?
This tribute book arrives while the signals on the situation of wild life, animal and
plant, is dramatic in Africa as everywhere. Demographic pressure, agriculture,
town planning and obviously poaching and illegal trade are decimating the last
specimens still free on the territory. In the particular case of lions, you should
know that there were 200,000 in 1920, 100,000 in 1960, 40,000 in 1995 and only
20,000 in 2019. The figures speak for themselves. At this rate, they will disappear
in the next 30 years.The only thing that is useful and urgent to do is to give way
to other species, that is to say to delimit territories where no human life would
come to interfere because everywhere where man advances, nature recedes.
There are concrete examples of areas left exclusively for wildlife and this is the
only option that allows for preservation.
I do not try to approach or capture
their attention, I am discreet to be the
least visible and therefore the least
intrusive possible.Often people ask
me how far and how close I am to the
animal. In fact, I am rarely within 30
meters. It is the use of large telephoto
lenses and a doubler that give this
impression of proximity.
8. In photography - there is a
system called ‘rule of thirds’. When
6. In your bio - you state the ̃Big Five. What does that mean? photographing your subjects. Do you
The Big Five have historically been the 5 most difficult animals to hunt on
safaris that Western whites came to buy in Africa, namely the lion, the leopard,
the rhino, the elephant and the buffalo. Today, although hunting safaris still
exist, many Western tourists have replaced rifles with cameras. apply these processes?
7.When it comes to a lions habitat - how close have you been? And
what rules do you need to follow being in there proximity?
It depends on the final format of the
image: this rule works well with the
2/3 format in 24x36. On the other
hand, for the square format that I like
a lot, I often get rid of it.