How do you photograph a wild elephant? With 1,100 pounds of gear.

Nov 02, 2023

How do you protect a delicate camera while photographing a powerful yet sometimes skittish animal? That was the dilemma faced by Jasper Doest last year when he was in Gabon to cover the effects of climate change on forest elephants. (One of the resulting images also appears in our 2022 Pictures of the Year story.) He needed a way to capture the foraging pachyderms without frightening them away from their food source. For help, Doest turned to National Geographic photo engineer Tom O’Brien, who designs and builds solutions for all kinds of field assignment hurdles. In this case, that meant developing an extraordinarily strong camera trap that wouldn't