Composed of nearly two million Wildebeest, the Great Migration roams across vast swaths of savanna in East Africa. The massive herds are always on the move, and they cross dozens of streams and rivers throughout the year. Yet only once per year, the migration crosses the largest river on their perpetual journey, the mighty Mara river in Northern Tanzania and Southern Kenya.

Arriving on the banks of the Mara river for the first time and watching thousands upon thousands of wildebeest cross was an awe-inspiring and near-spiritual experience. The vigorous mix of instinct and chance on such a grand scale hung so persistently in my mind’s eye, but not in the way I had expected. Here was arguably the most iconic phenomena on the continent of Africa, one I had watched countless times in documentaries, yet now I was feeling something so different, so much more intense – something so much more varied. I pondered ways to bring these emotions to my gallery and museum experiences and the techniques that would ultimately translate to a collector’s wall.

As the days passed, I approached the ever-evolving subject with different methods. Firing away with one technique and then rapidly changing to another as the scene evolved. It was emotional and exhilarating. Eventually, my visits to Kogatende rendered several images that express the raw emotion on view at that special time of year. Please explore the breadth of experience through the following four exposures: The visceral freeze-frame I call The Brink, the motley portrait I call The Rovers, the ethereal plunge I call Wildeghost, the eerie suspense I call Preamble, the rhythmic chaos I call Crux, the daring movement I call Surge, and the consuming landscape I call Vanguard.

The Mara is a right of passage for the migrating herds, so it only seems fitting that taking on the challenge of capturing its complexity became my own right of passage. While I always strive to make leaps in my artistic journey, sometimes I come up short. Which is exactly why I will always remember how the ground left my feet, even for just a moment, while creating this new work that pushed me to the brink of my own creative and technical frontier.