Photographing Endangered Wildlife in Kenya

Photography Tips  •  Wildlife Photography

Photography has the unique ability to give us a glimpse, quite literally, of places and people we might otherwise never see. Travel photographer Chris Schmidt fully embraces that mission, saying:

“As a travel photographer, there is a need and a desire to go as far afield as I can. I have to challenge myself to explore.”

In the following video, he documents a trip to Masai Mara, a wildlife reserve in Kenya named after the Maasai people, who are indigenous to the region:

Schmidt set out to document the people, animals, and landscape of the region and to see what Kenyans are doing to protect the wildlife of Masai Mara.

Originally established in 1961, the reserve is home to approximately 3,000 elephants and 22 lion prides, in addition to other wildlife like cheetahs, zebra, wildebeest, and rhinoceros. But, as Schmidt says, poaching has become “almost epidemic”—it has been estimated that the park is losing five lions a day, five elephants an hour, and one rhino every seven hours to poachers. But Kenyans are fighting back, setting up monitoring units to keep watch over the animals.