"Almost exactly a year after I took one of my strongest images, “Drought” I found my lens once again pointed in the direction of two fighting zebras. There are clear similarities and differences between the two. The obvious similarity is that both frames display zebras reared up and in heated battle, but here a far more endangered species is shown. There are roughly 2,500 Grevy’s Zebra’s left in Africa with the vast majority being located in Northern Kenya. The Lewa / Borana Landscape is simply the best place to photograph them.

The challenge that comes with photographing in Borana is that in almost every direction there are huge rocky hills making a clean background a real difficulty. I find big skies so important in my photography to accentuate the drama within the scene. My usual way to combat this is to use wide angle lenses from a ground up perspective but the grass was too long, and the subjects chased and fought for over 10 minutes moving considerable distances which made remote photography impossible. Therefore, unlike in “Drought”, I selected a telephoto lens, but stayed as low as possible to ensure the Zebra’s heads were set against a minimal background.

I was lucky enough to witness this epic duel but equally lucky that they reared up in such a dramatic way just 15 metres from me. Much of the fight took part behind trees and bushes some distance away. The beautifully backlit scene is what truly brings this image alive. It is as if the grass has turned into flames and the clouds into smoke. Nothing else would do for a duel at dusk."

Duel at Dusk, Borana, Kenya.
20% of sales goes to support Borana Conservancy
Available sizes
18"x23.61" Edition of 15
30"x39.35" Edition of 15
40"x52.47" Edition of 15

"Wildlife fine art photographer and conservationist, James Lewin, is entirely self-taught and first became interested in photography whilst in Kenya. He chooses to take black and white photographs using a wide-angled lens and shoots from a low level set against a dramatic background. This approach accentuates the magnitude of his subjects, most usually African wildlife.

James has held his own fundraising events whilst also donating prints to charity auctions. In 2018, at the National History Museum in London, his photograph ‘The Big Friendly Giant’ raised just over £4,000 at auction in aid of The Whitley Fund for Nature.

Several of James’s photographs have been shortlisted for the final round of judging in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year and in 2019, his photograph ‘The Baron of Borana’ received an Honourable Mention in The Monochrome Awards. He has won a number of other awards (Outdoor Photographer of the Year, BBC Wildlife and The Neutral Density Awards).

Alongside his love of photography, James is an ardent conservationist and donates a proportion of his profits to conservation charities to ensure the protection of the animals he photographs. The big tusker elephants are particularly close to his heart.

James's photographs are offered as archival pigment prints (the most commonly used among professional photographers), silver gelatin (the gold standard in black and white printing which surpasses archival pigment prints in longevity, quality and detail) and platinum palladium (these prints are made in a darkroom with photo chemistry and have the very best archival rating of any print - the image is embedded into the fibres of the paper, as opposed to an archival pigment print where the inks are sprayed onto the surface)."