More Than
a Website
I arrived for the first time looking for wildlife photographs. I came back wanting to understand everything around them.
April 2023
I first came to Solio in April 2023.
It was only a short trip, but I knew almost immediately that I would come back.
There was something very special about this place.
The enormous open plains beneath dramatic storm clouds. A forest that looked as though it belonged in a fairytale. Rhinos everywhere. Beautiful light and endless possibilities as a photographer.
I didn't know where to look first.
And somehow, on that very first visit, luck was on our side.
We found Tatu.
Tatu was a well-known and much-loved leopard at Solio. She had only three legs and wasn't seen very often, so finding her on my first visit felt incredibly special.
She was beautiful, and I remember feeling so lucky just to have seen her.
By the time I left Solio, I already knew the trip had been far too short.
A few months later, I was back.
And unbelievably, we found Tatu again.
This time, we followed her as she moved through the reserve, calling for a male.
Later, we received terrible news.
A pride of lions with young cubs had killed her.
Tears were running down my cheeks when I heard.
I saw her body that evening. Untouched, just killed.
It was heartbreaking, and I wasn't the only one who felt it. Tatu meant something to so many people who knew Solio. We buried her with the team the following day.
Wildlife photography gives you extraordinary moments, but it also means becoming attached to animals whose lives you can never control.
Njamba, and an offer
And with every return, that connection to the place became stronger.
Then came Njamba.
When the first orphaned rhino, Njamba, arrived, a new chapter began at Solio with the Rhino Orphanage.
The more I got to know Solio, the more I felt it needed a website that could show everything I was starting to see there.
A place this beautiful, with so much happening behind the scenes, deserved a way to show people what it really was.
So I offered to build one.
For free.
When I got the thumbs up, I was ridiculously excited.
Finally, I had found a way to use my skills for something that actually meant something to me.
I couldn't stop working on it.
There were plenty of sleepless nights. Not because anyone was pushing me to finish, but because my brain simply wouldn't switch off. I would lie in bed thinking about pages, photographs, stories and everything else the website could become.
Wildlife.
Landscapes.
Beautiful light.
But it wasn't enough.
At first, I already had plenty of photographs of Solio. Or at least I thought I did.
Because Solio isn't only what you see on a game drive.
If I wanted to tell its story properly, I needed to understand everything around it.
So I started looking beyond the wildlife.
I wanted to photograph the orphanage and the people caring for the rhinos.
I wanted to understand the Women's Empowerment Projects.
I joined school visits and saw another side of Solio's relationship with the surrounding communities.
I learned more about the challenges of protecting a reserve and about all the work that happens behind the scenes to protect the wildlife and the land.
The people behind it
So I started spending more and more of my time at Solio. Not only photographing, but joining in, learning and trying to understand all the different pieces that make the reserve what it is.
And the more time I spent there, the more Solio became about much more than wildlife.
I got to know the people behind it.
The keepers, the staff, the people I worked alongside and the familiar faces I would see every time I returned.
Those connections became one of the most meaningful parts of Solio for me.
Some of them became beautiful friendships.
Coming back started to feel different.
It wasn't only the excitement of wondering what we might find on a game drive anymore. It was arriving and seeing familiar faces again. Sitting together, listening to stories, laughing, learning from each other and slowly getting to know the people behind the place.
What began to matter
And the people are a huge part of that.
Some of the photographs that began to matter most to me weren't necessarily photographs of wildlife.
They were the people I had started to know.
A keeper preparing a bottle. The women working together. Children laughing during a school visit. Staff doing the work that happens every single day, whether anyone is there to photograph it or not.
Once you know the people behind a place, you start seeing it differently.
And somewhere along the way, I realised I wasn't simply building a website anymore.
I was learning how to tell the story of a place.
The orphanage
The orphanage became a particularly important part of that story.
My connection with animals is difficult for me to put into words.
I've always wanted to do something that could help them, but for a long time I didn't really know what that could look like.
I'm not a vet.
I'm not a wildlife researcher.
I'm a photographer.
And suddenly, that didn't feel like something separate from conservation.
I could document.
I could make people look.
It was something I could contribute.
I could help tell the stories of the animals and, just as importantly, the people working every day to protect them.
Eventually, I was given a title I never expected when I first drove through the gates of Solio in 2023:
It meant a lot to me.
What it changed
But perhaps the most valuable thing Solio gave me wasn't a title.
It changed the way I work.
I arrived for the first time looking for wildlife photographs.
I came back wanting to understand everything around them.
The people.
The land.
The work.
The community.
The things visitors see, and the things they usually don't.
What started as a website became something much bigger for me.
It showed me that photography could be more than creating a beautiful image.
It could be my way of giving something back.
See the website I created for Solio →
