Tembo King

Some beings carry time within them.
They don’t rush, they don’t hide. They simply are—monuments in motion.

He is known to some as Craig, but here, beyond the protective boundaries of Amboseli National Park, the Maasai people call him Tembo King—the Elephant King. One of the last of Kenya’s great tuskers, he moves through the landscape like a living myth, his presence felt long before it’s seen.

I had the immense privilege of photographing him in a conservancy owned and protected by the Maasai community—an ancestral land where the guardianship of elephants is not a job, but a calling. When these giants step beyond the national park, it is the Maasai who watch over them, walking with them, standing between them and the dangers that lie beyond the tall grass: roads, snares, hunters, indifference.

And it is no wonder; when Tembo King appears, the world seems to pause.

He moves with a patience that makes the earth feel older. His tusks curved like ancient ivory scrolls, etched by time. His eyes hold the weight of memory—of droughts and rains, of lives lost and spared. I chose to render the photograph in soft sepia—the first time I’ve ever done so. It felt right. Color would have shouted. Sepia whispers. It wraps the moment in timelessness, like an artifact unearthed from a dream.

The image is quiet. There is no drama. Just this majestic bull, walking calmly through his kingdom. But behind that quiet is a legacy of courage—his, and that of the people who walk beside him. The Maasai don’t see him as a relic or a spectacle. They see him as kin. As king. As someone who belongs.

And that’s the heart of this story.

Conservation isn’t just about fences and laws. It’s about relationships. About people who choose, every day, to protect something that cannot speak for itself—but whose silence echoes through the land like thunder.

Tembo King walks still. And as long as he does, there is hope.