"I traveled to Kenya and captured this powerful image to convey the plight of the southern white rhino"

It’s certainly not hard to see why Rahul Sachdev’s (@rahulsphotography) superb photograph of a southern white rhino, silhouetted by rays of golden light, won first prize in the Hamdan International Photography Award’s (@hipaae) ‘General – colour’ category.

Rahul, who is an ambassador for Canon Asia, captured the jaw-dropping image, entitled ‘Resilience’, using his Canon EOS R5 and Canon RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1 IS USM lens. He told me: “I feel the 100-500mm is my go-to lens for most of my work. I recently shifted to the Canon EOS R5 Mark II and I love that camera, too.”

I asked him why Canon is his system of choice when it comes to the best mirrorless cameras: “Canon hit the right notes in terms of button positioning and the menu system; I find it all very lucid. And I was blown away by the electronic viewfinder of the EOS R5 and EOS R6. Before that, whenever I wanted to try a mirrorless camera the viewfinder just didn't seem right, it seemed clunky.”

I got to sit down with Rahul at the HIPA 2024 awards ceremony in Dubai, where we discussed the award-winning image and its story.

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Rahul tells me he’s been traveling to Africa for roughly 15 years, but hadn’t initially been able to photograph many rhinos. “Typically you end up going to the Maasai Mara in Kenya or more famous places where sightings of rhinos are very far and few between,” he says. But that all changed when a friend introduced him to Kenya’s Solio Game Reserve, a privately owned sanctuary focused on the conservation of rhinos.

The photographer has now visited Solio many times, “it's just fabulous, the amount of rhinos that they've managed to save,” he says, “and the most beautiful part about this part of the world in terms of rhinos – and the southern white rhino especially – is that they've been able to curtail or control poaching as well.” He knew Solio was the location to capture a “powerful image to convey the plight of these animals in some way.”

Rahul is certainly no stranger to backlighting, “most of my photography ends up being backlit – early morning shots, for example," he says. "Solio has a beautiful forest of yellow-barked acacia [fever trees], which made a good backdrop as the sun was coming up, and on one fine day I got lucky with the rhino. It waited long enough for me to capture those rays and get the right composition, to convey more than anything else that these are beautiful creatures, so let's preserve them. And I hope that message comes through in the photo.”

I, for one, certainly think Rahul’s message comes through in striking fashion. And clearly, HIPA concurs. I asked the photographer what the award means to him: “It feels brilliant,” he said. “I don’t know if it has really sunk in. And also with HIPA not being specifically a wildlife photography competition, this feels more special. And for what HIPA stands for and what it’s trying to accomplish, I think it's so great for all the artists to have such a platform and I'm really honored to be here.”

For more information on HIPA, visit the competition's website.

Check out previous Photo of the Day images, and the stories behind them.
If you have an image you'd like us to consider for Photo of the Day, email it to us at digitalcameraworld@futurenet.com

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