{"id":645516,"date":"2026-08-19T14:00:23","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T14:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/645516\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T14:00:23","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T14:00:23","slug":"a-century-of-photographing-lions-in-national-geographic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/645516\/","title":{"rendered":"A Century of Photographing Lions in National Geographic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao MvWXB TjIXL aGjvy ebVHC \">Male <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalgeographic.com\/animals\/mammals\/facts\/african-lion\" dir=\"ltr\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">lions<\/a>, for all their bluster and might, mostly depend on females to do the <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalgeographic.com\/animals\/article\/lion-pride-family-dynamics-females\" dir=\"ltr\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">hunting<\/a>. So when an eight-year-old male named Hildur picked up the scent of blood early one evening, he leapt to his feet. \u201cHe probably hadn\u2019t eaten in two weeks,\u201d recalls Michael Nichols, a former staff photographer and editor-at-large at National Geographic. \u201cHe took off running for five miles until he got to this pride that had killed something.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">As Hildur swiftly passed through the day\u2019s fading light, his ribs sharply visible against his tawny torso, Nichols\u2014hanging out the passenger window of a vehicle driven by his wife, Reba Peck\u2014snapped photograph after photograph. One of those images made it into a 34-page feature in National Geographic. Published in 2013 with text by David Quammen, the story gave readers an intimate glimpse into the short, often brutal\u2014but occasionally triumphant\u2014<a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalgeographic.com\/magazine\/article\/serengeti-lions\" dir=\"ltr\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">lives of Serengeti lions<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Nichols and his editors selected photographs for the story that were not only aesthetically appealing and technically refined, but that also revealed something about the latest science on lions and their key roles in ecosystems. \u201cThis wasn\u2019t an exercise in just photographing,\u201d Nichols says. \u201cWe were fully intent on telling you what lions are all about, based on what had been learned from the research.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Male lions, for all their bluster and might, mostly depend on females to do the hunting. So when&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[267],"tags":[273170,365,362,363,364,221005,3616,366,18,117,19,17,22360,273171,273172,273174,273173,31052,22711],"class_list":["post-645516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-african-lions","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-asiatic-lions","tag-conservation","tag-design","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-lions","tag-lions-of-gir","tag-national-geographic-photography","tag-photos-of-lions","tag-photos-of-lions-in-national-geographic","tag-wildlife-conservation","tag-wildlife-photography"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117122539702193583","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}