From the Serengeti to the living room

A camera as an extension of curiosity

Anyone who meets Daryl quickly notices that sitting still isn't in his vocabulary. Alongside his job at a hospital, he is a photographer, runner and content creator. Travel and photography are the common thread running through his life.

His photography started simply, with a phone and a fashion blog. When he realised he wanted to get more out of his images, he bought his first DSLR camera. From that moment on, there was no turning back.

"I didn't just want to take beautiful photos, I wanted to tell stories. A good photo doesn't just show you what happened, it makes you feel what it was like to be there yourself." He took that way of looking with him to Tanzania.

A dream come true

A safari had been at the top of his wish list for years. At first he considered South Africa, but since his girlfriend had already been there, they chose Tanzania. Mainly because of the world-famous Serengeti. And the region lived up to every expectation: the vastness of the landscape, the tranquillity and the sheer abundance of wildlife. "It regularly felt as if we were part of a nature documentary."

"When you get into the jeep, you never know what the day will bring. Which animals will you come across? How close will they get? That unknown makes every game drive special."

While most holidays follow a schedule, a safari feels like one big adventure. Around every bend, something can happen that you never could have predicted. And on one late afternoon in Tarangire National Park, that's exactly what happened.

The moment everything changed

At the end of the afternoon, the jeep was slowly heading towards the park exit. Suddenly, an elephant appeared on the road. The guide calmly pulled the jeep over so the animal could pass, but the elephant had other plans. Instead of walking past the vehicle, it changed direction and headed straight for the jeep.

As the guide carefully reversed along the bumpy dirt road, the elephant kept coming closer. It picked up its pace, flapped its ears and made it very clear that the jeep was not welcome there. A tense moment, especially when reversing was no longer an option, because several jeeps were waiting behind them. The guide decided to drive onto the grass and find a safer position behind a bush. Only there did the elephant lose interest.

"It probably lasted only ten to fifteen minutes, but it felt much longer. It's in a moment like that that you truly realise how powerful wild animals are."

It was precisely during those tense minutes that Daryl pressed the shutter. Not because it's technically the perfect photo, but because the image captures a memory that needs no words: the approaching elephant, ears spread wide, the dust around its body and in the air.

"The jeep was reversing, the elephant was coming at us and I had to react in a split second. Every time I look at that photo, I'm right back in that moment."

From thousands of photos to one travel story

Back home, perhaps the hardest part of the trip began: choosing. Daryl quickly knew what he wanted to do with his photos. Not a folder on a hard drive, but a coffee table book telling the full story of the journey and that one photo of the elephant printed large on the wall.

While selecting, he first looked critically at technique: sharpness, focus point, composition and for burst series, he picked the best moment: the finest pose, the most interesting look. But the book had a maximum number of pages, which meant saying goodbye to photos he personally loved.

"Every photo is tied to a memory. But not everything fits in a book. Sometimes, as a photographer, you really have to kill your darlings."

The result is a photo book that reads like a visual travelogue, where every page takes him back to Tanzania for a moment: from sweeping landscapes to intimate encounters with animals. And in the living room hangs the moment he will never forget.

Memories you keep seeing

"You pick up a photo book from the shelf much more easily. You flip through it together, retell the stories and relive the trip for a while. That's completely different from photos sitting somewhere on a hard drive." According to him, the wall art does the same but daily. Not decoration, but a window onto that one moment in Tarangire.

Ask Daryl what he hopes to think back on when he opens the book in twenty years, and it's not about the perfect composition or camera settings, but about the feeling of that journey. And that is precisely the power of a printed memory. One glance at the wall or one page in the book, and for a moment you're right back there.