Alex Braczkowski

The first is that although Steve would obviously always take incredible images of the leopards or the tigers or the lions that were his subjects.

it was really more important seeing him in action, photographing everything around the study subject.

So, you know, when we think of a national geographic story, we think, oh, amazing photographs of lions or leopards.

But if you actually look deeper, it's every story has actually got to do with the people or the habitats.

So it's everything around the subject.

That was the most important thing that I learned from him.

And then obviously his camera trapping and his lighting are par excellence compared to nobody else.

So those are the things.

I'd say...

80% luck and 20% knowledge of the species ecology and biology.

So with big cats that he focuses on, there's two things.

The problem is they occur in most cases at very low densities.

So your chances of getting them on a camera trap, very low.

The second thing is also they use very specific habitat characteristics, mainly roads and trails.

So it's about knowing where to set your camera trap and hoping that the cat happens to be in the neighborhood.

So the tree climbing lions are particularly interesting because there's only really three or four populations in the whole of Africa that have this cultural behaviour.

And that happens to be in Lake Nakuru in Kenya.

It also happens to be in...

Tanzania's Serengeti National Park, Queen Elizabeth in Uganda, and then also there's a couple of other little places, but those are the main ones.

They're all able to climb trees, but the cultural element is very interesting because in these populations, almost every line is doing it.