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When I think of my first ideas of Africa, hippos were not the animal I thought of. Hippos were cute little plastic animals in a noisy game I played as a child. My first encounter with hippos was on a ledge overlooking a large pod of hippos in a shallow pool below. My attention was captured by a mother and baby hippo out of the water. The mother hippo was facing down a hissing crocodile and forcing it to back up. See this image from my archives here. I learned that these massive beasts are actually one of the most dangerous in Africa.
Zambia has a healthy population of hippos and I had the opportunity to spend time with them at river bank level. I first thought that it was going to be fairly boring as it was a hot, lazy morning and the sun was blazing so the animals were submerged to keep cool. Sun worshippers they are not. As in most wildlife photography situations, I just had to sit quietly with the camera in my hands waiting for a perfect moment. That moment happened when two enormous hippos exploded upwards from the river to clash with wide open mouths. They met twice with open mouths and I managed to capture a clear image of them, their teeth, and water everywhere in this image.
