![]() The animals are all arranged in poses by the photographer, for a more dramatic effect. The amazing photos of Lake Natron’s calcified animals, as well as other photographs taken in Eastern Africa are included in Nick Brandt’s latest book, Across the Ravaged Land. Tanzanias Lake Natron calcifies the animals that die in its waters, and Nick Brandt captures them with eerie. I took these creatures as I found them on the shoreline, and then placed them in ‘living’ positions, bringing them back to ‘life’, as it were. The soda and salt causes the creatures to calcify, perfectly preserved, as they dry. Calcified Reflected Flamingo, Lake Natron, 2010. It is very unlikely that you do not a layer of pink across the water. The flocks travel between Lake Manyara, through Lake Natron and into Kenya depending on the seasons. The water has an extremely high soda and salt content, so high that it would strip the ink off my Kodak film boxes within a few seconds. The lake is made famous by its enormous population of two Flamingo species. ![]() No-one knows for certain exactly how they die, but it appears that the extreme reflective nature of the lake’s surface confuses them, and like birds crashing into plate glass windows, they crash into the lake. The Lake came into notice worldwide after the great photographer Nick Brandt released some of his captures during his visit to the Lake Natron. “I unexpectedly found the creatures – all manner of birds and bats – washed up along the shoreline of Lake Natron in Northern Tanzania. ![]() “The notion of portraits of dead animals in the place where they once lived is what also drew me to photographing the creatures in the Calcified series,” Brandt explains. Only invertebrates, a few algae invertebrates and some fish that live near the edges of the lake can survive this environment. ![]() Flamingos sometime use the predator-free salt islands that sometimes form on the lake for nesting, but it’s a risky gamble, as the photos below clearly show. The Natron Tanzania is a breeding area of the over 2.5 million flamingos, which they choose as breeding ground for the fact that it is safe because of the caustic environment which is a barrier against various predators which would otherwise try to reach their nests on the seasonally forming evaporate islands. ![]()
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