Tanzania 2017
Storyteller: Terry Divyak, USA
What were the reasons for your travels? What compelled you to share your travels in a photo book?
I was traveling with my daughter and some guests to Tanzania on a photo safari for my company called Shutter Tours. As part of our travel package we offer a MILK book that includes not only photos we have taken on the trip of our guest experience, but we ask them to send us up to forty photos that we include as well. This way they have an heirloom quality book to remember their trip by and not merely photos on a hard drive.
What is your favorite image in the book and why?
My daughter Amanda was taking a photo of an elephant in the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. I had dreamed about bringing her for a couple of years and for her to experience an elephant with the perfect background in this magical place, is a memory that I'll always look back on.
What is your favorite story behind a single shot in the book?
The photos of the baby (above) and mother leopard (below) was a very unique experience. Our other travel mates had stayed back at the tented camp and Amanda and I wanted to go out for an afternoon game drive. We had been shooting since the early morning and my batteries were getting low in my camera. When we came upon the mother and baby in the grass, my camera died and I was forced to watch their interaction without my camera. Amanda was able to get about 50 photos before the light faded and it was one of those magical moments that few fathers and daughters get to experience. And it was my first sighting of a baby leopard.
What advice do you have for someone creating their first photo book?
I would suggest that when creating your first book that you use only quality images and have a friend help edit them if you are not comfortable doing so. Secondly, you’ll want to create some type of story line if they are travel photos and I find it best to go chronologically to help trigger memories of the trip.
I have created other books from our previous trips that people really love. I find the quality of MILK Books to be exactly what we need to help preserve those memories.
