When photo-eye asked Brandt about his recent work, he said that “The photos, darker in tone than previous work, reflect the further ongoing diminishing of the natural world of Africa.” This image features a dove on the left, and a sea eagle on the right. BE WARNED: these images may be slightly disturbing.īrandt posed the animals as part of his photography. Photographer Nick Brandt participated in a 2011 photo-eye blog which featured his images from the alkaline part of the lake.

The waters’ alkalinity tested somewhere between pH 9 and 10.5, dangerously basic due to years of volcanic ash spreading sodium carbonate throughout the Great Rift valley.Īlthough the lake is home to thousands of flamingos that nest near its waters and feed on a diet of alkaline tilapia, any other animals that make the mistake of swimming there will die and become petrified statues. Unless you’re a species that’s adapted to extremely harsh conditions, Lake Natron is a difficult environment to survive. Lake Natron, named for the compound that occurs naturally in its waters, looks like a description directly out of Dante’s Divine Comedy: a black, sullen swamp where the cruel and vindictive meet their fate, although the birds who perish there could hardly be labeled as such. If you’re interested, take a look at his book “Across the Ravaged Land” here.The New Scientist reports that a bizarre lake in northern Tanzania is turning animals into calcified statues. In order to take this impressive series of pictures, he placed the animals in the living positions we see in the photos after finding their little bodies perfectly preserved on the shoreline. This lake is named Lake Natron, and the following incredible images have been captured by photographer Nick Brandt, that documented these calcified bird carcasses in his new book. There is a lake in Tanzania, East Africa, that due to its extremely high alkalinity and a temperature that sometimes rises to 60 ☌, turns into salt statues almost every animal that has been immersed in it. That’s probably the image that would come to mind to the 99% of us, but prepare to change this fairy tale scenery you’re used to see: I bet you visualized a scene with fresh water and blue skies, perhaps with birds flying around and a number of fishes under the sea level. Which is the first image that comes up to your mind if I say the word “Lake”?

Lake natron animals statues