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At the Living with Wildlife Photography Competition awards in Midrand, I found myself drawn to photographs that showed more than animals in their natural surroundings. They captured moments involving the people who share their environment, from schoolchildren casually walking past an elephant to a herder comfortably strolling alongside three cheetahs.
Now in its second year, the Living with Wildlife Photography Competition is organised by Jamma Conservation & Communities. The 2026 competition shortlisted 34 photographs across three categories, exploring everyday encounters with wildlife, the challenges of living alongside wild animals and the role communities play in conservation. The awards were held in Midrand on Tuesday 6 October, in association with the Oppenheimer Generations Research & Conservation Conference.
One still that stayed with me was Our Elephant Neighbours by Kenyan photographer, Anthony Ochieng Onyango. The overall winning image shows schoolchildren walking along a dusty road as an elephant crosses behind them. When I spoke to Anthony, he explained how he came across the scene and why he felt compelled to capture it.
A walk home with an elephant in the background
Anthony took the photograph at Lake Jipe, on the Kenya-Tanzania border, where elephants frequent areas inhabited by local residents.
While exploring the area, he spotted children returning from school as elephants made their way back towards the park. The children began running past one of the animals, while an adult stood nearby watching its movements. Anthony stopped to capture the moment.
“The children in this image are not running from the elephant. They are running past it,” he explains.
The distinction is important. The children were giving the elephant space, while the adult waited for it to pass before guiding them along. Rather than depicting a dramatic confrontation, the image captures how people respond to an animal moving around their surroundings.
Anthony is a wildlife ecologist and conservation photographer, and for him these moments challenge the idea that the importance of wild animals is solely because of tourist attraction. He wants people to recognise their significance to the communities with whom they share living space.
He also challenges the perception that wildlife belongs to the government rather than the people who live alongside it daily. He believes communities need to recognise the value of these animals and take responsibility for protecting them.
At Lake Jipe, he says, the relationship between people and elephants has developed over generations, with residents making room for the animals in the places where they live and work.
His win also arrived at an unexpected moment. Two days earlier, he had survived a life-threatening accident in which he lost all his cameras. Receiving the winning notification reaffirmed that his work mattered, which encouraged him to return to the field with renewed commitment.
The realities of living with wildlife
While Anthony’s photograph centres on an encounter, Simon Kariuki’s Building a Safer Future Alongside Elephants shows the work involved in reducing the risks wildlife can pose to communities.
The snap captures community members constructing a gabion wall around a school at Lake Jipe, with an elephant lingering in the background. Pupils often walk to the lake to collect water, sharing the route with elephants. A new pump now supplies water directly to the school, and the wall provides an additional barrier around the grounds.
Nathan Mbithi’s Crossed Paths captures a less expected meeting. Three cheetah brothers, Wazi, Whitey and Wajanja, rest in the grass beside a fence as livestock graze nearby. The animals were identified as cheetahs from Amboseli, hundreds of kilometres away.
As the brothers rested beside the road, a herder passed with his cattle, sheep and goats. The moment brings predators and potential prey into close proximity, showing how the paths of wild animals and local communities can intersect.
Seeing wildlife differently
What stayed with me about Anthony’s winning photograph was the adult waiting for the elephant to pass. The children are easy to notice, but that quieter detail adds another dimension to the scene. It shows someone assessing the situation and waiting for the right moment to move.
The photograph leaves the viewer with a question that runs across all three images. What does sharing space with wildlife actually require of the people who live alongside it?
These three photographs are just a glimpse of the stories unfolding where people and wildlife share the same space. Take a look at the other shortlisted photographs from The 2026 Living with Wildlife Photography Competition.
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