The Big Job

For professional photographers, no invitation is as freighted as "Why not come by and take some pictures?" Sounds innocent enough, but there's no telling where it might lead and how the trail will twist and turn.

For instance...

In August, 2008, Carol Stevenson, whose work includes landscape, portrait and documentary photography, was working on a project in Queensland, Australia, where she met up with a friend who's in the hotel business. He recommended her to a friend of his who was working at a boutique hotel in the area in which she'd soon be shooting. When she met him, it turned out they shared an interest in, and concern for, elephants.

"He had just come from being the manager of the Four Seasons Tented Camp in Thailand," Carol says. The Tented Camp is not only a resort hotel, it's also somewhat of an elephant refuge. On its grounds are elephants rescued from the streets of Bangkok and other cities in Thailand. The Tented Camp's former manager suggested that Carol might be interested in documenting the elephants, and he offered an introduction to the man who is the director of elephants for the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation (GTAEF), an organization that works on behalf of the welfare of Asian elephants.

As Carol made the connections and did the research, she found that in addition to the Tented Camp, another hotel, the Anantara Golden Triangle Resort, was also supporting the effort and providing land for the elephants. Carol also found that GTAEF and the hotels do more than just offer a safe haven.

In Thailand, bans on the traditional use of elephants for transportation and logging had left the mahouts—the elephant owners and handlers who depend on the elephants for their livelihoods—with few opportunities. "So they became beggars on the streets or tried to make a living through tourism," Carol says. Neither was a good situation for the elephants. "The GTAEF provides the mahouts with a complete replacement income and lifestyle so they don't have to beg on the streets.

The hotels provide, in fact, working camps for the elephants and the mahouts. "There are elephant treks with the tourists," Carol says, "and even mahout training—the tourists learn how to be mahouts; they learn how to get up on an elephant, and they're taught the commands. It's something the people love to do. And the elephants will get all the food and water they need, the mahouts get food for their families, a small salaries and their children attend school."