Last Updated Friday March 7, 2008, EST 7:23 AM
It was already late, 10 a.m. on the Kenyan wild preserve Masai Mara. But John Reiter, a Mahwah photographer, had been stalking a lone zebra for three hours -- and he wasn't ready to give up his prey.
"I was hoping that three lionesses half an hour away would eventually go after it, because it was injured," he said.
The odds were against Reiter, who had hoped for a rare photographing experience. Lionesses usually hunt in the wee hours of the morning. "Typically when you go out on safari in the morning, you don't see the hunt," Reiter said. "You see the aftermath. You see lionesses feeding."
The zebra had stood still for three hours, apparently trying not to move its injured shoulder. Then it suddenly began trotting -- away from Reiter.
"My driver said, 'It's over,' " Reiter recalled. "I asked him to go a little bit farther. By luck, the zebra turned toward us."
Reiter captured the kill in a series of photographs, three of which are part of his exhibit at the Saddle River Valley Cultural Center. He clicked away from the open top of a Land Rover at eight frames a second.
His success as a photographer has everything to do with patience, Reiter said.
"Most people are not patient enough to wait around for whatever it is that should happen," he said. "They leave, and 10, 15 minutes afterward is when it happens."
Reiter, 59, certainly knows how to be patient. Despite a love affair with photography that began more than 35 years ago, he waited until he was 53 to retire from his day job and become a full-time photographer.
"It was part of my retirement plan," said Reiter, who graduated with a degree in marketing from Fairleigh Dickinson University. "My dad died pretty young, when he was 48, of a massive heart attack. I didn't have any indication that would happen to me, but I wanted to leave in time so that I could do what I enjoy."
Nowadays, Reiter spends his time teaching photography, selling prints and plotting his next excursions. He's already photographed the silverback gorillas of Rwanda, famous for being the subject of Dian Fossey's study. There, he almost had his tripod and camera stolen by a frisky young gorilla, and he played submissive when a dominant male beat his chest.
"It's nothing like going to the zoo," he said. "There's nothing between you and the wildlife."
Japan's snow monkeys and China's giant pandas may be next on the list.
"I want to get to do the polar bears before the ice melts," Reiter said.
E-mail: shih@northjersey.com
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