Chile — Torres del Paine

Torres del Paine is a national park in Chilean Patagonia, named for the three granite towers that stand over it. For a photographer it is one destination and one animal: the puma. Nowhere else is a big cat this consistently visible in open country, in daylight, at a distance you can work with.

The reason is the guanaco. The park holds them in numbers, the pumas live off them, and both stay out on open hillside and lake shore where there is nothing to hide either of them. Tracking is done on foot with local trackers who know the individual cats — which is why the pictures on this page have names on them rather than a species. Amarga and her kittens, working a ridgeline. Dania stalking guanaco.

It photographs nothing like a tiger reserve. There is no vehicle and no track to stay on; you walk, you wait, and the light is Patagonian — long, low and changeable, with the massif behind almost every frame.