Photographing elephants

One thing you learn very quickly about taking pictures of elephants is to grab three or four shots of every pose. Otherwise you are likely to end up with the picture on the left rather than the picture on the right. Elephants flap their ears constantly. It's one of the ways they regulate heat in those very large bodies, along with frequent dust baths and jumping into any available body of water. There's a large network of blood vessels in the ears and when blood flows there it's cooled by several degrees before returning to the body.