FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WORLD-FIRST AR WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR
PRIZE BRINGS THE WILD TO LIFE FOR SAFARI SELFIES
WHEREVER YOU ARE
- Pioneering app brings wild animals to life with your smartphone
- Snap them in your world then add to social media to win African safari
- Contest raises funds for animal charities in Africa and Americas
Nanyuki, Kenya – August 21, 2017 – A world-first competition launching today turns everyone with a smartphone into a wildlife photographer wherever they are, bringing ferocious fun to funding conservation and giving players a chance to win a safari to Africa.
Safari Central, from gaming group Internet of Elephants, uses data from animal protection organisations to create Augmented Reality (AR) versions of real animals including elephants, jaguars, and lemurs, in a free app that players download to their phones.
There they can unleash their creativity to take photos of their favourite animals wherever they are. A virtual rhino might be snapped charging down the Champs Elysees in Paris, or a pangolin starting a climb over the Sydney Harbour Bridge, or a grizzly bear barging between tables at a streetside cafe in Chicago.
A sample photo of Lola the Rhino in Augmented Reality
Players enter their favourite images to a photo contest on social media using the hashtag #RewildYourWorld. The competition runs to October 7th, and features weekly challenges to capture all of the six species involved – grizzly bears, indri lemurs, black rhinoceroses, African elephants, pangolins, and jaguars – as well as an overall Augmented Reality Wildlife Photographer of the Year winner.
“The grand vision is to get millions of people around the world to think about wildlife for five minutes every day, and think about it positively,” says Gautam Shah, founder of Internet of Elephants, the initiators and makers of Safari Central.
“Conservation suffers from so much bad news and gloomy images. People just want to turn the page or change the channel. But there are more than two billion people who play online or computer games. What if by playing our games we can get even a fraction of them to be addicted to wildlife? That could be a real game-changer for conservation.”
It’s free to download the app and to enter your first photographs into the competition. Players can then opt to buy more ‘photo film’, and those micro payments accumulate and go to the six conservation organisations partnering with Internet of Elephants: Chicago Zoological Society at Brookfield Zoo, Conservation International, Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Space for Giants, Tswalu Foundation, and The Institute for the Conservation of Neotropical Carnivores – “Pro-Carnivores”.
Each organisation gave Internet of Elephants data and images on actual animals that they research and monitor. The game designers then used that information to create virtual versions of those very animals for the photo competition.
The black rhino, Lola, was orphaned and rescued by rangers at Ol Pejeta until she was released back into the wild in 2014. “We are absolutely thrilled about this project because it is an extremely clever way to get a lot of people interested in conservation really quickly. The fact that this App features real animals that have real stories will make a huge difference in raising interest in our projects,” said Richard Vigne, Ol Pejeta Conservancy’s CEO.
Safari Central’s AR animals will go on to feature in a full Internet of Elephants game scheduled for release for the summer of 2018.
It will use GPS data of the animals’ movements across their territories – a jaguar patrolling the Brazilian rainforest, perhaps, or an elephant browsing Kenya’s savannah – and overlay that to selected world cities. Players will then track and try to spot the animals’ virtual twins, picking up insights into their behaviour that give them tactical advantages.
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Notes to Editors
To learn more and download the app please go to www.safaricentralgame.com
Contact us
Internet of Elephants Gautam Shah gautam@internetofelephants.com +254 715 277 453
Ol Pejeta Conservancy Elodie Sampere elodie.sampere@
Links Safari Central | Internet of Elephants
Images are available royalty free for features regarding Safari Central. Please find a selection of low and high resolution images through our press page.
About Ol Pejeta Conservancy
Ol Pejeta Conservancy is a 90,000-acre wildlife conservancy located in central Kenya. Ol Pejeta is the largest black rhino sanctuary in east Africa, home to the last three northern white rhinos on the planet and is the only place in Kenya to see chimpanzees. Ol Pejeta also integrates livestock with wildlife – both as a means to earn revenue for conservation but also as a rangeland management tool.