Getting Dirty!! (In a photographic sense!!).

Wildlife photography has never been so popular. In itself, this has many advantages with the development of better cameras, better lenses and all manner of photographic gadgets.

Conversely it means also that there is a lot of great photographic material out there in both social and printed media. It has probably never been harder to establish a “brand”, or reputation, as a great wildlife photographer. We are lucky in Southern Africa that we are blessed with photographic opportunity at every turn with the remarkable array of flora and fauna that we have on our doorstep, so much so that we don’t need to spend $000’s traveling to remote destinations to get the images of a lifetime.

With a little thought and imagination we can all produce wildlife imagery of the highest order in our local parks and game reserves, the secret lies in developing your technique to capture images that offer something different to other photographers out there. For example, how many unflattering photographs do we all see of animal and birds shot out of the window of a car in the Kruger Park, camera pointed downwards and with no thought for the environment in which the animal lives? These images might be nice keepsakes, but in many ways these images look the same as those shot in captivity and really lack punch. Far better to look for the interest value in an image and try and capture action from a different angle such as the shot of the Egyptian Goose below:

A simple solution is to try and shoot at the eye level of your subject. Whilst this can of course prove difficult to achieve with larger and more dangerous species, it’s easy enough to achieve with the majority of animal species and birds (especially working from bird hides) and the only inconvenience will be dirty, dusty clothing. A small price to pay for a knock out image good enough to grace the pages of Africa Geographic! Lazy photographers will just point and shoot from the window of the vehicle, and yes, on occasions they might get lucky but more often than not, they will just get an ordinary mug shot of no real quality.

Get down in the dirt and you enter the world of your subject, and see it from their eye level. After a while they will adjust to your being there and you might even get some interaction with them, or at the very least you will catch the light in their eye as they stare down the barrel of your lens. In my view, strong eye contact with the subject is what sets an image out from the rest of the pack. Sometimes you just don’t have the action of a lion kill, or an eagle swooping down on it’s prey, to give you that picture of a lifetime. But with a bit of legwork you can definitely find something out there that will be a worthy portfolio shot. Give it a try next time you are out in the field and, if nothing else, it’s a great deal more fun!!