Jan
25
Everyone has their favourite photos, and this is a sentimental one of mine.
Nkuringo was an old silverback of the first mountain gorilla group we visited in 2008, the Nkuringo Group at South Bwindi in Uganda. There were sixteen in the group then, but the leadership belonged to another younger silverback called Safari.
Nkuringo was the last of the group we spent time with, of some fifteen minutes, and was stripping the vines of leaves, not much bothered by his visitors. He was very old and seemed to have an injury to his mouth which we later learned had obtained in a fight two years earlier, leaving him slightly paralysed and making it difficult to eat.
If anyone still thinks that gorillas have the persona of a 1933 style King Kong, then they’d soon be persuaded otherwise by this guy.
Sadly, Nkuringo died of natural causes in April 2008 aged forty-nine, just six weeks after our visit.
Taken using a Nikon D300 with a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens at 200mm, f/3.3, 1/125 and ISO 560.
Jan
17
Cameras never lie, but a computer can
Maybe I’ve two of three qualities required for a little premature success. I can take above average pictures, am an above average retoucher, but unfortunately I lack an important third quality, which is the appetite for fakery.
I’ve a long shelf of books by wildlife photographers and it’s a collection I’ve often sought inspiration from. But sadly I’ll be putting a couple of those away now, now I’ve seen that of the photographs within, many aren’t photographs at all. They’re manipulated images, or they’re composites — where two or more photographs are combined to create an image that existed only in the maker’s mind in the pretence that they’re photographs.
There are many photographers whose work is superb without requiring such embellishment, but unfortunately there also seems to be a number who appear to deem themselves not good enough, so have to add extra elements to their photographs to be competitive. Only they’re not photographers now, they’re digital artists, for want of a name. Fair play though, but if you’re a digital artist then you must say so, just don’t have the world think you’re a photographer.
It’s not about what they’re DOING that irks me, it’s what they’re NOT doing, and that’s being unclear about their affiliation by not declaring their vocation properly, or indeed at all. It’s not illegal, but it’s deceptive, and in the minds of many it’s unethical.
You may write of your profession, your cameras and lenses, your understanding of your subjects, not to mention your skills in locating them. And you might write about the light, whether to shoot at ƒ2.8 or ƒ5.6, or the best focal lengths to use. But by not mentioning your Mac with the big processor, your compositing skills of adding falling rain or snow, more zebra to a herd, or more dust for drama, is deceptive. Deliberate omission of the whole truth is deception.
You’re afraid to show your hand because your integrity may suffer or you may not sell so many. You may also no longer be considered a photographer of exotic wildlife but instead, of an image maker more akin to a digital David Shepherd. It’s a shame that all your bona fide photographs will now be suspect on the evidence of your altered ones. And it’s a shame too, that bona fide photographers might be judged on the prescence of a suspect few like yourselves. You’re also taking from an unsuspecting public who believe they’re admiring a great talent – deceiving those who fund your profession.
I recently spent £40 on a large book, a wonderful book full of wildlife photographs taken by an experienced wildlife photographer who I’d long admired. It purports to be a book on wildlife photography. Indeed it’s text speaks of a love of photography and the animals photographed, but now I know – only some of those images really existed before the camera or the photographer.
Those images were largely or in part created on a computer in an office, combining ordinary images to make better ones. They existed only imaginatively and subsequently probably exist as a layered image file on a hard drive. Those images were never played out on the savannah or ever existed in a camera.
So I was misled, duped into thinking that it was a book of wonderful photography.
I’ve been taking photographs for twenty-five years, wildlife for five. I’ve also nineteen years of digital retouching behind me and I’ve never been tempted to alter a wildlife image. It just does not sit with me, it’s akin to photojournalism where the genre requires an accuracy and honesty of the recording of the scene before the camera. If I ever do choose to remove a leaf or branch for the sake of the image I’ll say so, and keep the integrity of my other pictures intact.
There’s no complaint here about manipulating an image to make it better, or of combining two images to make it one. But don’t call it photography, or pretend it to be because that would be a lie.
If you’re a digital artist then for the sake of photography say so. And if you’re a photographer, don’t be afraid to claim yourself as one.
Jan
16
“We’ve just one minute remaining” said our guide when I took this photo, the last and one of my favourites of a one hour session. Then, just as I’d taken the picture and become distracted while securing a footing, he came quickly forward, surprising us and nearly knocking me sideways. Stepping shin deep into mud to avoid him, he brushed by, splitting our group of eight on the way through. He didn’t look back. We were ignored, but then he knows that the mountain belongs to him.
This was a previsualised picture, from the water to his pose. Before we’d arrived in Rwanda to visit mountain gorillas, I was already hoping for rain. The rain would bring in some texture to his fur and brighten up the colors as water can do. Sure enough, on nearing the group after a two hour hike, it began to rain lightly. At a minute short of the hour, we found Kigoma some four metres in front, and all I needed was to move a little way to my right, and found myself with the picture I’d envisioned a few weeks earlier. Sometimes, luck pans out well if you look for it.
Kigoma is the second silverback of the Kwitonda Group, in the Parc des Volcans in Rwanda, which we visited in March 2008. Park rules stipulate that the maximum time spent with any one group is one hour per day.
Taken using a Nikon D300 with a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens at 95mm, f/3.3, 1/125 and ISO 1250.
It was protected with an Op-Tec rain sleeve.
Jan
10
Not wanting to miss Richmond Park with the recent snow cover, I arrived in time for the sunrise and made my way to the ponds near the centre to see if I can catch something bigger than this robin, ideally with antlers. There was plenty of ice and snow, but no deer, and by the time I got to the ponds the sun rose and soon enough the blue sky appeared.
I made do with this little red robin for a time, until two big unleashed dogs intervened. Later I found some deer, but I think the best pictures of that morning were of this little guy.
Taken using a Nikon D700 with a 300mm f/4.0 lens
with a 1.4 converter at 420mm, f/6.7, 1/350 and ISO 800.
Jan
02
One morning on the Masai Mara reserve, we encountered a lioness and her three cubs hauling a wildebeest carcass to cover. The kill was fresh, it was out in the open plain and the nearest cover of scrub was a mile distant.
So we watched as she hauled the carcass for some forty-five minutes until it was safe under cover from any other hungry scavengers. She had no help, not even from her cubs, who, just like children, tried everything they could to slow the process. They indulged in tug-o-war, and at one point even jumped on the dead antelope for a free ride.
This picture was taken at about her halfway point, while she paused for a minute to catch her breath.
Taken using a Nikon D300 with a 200-400 lens at 400mm, f/4.8, 1/1000 and ISO 200.
