A big shout out to Morkel Erasmus for his guest post yesterday. Some amazing images and it’s great to see all the positive comments. If you have not yet check it out click here and then leave Morkel a comment with your thoughts! Great post!
As I was looking through Morkel’s images and some of the images I shot during the last few days I started thinking about what it is in a scene that compels us to click the shutter. The options are endless yet a lot of the times people just shoot one type of shot. If you are lucky enough to spend time with animals in the wild take your time, look around and shoot the entire scene.
I captured the image above a few days ago as we sat watching around 12 Wild Dogs feed on a female Kudu they pulled down about 10 minutes earlier. To say that there was a lot of action is an understatement as the Dogs fed, played around and chased a Brown Hyena all over the place. So where do you start? What do you photograph first?
The ideal, and this is only if you have time, is to start wide and then go closer. First get a shot that shows the environment and sets the scene. From there start looking at the various participants in the scene and then, once you have a nice portrait of the animal look for abstracts. Look for stories within the frame that can fill the details or give a clearer vision to the story you witnessed.
The image on the right might at first glance seem quite brutal and dramatic but just take moment. The focus is obviously the kudu skull but the addition of the Wild Dog’s leg in the frame tell the story. By adding the portrait above, which might come across as quite harmless and innocent, to this image you are start getting an idea of what happened. Of the various ‘players’ that were involved in the drama.
I will be looking at this concept in a lot more detail next week as well as how to effectively crop your wildlife images. Wildlife photography, at it’s core, is about telling a story, about documenting nature. When you go out into the field this weekend, try to photograph to tell the story. Show the story.
Time for me to get going. Heading out into he filed with a new toy, well kinda. I got my hands on a Nikon 80-200 2.8 lens and I am very keen to see what it can do. This morning I shot of a few shots with it and first impression is pretty good. It is the old push-pull focussing mechanism and I am quite liking it. Early next year I will most likely be getting the Nikon 70-200 2.8 VRII so until that time I will play around with this one. Time allowing I will post a few images and thoughts on this lens during the weekend.
If you need more reading material for the weekend you can also check out a blog post on black and white wildlife photography I did for AfricaFreak by clicking here. From the same site you can also register to download the e-book Safari Tips 101 which I wrote about here.
I will be back on Monday but for now go out and photograph a wildlife ‘story’. 
See ya soon!
Gerry
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