Magical Moments and Nature as Art

It’s amazing how sometimes you read something and think damn, that’s exactly what I wanted to say!

Karine Aigner’s guest post from yesterday not only included some of the most amazing Wild Dog images I have seen but also hit home with the down to basics truth that a lot of us feel is something we knew deep down but most of the times either forget or ignore.  It is all too easy to be a drive by shooter, as Karine calls it, and I must admit it is something that I have also been guilty of.  The Wild Dog image below is one of Karine’s images that she sees as a drive by shot.  Not bad for a very normal Wild Dog image but nothing compared to what she created by taking time to wait and look for her images.

I would like to believe that I have moved past the shoot as much of everything with as high a frame rate as possible and it is all too easy to blame your guests or people with you for not getting the shot .  All just excuses.

Make the time.   Go out into the field again and agin.  Go on our own.  Go with other photographers.  The bottom-line is that you have to do something to get images that are different.  You need to want to take images that are different.  Images that are better.

On the one side you will see and photograph magical moments.  Moments that nature will share with you if you are patient enough to hang around.  If you are passionate enough to hang around.  This image of a young female leopard jumping into a tree to go and retrieve her kill was one of those moments from the last few days.  It’s not a technically perfect shot but it show a small glimpse into the nature of Africa’s most elusive cats.

There will then always be times where you are sitting with a subject that, at the time, is just not doing anything. Lions tend to do that quite well and while we were patiently waiting for the big cat to wake up I shot a few portraits using the light as a guide.  The early morning light filled in the one side of the lion’s face with a very strong shadow creating some serious contrast in the scene.  To me this was always going to be a dramatic monochrome portrait.  Nature as art.

By simply increasing the contrast and removing a few spots from the background I was able to create the image I ‘saw’ when we sat with this male on a cold winter’s morning.

This weekend I hope to work through a whole bucketload of images that I got while shooting with a few other photographers this weekend.  Lots of new images.  Lots of moments captured.  You might have seen that I went shooting with Kerry de Bruyn and Morkel Erasmus so if you are keen to see more images from a great few days of photography check out their blogs as well.  Great stuff!

Before you leave the office for the weekend make sure to pop in to the Bush Warriors website to see some of the latest images that have been added in the Photo of the Day contest.  By entering your images you can win autographed copy of Wildlife Photography by Internationally acclaimed award winning wildlife photographer Uwe Skrzypczak.  Here are two of the latest images that have been entered into the competition.  Click on either of the images to check out more of the entries!

Have a great weekend and I will be back on Monday.

Gerry