You can only shoot what you see.
All too often wildlife photographers, or people photographing wildlife, get too catch up in the never ending quest to create perfect images.
Sounds strange?
Think about it. You have a great sighting out in the wild. Take what you think is a great photograph. Then people comment about the little piece of grass in front of the zebra’s nose.
Unnecessary?
I sometimes think so.
The reality is that you can only shoot what you see. You cannot make your subject move from behind the grass. You cannot make the grass disappear.
Yeah, yeah I know you can clone the grass out or do some or other fancy Photoshop trick to try and get that perfect image but the goal is still to get as much as possible correct in the camera.
By all means, if you are out to create a fine art type image lose the grass. Remove the tree in the background that distracts your eye from the subject.
What I am referring to is wildlife photography. Real wildlife photography which shows nature as it is. And you know what? In the wild, sometimes there is grass in front of animals.
This is what I saw yesterday morning.
This young male, part of a pride of eleven, has just finished killing a zebra.
Yes it is gruesome. But is is nature. Lions have to kill to survive.
Yes there are distracting elements in the foreground. But it shows the story. The story of the rest of the pride feeding off the zebra.
Yes there are grasses in front of his face. But I can only shoot what I see.
I am not very fond of photographing predators on a kill, personal choice, but this image illustrates what I wanted to say. It is a photograph that shows the raw beauty that is nature. It is a real wildlife photograph.
Short version?
Shoot what you see out there. Don’t let a little piece of grass stop you from photographing nature. (Or keep you busy for too long during your post processing!).
As always, tomorrow is guest blogger Thursday and I am very pleased to welcome Steve Bailey. Steve was born in Liverpool England, moving to Africa at the young age of ten, always had an interest in photography and eventually studied Graphics/Photography obtaining a City and Guilds Diploma in Graphic Reproduction. Steve spent 25 years in Zimbabwe before transferring to Cape Town South Africa were he still lives today.
Make sure to join Steve tomorrow for his guest post ‘Panic‘. Great article. Great images!
I’ll see ya on Friday. Go out there and shoot what you see!
Gerry
This post was originally syndicated from
Site : Photo-Africa.
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Tags: lion, photography tips, syndicated
