Beyond the mundane
David Hay Jones
The recent discussion of landscape and wildlife photography has helped
me a lot. Some years back, when I wanted to get into fulltime wildlifing
and didn't know how, I followed advice from books. One such, from Art
Wolfe, was to hunt species. Paraphrasing Wolfe, unless you had thousands
of interesting species to your name, you'd never make it in fulltime
stock photography. So I went out and and photographed species. Then I
was more interested in the species than the impact of the resulting
photograph. If the background was a uniform colour, the animal sharp,
the exposure good and composition pleasing, I was happy.
After a year or so of that, all the pictures looked the same. They
were variations on a theme: bird in a pool; bird on a perch; fox in a
field; coyote in a desert. It was subject and background, competent
stuff, very pretty, but far from art and certainly not innovative and
creative as is the best landscape photography.
So how do you move on from hack-style shots of wildlife? That's a
constantly perplexing question. Here, I could easily do more landscape
photography because landscape is close to hand; I walk out the door and
am surrounded by it. But I am driven by the desire to do something
creative with birds and animals.
Lanting has moved wildlife photography along by getting away from
representational subject against background stuff. He injects mood into
his images; if the penguins are fuzzy, so what! I think Wolfe has done
good work with animals in movement and slow shutter speeds. We don't
need to see every barb of every feather; we don't need to every strand of
fur on the wolf's face.
Landscape photography's great acheivement, I think, is the treatment
of landscape as a canvas, giving us images far more enticing than the
scene itself. Wildlife photography does not often do this. Very few
wildlife photographers use animals to create shapes, patterns,
colours, images in their own right. I don't mean using animals to create
abstract photographs but portraying animals in ways that are beyond the
usual, beyond representational and documentary. How do you do that
without losing contact with wildlife photography altogether, without
getting into manipulation or filter-mania.
There's a market albeit dwindling, for pinsharp, conventional salmon
leaping into bears' jaws, herons in Florida, hummingbirds in Texas etc,
etc. But there's a whole field out there, call it art if you wish, of
wildlife photography which is waiting to be taken, which takes us far
beyond the guidebooks and image banks to which we love to contribute and
which pays our bills.
David
Don Baccus
In article <35838...@d2o31.telia.com>,
David Hay Jones <trv....@okkmokk.mail.telia.com> wrote:
>The recent discussion of landscape and wildlife photography has helped
>me a lot. Some years back, when I wanted to get into fulltime wildlifing
>and didn't know how, I followed advice from books. One such, from Art
>Wolfe, was to hunt species. Paraphrasing Wolfe, unless you had thousands
>of interesting species to your name, you'd never make it in fulltime
>stock photography. So I went out and and photographed species. Then I
>was more interested in the species than the impact of the resulting
>photograph. If the background was a uniform colour, the animal sharp,
>the exposure good and composition pleasing, I was happy.
> After a year or so of that, all the pictures looked the same. They
>were variations on a theme: bird in a pool; bird on a perch; fox in a
>field; coyote in a desert. It was subject and background, competent
>stuff, very pretty, but far from art and certainly not innovative and
>creative as is the best landscape photography.
> So how do you move on from hack-style shots of wildlife? That's a
>constantly perplexing question.
Not really, in my view. Wolfe's right about making sales, it is very
much a numbers game. I've kind of resisted the shotgun approach you
describe, though I fell into it last year when asked to provide photographs
for a field guide.
It's gotten so competitive, though, that the simple, competent stock
photos you describe are being replaced in stock agency files with much
higher quality stuff of the same species.
>Here, I could easily do more landscape
>photography because landscape is close to hand; I walk out the door and
>am surrounded by it. But I am driven by the desire to do something
>creative with birds and animals.
This is also why few nature photographers specialize simply in birds or
animals IF they want to make a living from their photography. Most
shoot EVERYTHING. Look at John Shaw. He's a competent bird, mammal,
flower, landscape, and macro photographer. More than competent, actually,
that's one reason why he's so highly respected.
This is why I so object to your earlier posts about status deriving
from effort. Sure, Brandenburg's status in the nature photography field
derives from his hard, laborious, wolf photography projects. I won't
deny that in his case, this hard work combined with excellent images
have resulted in widespread admiration for him.
Yet, John Shaw has taken very much the opposite approach and I think can
fairly be argued has higher status in the field. Certainly, he is
revered by most of his fellow professionals. In his case, he's achieved
this status not because of the effort he expends on his images (though
I'm sure some have required a great deal of effort), but because he's
such a damned good photographer who's mastered many of the sub-genres
of the field. He's one of the best landscape shooters around, one of
the best flower shooters around, one of the best bird and mammal
shooters around, and one of the best macro shooters around. He's just
one of the best. I have no doubt he could be good at any type of
photography he wanted to pursue.
> Lanting has moved wildlife photography along by getting away from
>representational subject against background stuff. He injects mood into
>his images; if the penguins are fuzzy, so what! I think Wolfe has done
>good work with animals in movement and slow shutter speeds. We don't
>need to see every barb of every feather; we don't need to every strand of
>fur on the wolf's face.
> Landscape photography's great acheivement, I think, is the treatment
>of landscape as a canvas, giving us images far more enticing than the
>scene itself. Wildlife photography does not often do this. Very few
>wildlife photographers use animals to create shapes, patterns,
>colours, images in their own right. I don't mean using animals to create
>abstract photographs but portraying animals in ways that are beyond the
>usual, beyond representational and documentary. How do you do that
>without losing contact with wildlife photography altogether, without
>getting into manipulation or filter-mania.
> There's a market albeit dwindling, for pinsharp, conventional salmon
>leaping into bears' jaws, herons in Florida, hummingbirds in Texas etc,
>etc. But there's a whole field out there, call it art if you wish, of
>wildlife photography which is waiting to be taken, which takes us far
>beyond the guidebooks and image banks to which we love to contribute and
>which pays our bills.
True enough, though I don't think the market's dwindling, actually, I
think the market's just saturated because the number of folks shooting
such subjects has exploded in the past two decades.
--
- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dho...@pacifier.com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, at http://donb.photo.net