Photographing Elephants

The first image Beverly ever published in the National Geographic Magazine, over 30 years ago, was a shot (on film) called ‘Elephant Wake,’ as a feature story. It was about the then-unknown mourning rituals that elephants display. We have both been photographing elephants ever since!

With World Elephant Day just behind us and this week’s message dedicated to photography, I wanted to talk about how we have photographed elephants over the years, some techniques and methods we both use, and lessons learned the hard way.

Taking images of large grey animated lumps can be tricky, especially at midday when the exposure difference is a dozen ‘f‘stops.

To start, we like to get down low, where we can, and aim our cameras up at these impressive beasts, visually honouring them. This often gives you a background of the sky, and that contrast is hard to control, so we often fill the frame, getting rid of an annoying white sky.

Sometimes we push the exposure by compensating as one would for a black cat on a white carpet to get some detail in the faces and use the light to reach into their eyes to see those expressions, or again, risk a blob against a perfectly exposed sky.

They generally move at a sedate slow pace but don’t be deceived; they are actually moving fast, covering the ground in giant steps, so reducing the shutter speed and following them, turning the motion into a blur, can give your image ‘action’ where there is very little.

When they challenge each other and fight, I often bring the shutter down even further and risk getting a frame of shapes and textures, which is really what elephants are anyway.

I like to get symbolic close-ups of tusks and eyes, trunk hairs and details in a minimalistic way, just the parts of an elephant that symbolise them. We both generally don’t shoot mid-shots unless they are of action like an elephant charging or chasing lions or painted dogs. Mostly though, we have fun and experiment and don’t take a risky blurred shot as a serious failure.

Photography is part ‘capturing’ an image, part enjoying the creative process of ‘making’ an image, so the ‘rules’ are really only guidelines from which to start. But there is one rule we abide by. If we have inadvertently disturbed an elephant and it charges (as you will see in the video), we don’t see that as a great photographic opportunity, that we see it as a failure - our failure to be invisible. Sometimes it does go wrong, and we apologise, but we NEVER go out seeking to get a charge on camera.

Stress has unknown impacts on animals’ health and even survival, and elephants deserve better treatment from us, even us photographers that use cameras, not guns.

[ Ссылка ]

свернуть