I'm trying to get used to the traffic jams that I create
when I do these pieces to camera.
I hate it when people queue up behind me as if I've seen a leopard.
I haven't seen a leopard, I'm just talking to you guys!
So here I am, I'm sitting in the middle of nowhere
in the grasslands of South Africa and today
I want to talk about Soft Skills, the Soft Skills around
wildlife photography.
I'm on the not so sunny plains and grasslands
of Africa today and I'm loving it because
I've got scattered clouds, some of my favourite
conditions for photographing wildlife
and it's not just because it's cool and not so hot
out here and the flies have gone, that I like it.
It's also because the animals do more in these conditions.
They get out, they're not hiding under bushes
trying to avoid the flies and stay cool.
The other reason I like it is the beautiful
warm shadows that you get as the
sunlight scatters across the clouds
and we get that change in light, that play in light
across the scenes and the wildlife that we encounter.
So it's great! It's great conditions today.
And I'm hoping to use that to show you
Some of the techniques that I like to use when I come out
to photograph wildlife.
So I've found my first subject today and
it was a rufous naped lark or it IS a Rufous naped lark.
and I love these animals
these little birds.
They are, to me, they are the sound of Africa
or this region of Africa, in summertime. They make a beautiful
melodic call perched high on a
bush or exposed branch
and shout it out to the world.
While they're doing that, they flick their wings
in a beautiful display. So you can drive around and you hear these
Rufous-naped larks it's always worth stopping and trying to find
one to photograph because they are actually quite beautiful birds.
Now this one is perfectly placed
because, not only does he have this soft
beautiful light falling on him but
he's got a dark treeline behind him
which I've managed to place him in front of and separate
the bird from the background.
Can you hear that?
[CHIRPING]
That sort of chirping noise?
That is a Zitting cisticola
and it's flying around
in circles about 15 or 20m off the ground
So you'd have to look up in the air to see him
trying to attract a mate. Another African sound of summer.
I'm sitting and waiting and
There's nothing here.
Why and I doing it?
If you can see out there, you'll know why. I'm in a cool
spot. I'm in a really nice environment to
try and capture a photograph of something.
And you don't get this pink grassland
anywhere else in South Africa except this
particular spot and to a lot of people it may
seem
wrong to have pink grassland. It's not grass but
it's a weed. It's an invasive species
of plant called Pom-Pom Weed.
And some people would say it's ugly
But, if you put an animal in that weed
In that sort of,
field of pink. It's unusual.
It's really odd. So
there's a herd of Zebra over there. Zebra again
and I'm gonna sit here and wait.
and see what happens. I've got time.
If they wander into this weed. Into this field of weed
and come closer to me, it could make for
an awesome picture.
So, sitting and waiting
at good locations for photographs might sound like
a strange thing to do because normally what you do is you find the animal
and then you try and put that animal in nice light
or in a nice situation but you can do it the other way round too.
You can actually wait at a good location and wait for an animal
to come in to it
and take a picture of that. As I've said wildlife photography
is all about patience and waiting.
It's about putting your animals, your species
you subjects, at the right place
at the right time, in the right light.
So I'm driving off now looking for something else but it reminded me
of another tip and this is quite a good one
It's quite easy to follow.
Basically what you want to do on a game drive
is plan your route so that the sun stays on your left
most of the time. It's not always easy to do
but if you can do it, what it means is that you
can photograph out of the right side of the car, the drivers side
in my case and the passenger can be in the back also
photographing out of the window there.
What that means is that generally
any animals you encounter or birds you encounter
scenes that you encounter are going to be front lit
or side lit by the low hanging sun
particularly in the evening or the morning or pretty much
all day in winter time in South Africa because of the latitude that we are at.
So, if you can plan your route don't just drive
in and drive around and drive anywhere.
You need to sit down, maybe look at a map
and figure at what time you are gonna be at various places
and try and keep that sun on your left
and drive down those roads
to try and find the animals that you want to photograph.
Pretty simple but
quite a good way to ensure that the lighting is good
for most of the photographs that you get.
One of the things that we need to do as wildlife photographers is actually
to find the animals that we want to photograph. They're not like fashion models
that show up
hopefully on time.
These are secretive creatures that want to go about their business
without being seen or worse, eaten.
So finding them can be a bit of a problem.
Now there's two general schools of thought about this.
One is to drive around quite quickly and just stop
at everything that everybody else sees and that works really well for
cat sightings
because typically there's a
throughput of traffic at cat sightings. As someone leaves someone else arrives
and generally you'll
see a cat like that. So you might have to drive quite large distances
to see it
The other school of thought which I like is to drive much slower.
I'm talking 10 or 15kmh I mean this is
extreme slow driving and the reason I like
this, particularly in summer, is that it can introduce us to
to many more abundant types of wildlife
You'll drive around an area, a promising area
really slowly and you'll see little things
like Dwarf mongoose, honey badgers, maybe a caracal
You might actually see something like a leopard that's lying up in a tree
that you wouldn't otherwise see unless someone else had
seen it crossing the road first.
So these type of encounters are typical of
slow driving. When you drive around quickly
you tend to find animals
that are large or that other people stop at. Things like elephant,
giraffes, rhinos, buffalo's
and you might think, well that's all the good stuff. I contend that
no, it isn't all the good stuff.
The good stuff is hidden under a bush
and you drive past it
perhaps, without seeing it. Something like a serval or a caracal
or even something a simple as a
a vlei rat or
Brandt's whistling rat. Some cool little creature
you might never
otherwise have seen.
I'm sitting here with a large white
he's about 100 or 200m away
and ambling downhill and I wanted to talk
positioning. Positioning is really important
in wildlife photography because all too often what we do is
we see an animal, it's on the side of the road just up ahead and we want to
get really close to it. As close as possible so we can snap a picture
But what often happens when you do that is
the animals gets startled, it gets frightened
, it turns its back on you and starts walking further
into to the bush. So you end up with a lot of backside shots
which are not the greatest, let's face it.
There's a better way to do these things.
Typically we've got a decent focal length
on our cameras so we don't need to go right
up close to that animal to get a decent picture of it.
What we want is a photograph of the animal
behaving in a natural way or doing something interesting
that's not
in tune with being frightened by your vehicle.
So if you stop a good distance away
that's the first thing. Don't go too close, stop a good distance
away from the animal
and try and start photographing from further back.
Then, what you can do, is think about where that animal wants to go
and what it wants to do and try and position your vehicle
where it's going maybe at a resource like a waterhole
or something like that. Go and position yourself, maybe at a road its gonna cross.
and then wait.
and eventually that animal will probably come out where you thought it was going to come out.
and you can get an awesome picture of it doing something natural
in its own space and in its own time
without being frightened of you!
Right guys, it's getting dark. Too dark to video, too dark to film
too dark to photograph and I'm HUNGRY!
So, please, if you like this video HIT that like button
SMASH that subscribe button
and I'll see you soon.