Increasingly, as a filmmaker,
it really does matter that the films matter.
I think initially I was just like, "I just want to work and film wildlife,"
because that's what I want to do and of course that's still what I want to do.
I want to film in the natural world, but I...
Wouldn't it be great to make a difference? Wouldn't it be great to inspire people?
That would be an amazing outcome.
When I was in my late teens I was working and living in Tanzania and I met a BBC film crew...
...who were passing through and it was that amazing sort of light bulb moment.
Where I was… ‘oh you could do that as a job.'
It never occurred to me, not to be a wildlife camera woman.
I know how to frame stuff. It's instinctive.
It just comes into the frame and I know when it's right and I know when it works...
...and I get very happy.
A great friend of mine Richard Moss - an incredibly talented artist and filmmaker,
he says beauty is the sharpest tool in the box, and I totally agree with him,
because I think you can make your point, as long as you're telling a story, and it's not gratuitous,
you can make people really feel.
Nature does what nature does and we're not there to intervene,
we're there to record it truthfully and not have any impact on it,
which is why, again, I think I like being a long lens camerawoman because you're removed.
You're observing, you're not...You know that you are not influencing the behaviour in any way.
And I really like that.
I've seen some heartbreaking, heartbreaking things.
I've seen a cheetah mother being tossed by a Grant's gazelle. She died.
Two days later, her three cubs died. I couldn't intervene.
I told the scientists about it because that's their job, right?
My job is not there to get involved, my job is to record it faithfully.
Pretty much every wildlife shoot has exactly the same constraints,
which is: there will be a moment that you have to cover and it's not enough to have one lens.
You have to have a zoom, an ultra-zoom, that will get you the different ranges of shot size.
Because it’s no good just having a mid-shot - it’s not going to carry it​.
So you need that big detail, you need the eyes, paws, whatever it might be,
but you also need that big wide.
We want an ultra zoom that’s fast, that holds focus, that’s pinsharp to the edges...
...and that really allows you to get in close when you’re far away.
Because the whole business of nature filmmaking is you’re usually far away
because you don’t want to, you know, influence anything that’s going on.
We pretty much all use different cameras, but we all used the same glass,
because Canon are the only people who make an ultra-zoom for wildlife that does enough.
The CN 20 is a beast, it’s amazing. I remember laying my hands on it for the first time...
...and it’s incredible because it’s got 180 rotation...
...if you’re pulling focus - you’ve got a cheetah running - you really have to move that barrel.
I know that when Canon were developing the 50 - 1000 they definitely spoke to wildlife people,
because it is a lens that is used almost exclusively.
And... I will take a 17 - 120 with me on a shoot, it’ll come out of the box maybe twice.
But I will be almost exclusively on that 50 - 1000, well it goes to 1500,
because that’s the one, it’s the work horse.
It’s the one that lets me get the sequence.
The only advantage men have over us is they can grow beards in the cold.
I’m glib about it... it’s very serious, there needs to be more women doing what I do.
I think the more they see people like me doing it, the more normal it will become.