REMINISCENCES: This is MY Post!

If you are at all serious about your craft, you will have found out very early on in your journey that photography is very hard work. Another of the many lessons that I have learnt is to remain busy at photography, no matter what current circumstances or challenges confront you. For me, energy-sapping and zeal-enervating conditions include a lengthy lack of opportunity, a location that I would not have chosen as an ideal photographic destination (and yet find myself in for a particular reason) and a lack of the kind of light for which I had been hoping.

Travelling through a tiny private nature reserve (near Bela-Bela in the Limpopo Province of South Africa) several years ago, just after sunset, I came across a young Black-shouldered Kite perched on a spindly twig of a dead tree. Initially I drove past the bird. I felt exasperated and tired – after all, it had been cloudy all afternoon, the light was not ideal for a simple portrait, the bird was far away, and I wanted to get back home... It had not turned out to be a good afternoon photographically – very few sightings and opportunities for images – so I reversed and attempted to create at least some kind of composition of the bird on its perch with clouds in the background.

As I was peering through the viewfinder, concentrating on the moving clouds behind the bird, a dark, out-of-focus entity suddenly appeared in the frame. Instead of looking up in surprise to see what this object could possibly be, I kept on looking through the camera. A second Kite came hurtling at speed towards the first bird. The pictures tell the story of what happened next.

Although Black-shouldered Kites are highly nomadic over much of their range, they are nevertheless fiercely territorial over their present patch, especially so during the breeding season when the lives of the pair become more settled. While fledglings do accompany and are cared for by their father for the first three months or so of their lives, their formerly caring father will turn into a mean opponent once the littlies have been taught and have mastered all the skills they need to survive. A territory-holding kite simply does not tolerate the intrusion of any older bird into its neighbourhood, whether it is related to the territory-owner or not.

Had I not disciplined myself to carry on working and had I taken my eye away from the viewfinder because a strange item had appeared there, I would have missed the opportunity to capture this sequence of images.

The lesson: keep on shooting, no matter what the conditions, no matter what your mood, your energy levels are. Photography is for workaholics.

The ‘Birth’ of the Series “Who am I? Who are We?”

Many, many years ago, in August of 2008 to be precise, my wife Jacqui and I received a marvellous gift: a weeklong stay, by ourselves, on a tiny game reserve near Bela-Bela in the Limpopo Province of South Africa.

Upon arrival, we realised immediately that the previous summer’s rainfall had been very sparse. The bushveld surrounding us was exceptionally dry; hardly any leaves remained on the main species of trees. Even the hardy thorn-trees, the various Acacia species*, had lost most of their foliage. Only the single magnificent marula tree in the centre of the homestead we were to occupy for the next week and a few large buffalo-thorn jujubes nearby still wore leaves that revealed shades of green – no doubt these giants were still able to draw sufficient moisture from the deeper water table.

Eager to unpack after the drive and to settle down to a cold mid-morning drink, I rushed up to the main door of the compound. As I stuck out my hand (clutching the bunch of keys I had been given), I was startled by a lightning-fast movement above and to the left of my head. My body froze. Whatever it was, it was rather long – not too big, but long. Slowly I turned my head to gaze upwards and to the left. On a narrow ledge of the wall of the compound that reached in deep under the overhanging thatched roof sat a bushbaby (or South African galago). We two primates were each rooted to the spot, neither one of us wishing to startle the other further.

I backed off slowly, all the while whispering to Jacqui to come closer to have a look. With a few bounds, the bushbaby pinged along the wall and vanished up the closest buffalo-thorn jujube. Gone!

At lunchtime two days later, I heard a family of grey go-away-birds sounding their alarm from the top of one of the buffalo-thorn jujubes close to the compound. I approached slowly, knowing and trusting my experience with these birds. Something was up. With binoculars, I scanned every nook and cranny, every cluster of leaves of those trees. There, hidden amongst a dense clump of foliage and protected by a patch of mistletoe was the bushbaby, fast asleep on a branch in a patch of sunlight in the middle of the day!

My capers over the next quarter of an hour must have seemed comical – luckily, the only witnesses were my chuckling wife, a family of go-away-birds and a slumbering bushbaby. With deliberate but very careful movements, I managed to fetch and lean an extendable ladder against the main trunk of the tree in which the bushbaby was resting. With one hand free to cling to the ladder, the other hand cradling my camera and telephoto lens, I crept up the rickety support strut-by-strut.

Standing on the wobbly ladder 10 m above the ground, I cradled the topmost, pipe-like rung of the ladder in the crook of my left elbow. This allowed my left hand to support the barrel of the long lens that I intended to use. My right hand clutched the camera. By leaning out backwards, away from my support, I could hold onto the ladder and keep my camera's lens stable at the same time. This was not the safest way to photograph wildlife.

I knew at the time that any images I could get would not be great photographs; however, they would be my first images of a bushbaby taken during daylight hours. I took the first shot. Immediately the bushbaby opened its eyes. It shifted its body weight ever so slightly, getting ready to leap out of harm’s way. I only snapped another three photographs. I did not want to disturb the visitor to the compound. Obviously the dense foliage of the trees and the overhanging thatched roof provided a rare patch of protection in the otherwise parched and leafless, exposed bushveld. As slowly and quietly as I could, I retreated down the ladder.

Back home, once the slide films had been processed, I showed the images to my wife. Until very recently Jacqui had been a teacher of Afrikaans at secondary school level. She asked if she could use the photographs to teach her junior pupils about body parts and their functions. That night I composed a very short slideshow on my laptop for Jacqui's junior classes and gave her a copy. Then I promptly forgot about it.

Fast forward to the beginning of 2019. By then two delightful little rascals, Jacqui's grandsons, had joined the family and were of an age at which story-time had become an integral part of their daily routine. I have always taken great delight in teaching young children about the bush. One night, discussing with Jacqui how we could enthuse the little people with a sense of admiration and awe about the wilderness and its inhabitants, Jacqui mentioned the slideshow.

The next morning I trawled through my collection of wildlife images. Since that August in 2008, I have had a few other occasions to photograph bushbabies. I decided that I could write a short story, posing as a bushbaby and asking the littlies to identify the narrator of the story from clues that I would pepper throughout the short riddle.

Within a week I had written and illustrated the first Afrikaans story, My Naam is Galago moholi – Wie is Ek? (My Name is Galago moholi – Who am I?). Over the remainder of 2019 and the first three months of this year, this first mini-project morphed into a five-part series – in Afrikaans and then translated into English – on the more common African animals.

Every book in the series contains 14 riddles, each narrated by one of Africa’s iconic animal species or a group of animals. Each book asks the young (and not so young) reader to identify six mammals, five birds, a group of reptiles and two groups of insects (except for Series 3 in which spiders replace one of the groups of insects). My own photographic images (slightly modified) illustrate each riddle – each book in the series contains a minimum of 162 photographs.

Thus a very brief encounter in the bushveld of South Africa many years ago led to the birth and maturation of a five-part series of children’s books, with 70 stories and 818 photographs in total, and available in two languages:

Wie is Ek? Wie is Ons? – Diere van Afrika Stel vir Jou Raaiseltjies

Who am I? Who are We? – Short Riddles Posed by African Animals

To find these books at your favourite eBook seller, follow the link

https://books2read.com/ap/8NkvaJ/Tnreb-Rekabnessiev

*    For the purists, I do know that Africa’s ‘Acacia’ species now have been assigned to the genera Vachellia and Senegalia; however, I still call them acacias – just to irritate any Australians, who, as a nation, have pilfered the name that rightfully belongs to Africa’s most iconic trees.

WILD IMAG(E) IN A(C)TION: IV – Composition and Style

In this final blog in the series, I will mention briefly a few thoughts on the most demanding aspects of photography, namely composition and the development of your own, personal vision and style.

7.         An eye for an eye

If you accept that photography is an important medium of visual communication for your thoughts, feelings and intentions, you will acquire and advance your own unique style. This is inevitable since so much of your own being will shape your way of seeing and the images that you think are worthwhile capturing. While your own distinctive approach to your chosen subject(s) will evolve (and consequently your own style too), the first hurdle that needs to be vaulted is the development of your photographic vision.

In order to acquire, elaborate, and hone your personal vision, you need to be an active photographer all of the time. Much work can be done even though opportunities for taking photographs are absent. Careful composition is the key to any image that carries punch. Mastering composition requires constant practice. Even though you spend much more time away from your equipment than you do peering through the viewfinder, you still need to carry on looking, envisioning, imagining, and practising composition, whether you are engaged in taking photographs or not.

No matter where you find yourself at any one moment, no matter what you are busy doing at any one time, be mindful of visual elements (line, shape, texture, pattern, rhythm) in your environment at all times. Pore over forms and angles; see how they change with changing viewpoint and changing light conditions. In any scene, consider how different planes (of depth, tonal value, colour, for example) could interact if you were to frame only a part of the view. Get to know light and shadow, how they fall and change. For practice, the subject matter is not important. The rear-view or the wing mirror of your car can be very engaging while you are on the highway – use it as a surrogate camera frame to pick and choose compositions that are emerging there.

Look at and scrutinise images constantly (be they doodles, sketches, paintings, advertisements, the images of other photographers and, especially, your own works). How do they affect you? Re-crop them in your imagination. Think about how changes in composition would affect the impact of the presented images. What do they express in their original presentation, what do they say after a new choice of image format? Think about what you would have done given the same subject and the same conditions that were faced by the photographer whose image(s) you are perusing. (A caveat concerning this last point: it is not expedient to express these thoughts in comments about someone else’s work. These thoughts are for you alone, unless you are asked to express such an opinion explicitly by the photographer. Always err on the side of civility, and assume that the photographer intended the image to look as it does in its presented form. This is an exercise for yourself and for the honing of your own visual literacy.)

Keep yourself busy incessantly, working hard on your way of seeing and on your own competence at visual literacy – and, above all, keep on previsualising.

8.         Rules? What rules? My vision rules!

It is obvious that some ‘rules’ of composition are appropriate and work adequately for most average pictures. This is simply an outcome of our own eyes and the internal visual processing mechanisms in our brains themselves being prescriptive (for example, only ROYGBIV wavelengths; a field of vision that adheres roughly to a 3:2 ratio; very shallow depth of focus balanced by amazing speed of readjustment; average contrast, again achieved by prompt regulation of the visual mechanisms). The way we see is compelled by structural and physiological adaptations and constraints of our own biological apparatus and processes. Given that all of us see the world using our very similarly restricted visual mechanisms, it is no wonder that we have ended up with ‘the rule of thirds’, ‘the centre of the image is weak’, ‘red is hot and aggressive’, etcetera.

These ‘rules’ of composition are only very rough guidelines that achieve an average impact (at best) on ourselves and on an audience of our images at best. These ‘rules’ are very much hard-wired into the machinery and machinations of our visual system. Luckily, our vision is not governed only by physical and neurophysiological mechanisms. We are all emotional beings, individuals whose vision depends besides on the emotional states of our brains, our experiences and our imagination. Our emotions are capricious, our experiences expansive and our imagination boundless – in its entirety, our vision gives us access to a far more interesting and sinuous ‘reality’.

Balance or imbalance of the various visual elements that will make up an effective arrangement and the control of depth of the final composition remain indispensable in any good image. However, as to how these effects are achieved remains firmly rooted in personal style and expression, and in the subject matter itself. One tenet is clear: the greater the number of visual elements you wish to incorporate in your final selection (in other words, the more interesting your image promises to be), the more care you need to take with composition – otherwise, the potential peters out in clutter.

The most demanding aspect of photography (and all other visual media) to master is to learn how to use and manipulate the impact of all the visual elements to achieve communication of your intentions through your photographs. Undoubtedly, the key lies in ceaseless observation and practice. Practice makes perfect, so they say; at least it can prevent a repeat of mistakes made previously.

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This series of blogs has raised many more questions than it has provided answers. Perhaps deliberately so, because, by providing simple answers, your own unique photographic process – from imagination, to image, to the audience's imagination – may become severely stilted. So, whatever you do, do it your way, and let us, the viewers, interact with you and your images through your own, unique and very special photography. 

The romantic vision of a photographer's life involves endless travel and endless pleasure. My own personal experience is that photography is physically tiring, emotionally draining, frustrating and a challenge that requires total dedication and an endless imagination. Like all human endeavour it is very hard work. Nevertheless, it is work that is oh so, so, so sweet when the image finally clicks.

WILD IMAG(E) IN A(C)TION: III – The Photographic Process

In this series, I discuss briefly a few ideas and my own thoughts on the subject of photography (particularly, but not limited to, of fauna, flora and the environment). This is the third instalment in the series and deals with aspects of the photographic process.

4.         The image is king, technique just a pawn

Once you know what you wish to express about a particular subject or scene, once your observation is ready to be transformed into a photograph, then, and only then, should technique take over. Of course, beforehand you need to become competent with any techniques you will be using; you will have to know and understand too any and all of your camera’s settings (and how to change and select them). However, any decision about the appropriate camera-lens combination, your intended viewpoint selection, the appropriate ISO (ASA) rating of the camera’s sensor (film type selection if you are using film), the appropriate f-stop and the appropriate exposure time for your final intended image can only be taken once you can envisage, ‘see’, the final image in your mind.

For the vast majority of images you wish to capture, your interpretation does not require more than the correct use of the appropriate equipment and camera settings. Always remember that YOU are the visionary; a camera does not see, it has no vision of its own, it can not compose an image. Gadgets and tricks rarely enhance the visual communication in my opinion. Does your interpretation really require the use of a filter? (It may – then use it knowledgeably.) Does your intended final image require fill-in flash or the use of a strobe, or can you rely solely on the existing natural light? (Invariably I pose this question when I am busy with macrophotography.) Does the way you are using your drone, your miniature action-camera, your radio-controlled camera-buggy enhance your photographic communication, or are you using them simply because you have seen other photographers use such equipment?

Of special relevance here is digital post-processing and photo-manipulation. “Shoot in RAW and you can complete the photographic process, fix the image later,” is an oft quoted adage. You can then delete what should not be there, add in what should have been included, change the lighting and the background; you can even combine species together that would not normally interact – a polar bear hunting a penguin, let us say – and, voila, you have an image that simply blooms. Alternatively, you can just download images from the web and use those; you then save yourself the hassle of all that travel, the sweat and the tears, the hard work. This has happened and does happen still.

Do not misunderstand; all digital images have to be processed, more or less so, after capture. With digital files, the amount of post-processing depends on your interpretation of the subject and on your intentions that you wish to communicate through the photograph. Used to these ends, digital processing is no less necessary than the chemical development of film (which process is also manipulated to achieve specific, enhanced qualities in the negative for printing of the final image). Moreover, digital manipulation allows for easy access to processes that in the past were difficult to achieve, for example, black-and-white processing and printing, the use of bas-relief, solarisation and other (formerly) darkroom techniques.

Nevertheless, whatever manipulation you intend to perform after releasing the shutter should have been considered and should be part of your initial previsualisation. All manipulation should remain part of the process of communication and must enhance the final image and the resulting stimulation that it will provide the viewer’s imagination. So your digital file (or film negative), captured at the moment you released the shutter, should be as close to the final, imagined image as it can possibly be. Manipulation alone can not create a more polished product from a badly conceived, poorly executed picture file or negative.

A further possible hick-up in your voyage as a photographer concerns whether and how much of the information provided by others you wish to incorporate into your own technique and style. Reading about another photographer's techniques is fun and can provide you with valuable clues for use in your own photo-interpretation. You may discover new ways of doing things technically. While reading you may suddenly think of a simple way to tweak your own photography. However, this information alone, taken on board willy-nilly without careful consideration, will not make you a better photographer. What works well for others may not work for you. The great danger in adopting technique as gospel is, of course, that it will set you firmly on the road to simple copying (and frustration – you may never possess that lens, that camera, that gadget!).

Nothing beats previsualisation. Nothing beats your own attempt at interpretation. If you are serious about the process of photography, nothing beats your own (limited, exciting, hampered, excellent, inadequate, competent, disillusioning, emotionally satisfying, challenging, sensational) stimulation of the imagination to seek out and capture good photographs.

5.         It was the hammer!

Competent photographers will create exciting images with homemade cereal-box pinhole cameras. So do not blame your tools – ever. Granted, if you do not possess long glass you will never get an image of a leopard's eye on free range, but you might get the eye of a Leopard Toad. This may equally fulfil your needs and your intention. Know your equipment, both its limitations and its strengths, and shape or adapt your vision accordingly. Use your equipment’s strengths and your own to maximum effect; explore and find ways to lessen the limitations. If necessary, hire equipment and rather spend your hard-earned cash on memory cards (or film), extra batteries and, most importantly, more regular opportunities to create photographs.

If you really find yourself in a situation where you consider a specific piece of equipment to be indispensable (and you simply do not have access to it), re-visualise, re-compose, but do not walk away from the possible subject or opportunity. You may not be able to capture the image you initially intended to take, but you may get a dozen or more photographs that are equally exciting simply by changing your attitude and motivation. So often photographers miss opportunities. Been there!

6.         Twenty metres back and six steps left

If you embrace photography as a form of visual communication, you will develop your own personal style. Your own vision depends not on how different you can make your photographs, but rather on how you feel about and approach your subject matter differently. Your imagination is not the consequence of your photographs; imagination precedes expression and so your personal style develops from, and is the consequence of, your own, unique imagination. (In the mind of the audience, the process is reversed, of course, as your style and your images elicit novel responses in the viewer's imagination.)

How many photographs of lion (closely cropped, side-on, glint in the eye, four feet visible, tail up, background blurred to non-existence) can you recall? Thousands, if you could remember them all. What do all these images express? This is a lion, full stop! Sadly, however, the being itself – the majesty, the power, the hunger in the hunter – has been left behind in the veld. Know what you want to express. Change your point of view, try a different angle, a different perspective and, above all, change your interpretation. Then you will begin to communicate by way of your images.

Back off! Including the environment and incorporating some of its elements (lines, shapes, rhythms, textures) in the composition, will invariably make for a more interesting interpretation of the subject. Isolating your subject from the background by using a long focal length and choosing a shallow depth-of-field is not the only way to give it pre-eminence in your image. Similarly, landscapes do not need to be crisp front-to-back, nor do they have to be captured with a wide-angle lens. Often an intimate glimpse of a part of the landscape reveals so much more than the wider panoramic view would do. Experiment, maximise your expressive communication and satisfy your individual vision.

ABOUT THIS IMAGE... ‘Rock Cod'

I am certain that I am not alone in my frustration over the current lockdown restrictions on movement of individuals and travel imposed by the majority of governments worldwide in response to the COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. As these restrictions have been extended over months, my own opportunities as a photographer have been limited severely.

If I were informed by government that I would have to spend the rest of my life ‘isolated’ on a particular tiny patch of this planet’s surface (an area of 50 metres by 50 metres, say), what kind of environment would be ideal for photography? Shut away from all others and never again being able to leave my assigned space, I would hope that my new, restricted homeland would be situated somewhere along the shoreline.

I am besotted with the bushveld of Africa and spend most of my photographic opportunities in some manifestation of this veld-type. However, square metre for square metre, the shoreline (a stretch of rocky shore with a slither of sandy beach thrown into the mix) beats any other wilderness environment hands down in terms of photographic opportunities in a small, restricted area.

I have had only very few opportunities to visit the coast (for various reasons that are of no importance here). On the rare occasions that I have been privileged to take photographs in this environment, I have worked myself to exhaustion. The variety of line, shape, texture, pattern, rhythm and colour that is on show here and available to a photographer to compose into wonderful images is endless. So too is the variety of subjects: from the ceaseless to-and-fro movement of wave and surf (quiet, gentle and caressing at one moment, thundering, overpowering and abusive the next), to the exotic, intoxicating miniature gardens of the rock-pools and the constant scuttling about and hide-and-seek of crabs and other denizens of rock and sand.

A long time ago, in pre-digital days, I spent my first ever week and a half of stills photography along a very short strip of rocky shore in Scottburgh (KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa). Only a single railway line and a low dune separated the house that a work colleague had provided as accommodation for this trip from the rocky shore. Each day I combed the same strip of coast thoroughly and intimately from before sunrise to well after sunset, stopping only during the hottest midday hours.

By the end of an exhilarating, yet exhausting, first week, I was convinced that I had visited and explored every square metre of this strip of rocky shore. Most certainly, I knew intimately the path through the rocks from and to the gap in the tangled vegetation of the dune that I had to cross to get to the rocky shore or to the house that I was occupying. After all, by now I had trudged along this path four times a day for a full week.

And yet, on the second last day of my sojourn, quite late in the morning, on my way ‘home’, I stumbled across a flat sheet of rock covered in the most intriguing lines. Immediately, the outline of a cubist cartoon of a ‘fossilised’ fish popped into view. I must have crissed and crossed over, walked on, looked at and inspected this small, flat slab several times during the previous week without ‘seeing’ the potential that this ‘rockscape’ offered, the unique and splendid arrangement of lines, shapes and textures.

Here it had lain, my ‘Rock Cod’, exposed to sun and surf, not for a week, but for years certainly. This experience has taught me to look, look and look again. To ‘see’ and capture an image that excites me requires not only the subject matter itself, but also a conjunction of the subject, my mood, my imagination and my vision.

WILD IMAG(E) IN A(C)TION: II – You and Your Images

In this (and the next two) blogs in this series, I will mention and discuss very briefly a few opinions and suggestions on the subject of photography (particularly, but not limited to, of fauna, flora and the environment). I revisit these musings regularly to remind myself repeatedly that I need to keep on honing my craft. The points I raise in this blog deal with my readiness and attitude as a photographer.

1.         Are YOU in the picture?

Photography is just as much about knowing yourself as it is about knowing the technicalities of the photographic process and knowing your subject. An exciting image will reflect your ideas, your passions, and your interaction with and response to the subject matter.

The process of capturing an image starts with a personal observation and is followed by a deliberate selection of what must be included and what must be excluded from the frame to ‘create’ the final composition. The final, chosen image is selected deliberately from among the infinite number of other possible compositions that confront you. As the photographer, you decide exactly which smidgen of the reality that you are looking at to include in the photograph – all else, the rest of reality, is excluded from the frame. As a consequence of your decisions, you yourself become a vital ingredient in any photograph that you capture.

You will communicate much about yourself to your audience. What is it that attracted you to that particular selected image? How do you feel about the subject you are photographing? What interpretation(s) are you giving to your observation? You can simply state, “This is exhibit A”. But you could also state, “This is exhibit A and ... because ... since ...  So, viewer, take a second, closer and longer look!” All great images force the viewer to do the latter, and all lasting images give us hints about the photographer's state of mind. Thus the photographer's observation, interpretation and intention are transmitted to the audience via the image.

Always remember that the audience you wish to entice to spend some time looking at your photographs is intelligent and visually literate to a high degree. This is the audience you want to attract, the individuals with whom you wish to communicate. These are the people who will give you the necessary feedback about your success and standing as a photographer. More importantly, they will show you how you can develop and refine your craft further still.

2.         Ah, there you are!

All images with impact have been previsualised to a greater or lesser degree. A good photographer understands her intentions and is searching her surroundings constantly for the next final selection that will be captured as a photograph. Such previsualisation (which requires much imagination and thought) is a bit easier to engage in with a static subject or one that can be manipulated and controlled in the studio or even outdoors, a subject that does not vanish in an instant. However, even in environmental photography, which relies very heavily on chance and split-second decision-taking, the good photographer knows beforehand what she is seeking. “This is the image that would satisfy my need to express myself about this subject. How do I go about finding and capturing it?” “This is what I need to say. What composition will convey this message best?” Even if previsualisation is as brief as “How can I best use this splendid light?” or “Where can I go from here to get the best shot?”, visual preparation is vital. You need to ‘see’ the image in your imagination before you attempt to capture it.

Effective previsualisation requires planning. Merely travelling around, seeing what you can snap up is challenging and fun, but without previsualisation this process will always remain one of documentation only. Before you travel to any destination in search of photographs (even your own backyard) or, failing that, while you are already on the way, ask yourself a few questions to kick-start the process of previsualisation.

If you are travelling to a known destination, plan carefully. “What am I likely to encounter and where? What is it that I am hoping to find? What could happen? What could I see? How will I be affected by my travel experience?” On the other hand, if the destination is new to you, questions should likely be “Why am I going there? What can I expect? What will happen if...?”

Previsualisation also means knowing your subject well, be it a person, an inanimate object, a place, a landscape, or a particular species that you are after, for example. Your subject may solely be the light or it may be a process that you wish to capture and share in an image. What do you want to express? What intrigues you? What is your opinion on the matter? What is it about this subject that took your breath away initially?

There are dangers involved with previsualisation. Never become too rigid in your response to a situation because of your previsualisation. Never miss those images that simply PING! unexpectedly. Never despair because the weather or the light are not what you had hoped for, or because your favourite species has not appeared. Use the prevailing conditions and start previsualising anew. Effective previsualisation is an unceasing and fluid activity. Always leave room for those most magical of ingredients, spontaneity and serendipity.

3.         Oops! Are you here too?

By choice, I call myself an environmental photographer. My subject matter includes the fauna and flora, as well as the patterns and processes of the environment in which they are embedded. This third point of the blog applies particularly to photographers with a similar interest. However, with a little thought and application, the point can be applied to almost all photographic subjects or genres.

There is a glut of wildlife and landscape photography in the media and on the market. Some of it is excellent; some of it is valuable as natural history documentation. Sadly, the overwhelming majority of images on display (particularly on social media) simply do not qualify as good photographs because they do not engage the viewer actively; they communicate very little – other than the obvious identification of a particular subject.

This mind-numbing bombardment of pictures can become overwhelming and discouraging (if not infuriating) for many reasons. For me there are two important challenges that confront photographers that are at the start of their photographic journey (particularly so young photographers). Faced with this stream of snaps, you need to remind yourself that only a small subset of people who use a camera (in the broadest sense of any available image-capturing device) actually comprises photographers. Always go out of your way to illicit feedback (positive and negative) from the photographers you admire the most. Judging your ‘success’ (or otherwise) by the number of ‘likes’ that your images attract on social media platforms is misguided at best. Chasing hollow praise can become debilitating and can become ruinous to the development and enhancement of any real talent. It is never the number of likes, comments, friends or followers (on social media particularly) that will indicate in any meaningful and helpful way your competence and growth as a photographer – these indicators will simply tell you how popular you are. Rather, it is a matter of WHO has given you a positive comment, encouragement or constructive criticism. The honest opinion of a good photographer outweighs all else.

Also, remember that the public (which may or may not include competent photographers) will be wowed for all time by depictions of certain ‘subjects’, irrespective of the photographic merit of the pictures. Cats, dogs, kids, breakfast meals, even cups of coffee come to mind immediately. Amongst wildlife ‘photographers’ it tends to be the large predators. (In South Africa, it is leopards – nowadays they have also been given names. I wonder what the leopards call photographers? I have a few choice suggestions that I shall keep to myself!)

As a serious photographer, do not overlook the obvious. Much that needs to be expressed about the environment and its inhabitants rests with the little guys. There exists an endless variety that is important and must be spoken about. (Yes, I do know that the little guys do not sell well, but so what!)

Include processes in your visual repertoire. It is obvious that showing action or depicting an ecological relationship between individuals may hold more interest for the viewer. However, consider too the effect of abiotic processes on the fauna, flora and environment – rain, wind, wave action, the effect of changing light conditions, for example. Again, the variety (and the delight at seeing and communicating something new) is endless.