Friday 13 February 2009

A different view of wildlife

Giraffe spots, Tanzania, January 2009

Following on from thoughts and comments at Stills, I'm wondering why wildlife photography has to gravitate to the same styles? Whole animals, head up, looking at camera. Or for bird photography, the bird on a stick, full profile, clear eye. Certainly there are action shots of the dramatic but not too gory type, but it all starts to converge.

This seems to me to be the animal equivalent of the golden light, saturation to 11, Velvia-esque landscape stuff that I really don't care for.

Why can't we see more than the pretty picture in wildlife photography?

There is so much more to wildlife behaviour than that. I was fascinated by all kinds of stuff out in Tanzania - the way different species demonstrate relationships, and inter-relate with one another. Societal order, dominance and fighting. Feeding, preying, scavenging. Markings and camouflage.

In future, if I'm going to be photographing wildlife, in the wild, those will be the subjects I'll be looking towards: the interesting (to me) stuff.

1 comment:

  1. Not all of it does, plenty of examples that fit your criteria here:
    http://www.franslanting.com/gallery/index.php

    ReplyDelete

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