Being a professional photographer could be a very difficult occupation, I reckon. Because it is my hobby and I love it (I'm truly an amateur) I often think about the life of a pro 'tog. There are all types, because there are so many genres. I have mentioned sports before, and I used to daydream about following cricket all over the world as a photographer. Actually, that was probably right after I used to daydream about travelling the world playing cricket! And of course, the fashion photographers who get paid obscene amounts of money just to take pictures of pretty girls. Food photographers, wedding photographers, studio photographers, school photographers (the kids, not the buildings!) and so on. Not to mention the dreaded paparazzi who have made celebrity spotting a spectator sport. I bet they all have their difficulties.
But surely, one of the most problematic would be the nature photographer. The requirement of having the utmost patience would probably rule me out immediately. Then there would be the issue of working around fierce animals and things that would want to eat you, or at least take a big bite out of you. Even a little bite! Not to mention the sun, the wind, the rain and snow... you get the picture. (Sorry about the awful pun!)
I thought a lot about this when I visited Kruger National Park in southern Africa in 2006. Of course, I was looking forward to making images of animals in the wild, and the trip surely lived up to my expectations. But not without some problems that I had not foreseen.
The first one was that I had not considered that animals don't want to get their picture taken. Well, it's not that, exactly - they just don't want to be around humans, and who could blame them. So whilst animals were plentiful where we were, they had the annoying habit of wanting to leave an area just as I turned up. Result - lots of images of animals' bums, as the beasts tried to get away as quickly as possible.
The next problem was that, even when they deigned to hang around, animals have no idea about working with a photographer. They move behind bushes, or they carefully arrange for their face to be obscured by a branch. They even close their eyes at times! Photographing kids would be bliss by comparison!
TIPS: Be prepared for a lower than usual percentage of keepers. Learn to be really quiet. Try to be absolutely still and really, really patient. Above all, really enjoy yourself.
Nothing beats the splendour of seeing some of nature's most spectacular wildlife in their natural environment. Awesome is a very over-used word, but being close enough to a wild animal to take an image like this one of the giraffe is nothing short of awesome.
EXIF: Nikon D70; Nikkor 80-400mm VR; ISO 200; 1/400 sec; f6.3.
TFF
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