underwater kingfisher etc

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Appears you might have the wrong end of the stick.

If anything, the experiences really indicate *gear* is not the solution to better photography, it is the commitment of the photographer.

[MILLIREHM]

Well this is the "principle" adhered.
In fact our site appears to be at least as much about gear than about photography.
Bird photography is at least one area where this principle does not work. You either have some tele range or you dont this is the entrance card. (One can do nest photography with wideangle i know). It s a requirement but it does not do the job as our colleague "gavin brooks" has shown who was dreaming about a steep career after having bought his Sigmonster in the old NG site. Nevertheless modern photographic equipment enables shots that were impossible in former decades. the already mentioned D500 brought a signfigicant improvement here.

[Peter Connan]

Yesterday, I went to my local little game reserve (Rietvlei, for those couple who may know of it) with a colleague.

We found a tree which some White-fronted Bee-eaters were using as a place to hunt from. For those who don't know, Bee-eaters are revered for launching and returning to the same perch while hunting.

I spent about 45 minuted trying to get sharp pictures of them taking off or landing. Shot over a hundred frames.

The result: not one single sharp image of a bee-eater in flight. Not one.

No matter how you build the hide, or how often you feed, or what camera and lens you use, make no mistake, that is still an insanely difficult shot.
The fact that 20 or 50 or 200 others have or have not pulled it off does not change that. So perhaps the shots are the same, perhaps that's enough for some people. I for one could not judge them.

[Les Olson]

The result: not one single sharp image of a bee-eater in flight. Not one.

No matter how you build the hide, or how often you feed, or what camera and lens you use, make no mistake, that is still an insanely difficult shot.
The fact that 20 or 50 or 200 others have or have not pulled it off does not change that. So perhaps the shots are the same, perhaps that's enough for some people. I for one could not judge them.

The question, however, is why you want a photograph of a bee-eater in flight?  I realise many people will think this is a bizarre question, but it goes to the heart of our relationship to the natural world. 

If the answer is to say something about climate change or threatened species, fine - but then there is no excuse for creating artificial conditions.  If the answer is for the challenge, fine also - but then there is no reason to create artificial conditions because that merely reduces your triumph when you finally succeed.   

What is not fine is treating the natural world as something that has value because we can take great photographs of it (please note that I am not suggesting that you - or anyone else here - is treating the natural world like that).  We act wrongly if we treat the natural world as a means to an end, instead of as an end in itself - that is how we end up with ivory poaching. 

[Anthony]

It is a bizarre question.

How could a photographer not understand the joy in creating a beautiful image of a beautiful animal in action?

The natural world has great value in many ways, and one of them is as a source of beauty, directly to our eyes or less directly via photography.  There is no need to justify this on the grounds that the photographer is preaching to people or is meeting a challenge.  It is absolutely fine to treat the natural world as a source of images.  How this is done is another matter altogether. 

The suggestion that nature using nature as a means to a photographic end is on some sort of spectrum which includes ivory poaching is obvious nonsense. 

[Les Olson]

It is a bizarre question.

How could a photographer not understand the joy in creating a beautiful image of a beautiful animal in action?

The natural world has great value in many ways, and one of them is as a source of beauty, directly to our eyes or less directly via photography.  There is no need to justify this on the grounds that the photographer is preaching to people or is meeting a challenge.  It is absolutely fine to treat the natural world as a source of images.  How this is done is another matter altogether. 

The suggestion that nature using nature as a means to a photographic end is on some sort of spectrum which includes ivory poaching is obvious nonsense.

Well, the photographer might do better if he were given an explanation of what the word "beautiful" means when applied to an image.  As far as animals go, surely it cannot be controversial to point out that calling them beautiful - or brave, or cruel, or angry or any other term based on human experience - is radically misleading? 

The vast majority of the ivory trade, legal and illegal, happens in China.  Ivory carving is a centuries-old tradition in China, and in May 2006 was included by the Chinese government on its National List of Intangible Cultural Heritages.   To preserve this cultural heritage, China has not only refused to shut down the ivory trade, but arranged a CITES exemption for shipments of ivory from southern Africa to China.  The result has been an increase in the price of ivory and a rapid expansion of the trade in carved ivory.  The legal (ie, using stockpiled and legally culled ivory) market was and is more or less fixed in size, but the black market (ie, using poached ivory) and the auction market expanded.  The auction market is especially important, because it is very large and has driven the increase in value of carved ivory.  The auction trade is often called the grey market, because although it is supposed to deal in antique (pre-1949) carvings at least 2/3 of the works sold at auction are in fact new, and there is a very close correlation between the increased volume of ivory traded in the Chinese auction market over the last 15 years and the increase in the number of illegally killed elephants over the same period. 

The point is that saying that it is reasonable to weigh the value to us of a photograph against the interest of the animal in living its life undisturbed is exactly the same, logically and ethically, as saying that it is reasonable to weight the cultural value of ivory carving against the survival of elephants. 

Of course I am not saying that using the world as a source of images is wrong.  But stopping there and leaving consideration of how it is done for another day is silly: you have to decide how you are going to do it before you take any photographs.  So the acceptability of how you are going to do it has to be judged before there are any photographs.  To put that another way, when we are talking about something as trivial as photography, ends do not justify means.

[Peter Connan]

Perhaps I am too stupid to fully understand what you mean, but the simple fact of the matter is that, in Southern Africa (I can't speak for anywhere else, but I expect this is true for most places), if the wild animals do not bring in more revenue than the land they occupy can earn through other means, they will cease to exist on that land, because that land will be used for some other commercial enterprise.

As I have already mentioned, none of the existing game conservation areas in this part of the world are large enough that wild animals that they can exist without human intervention. Coupled to that, the only ways they can "pay their way" is by, to put it crudely, entertaining people.

So, effectively, we are talking here only of the scale and/or nature of the disturbance, not of principle.

Furthermore, since humans have existed for far longer than they have been able to write, nobody knows how animals behaved before we started interfering. There are a number of scientists who believe that the population of Africa's pachyderms were controlled untill surprisingly recently by the sabre-toothed tiger, but that that was hunted to extinction by man in self-defense...

[Les Olson]

Perhaps I am too stupid to fully understand what you mean, but the simple fact of the matter is that, in Southern Africa (I can't speak for anywhere else, but I expect this is true for most places), if the wild animals do not bring in more revenue than the land they occupy can earn through other means, they will cease to exist on that land, because that land will be used for some other commercial enterprise.

As I have already mentioned, none of the existing game conservation areas in this part of the world are large enough that wild animals that they can exist without human intervention. Coupled to that, the only ways they can "pay their way" is by, to put it crudely, entertaining people.

So, effectively, we are talking here only of the scale and/or nature of the disturbance, not of principle.

Furthermore, since humans have existed for far longer than they have been able to write, nobody knows how animals behaved before we started interfering. There are a number of scientists who believe that the population of Africa's pachyderms were controlled untill surprisingly recently by the sabre-toothed tiger, but that that was hunted to extinction by man in self-defense...

Sure, and the point is not to exalt an imaginary state of nature free of human influence - although I reject the idea that market forces cannot be overcome, or that if wild places and wild animals cannot pay their way they will disappear and there is nothing we can do about it.  The point is to think about how we see what we photograph, and how to see differently in order to photograph better. 

There is a strong tendency, which AFAIK people everywhere have, to define others - other people, other places, other species - by comparing them to us.  So we talk about the Near East, the Middle East and the Far East - near and far being relative to England, of course.  Needless to say, it is always the socially dominant group that is the standard.  So a beautiful woman is one whose appearance appeals to men, and a beautiful animal is one that appeals to photographers.  That is an ethical problem, of course, at least in the case of women, but the point I am trying to make is that it is also a problem photographically, because it restricts us to a limited and conventional vision. 

The key to better photography is getting outside the conventional vision - for example, in regard to beauty, Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs of Lisa Lyon.   To bring out how different and how much less interesting a conventional vision is it is worth comparing Mapplethorpe's photographs of Lyon and those taken of her by Playboy around the same time. 

[Bjørn Rørslett]

"... the simple fact of the matter is that, in Southern Africa (I can't speak for anywhere else, but I expect this is true for most places), if the wild animals do not bring in more revenue than the land they occupy can earn through other means, they will cease to exist on that land, because that land will be used for some other commercial enterprise."

This view of nature, thankfully, is not universal.

[MILLIREHM]

This view of nature, thankfully, is not universal.

+1

[Anthony]

Well, the photographer might do better if he were given an explanation of what the word "beautiful" means when applied to an image.  As far as animals go, surely it cannot be controversial to point out that calling them beautiful - or brave, or cruel, or angry or any other term based on human experience - is radically misleading? 

It is not at all misleading.  As a concept, it is not capable of being misleading.  It is a statement of one of the emotions we have about what we see.  Nobody is entitled to tell another person what that person can or cannot find beautiful.

You are mixing two separate issues when you treat statements about beauty with statements about courage, etc.  If I say I find an animal beautiful I am saying something about my feelings.  If I say I find an animal brave, I am saying something about the animal.


The vast majority of the ivory trade, legal and illegal, happens in China.  Ivory carving is a centuries-old tradition in China, and in May 2006 was included by the Chinese government on its National List of Intangible Cultural Heritages.   To preserve this cultural heritage, China has not only refused to shut down the ivory trade, but arranged a CITES exemption for shipments of ivory from southern Africa to China.  The result has been an increase in the price of ivory and a rapid expansion of the trade in carved ivory.  The legal (ie, using stockpiled and legally culled ivory) market was and is more or less fixed in size, but the black market (ie, using poached ivory) and the auction market expanded.  The auction market is especially important, because it is very large and has driven the increase in value of carved ivory.  The auction trade is often called the grey market, because although it is supposed to deal in antique (pre-1949) carvings at least 2/3 of the works sold at auction are in fact new, and there is a very close correlation between the increased volume of ivory traded in the Chinese auction market over the last 15 years and the increase in the number of illegally killed elephants over the same period. 

The point is that saying that it is reasonable to weigh the value to us of a photograph against the interest of the animal in living its life undisturbed is exactly the same, logically and ethically, as saying that it is reasonable to weight the cultural value of ivory carving against the survival of elephants. 

That comparison lacks any sense of proportion.  The ethical decision concerning when to take a photograph of an animal are entirely different from the ethical decision as to the illegal slaughter of elephants.   

Anyone who knows anything about wildlife knows that the concept of an animal living its life undisturbed is nonsense.  An animal's life in the wild is one of constant disturbance and threat.   Very many wild animals are habituated to humans and interact with them peacefully.  Typically they find humans much less disturbing than many other animals (often including those of their own species).  How we behave in the presence of animals is, of course, important.   

Of course I am not saying that using the world as a source of images is wrong.  But stopping there and leaving consideration of how it is done for another day is silly: you have to decide how you are going to do it before you take any photographs.  So the acceptability of how you are going to do it has to be judged before there are any photographs.  To put that another way, when we are talking about something as trivial as photography, ends do not justify means.


The photography of wild animals (including from hides or in artificial environments such as that in Elsa's original post) is not in itself unethical at all.  Properly carried out, it contributes to animal welfare by making the animals valuable to the locals and helping to save them from the threat of habitat erosion.  Peter Connan is correct.

[Anthony]

"... the simple fact of the matter is that, in Southern Africa (I can't speak for anywhere else, but I expect this is true for most places), if the wild animals do not bring in more revenue than the land they occupy can earn through other means, they will cease to exist on that land, because that land will be used for some other commercial enterprise."

This view of nature, thankfully, is not universal.

I don't think it is a view of nature.  It is a statement of the reality of the future of wildlife throughout Africa and in many other places which are under population pressure.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

It is a view of balance of the interests of man vs nature. Only if man sees himself superior to all other creatures can land use be described in commercial terms.

By the way, Anthony, please edit your next to last post. Some code tags obviously are missing so formatting is all wrong.

[Peter Connan]

In South Africa alone, around 7.5 million people do not have adequate housing (https://www.homelessworldcup.org/homelessness-statistics/). the great majority of these people believe, due to political mistakes both past and present, that they are entitled to housing, land and jobs.

These people have no understanding of the importance of nature in our own survival. Nor do they have any interest in nature, and virtually none of them can afford to travel to a nature reserve or anywhere else they may see the beauty of wild animals.

For them, any area reserved for conservation is land they feel should belong to them. The animals look like a good meal to them. The fact that most of these areas are too dry to farm, and will be destroyed in short order if they try to farm it is totally beyond their understanding.

Our government, since 1994 and before, has been promising them land and jobs, which promises they have largely failed to deliver on. In the latest (unfortunately only municipal) elections, the ruling party has lost a lot of ground, and they are now scrambling to recover their lost ground. Recently, they have been mooting new legislation such as "use it or lose it". The purpose of this legislation is that ground which is not earning income will be repatriated and re-distributed.

This is our reality, and it is not a unique reality either.

I realize (and gladly so) that things are different in Europe. However, that knowledge does not solve the problems in Africa, India and South America, the very places where most of the biodiversity is.

Here, we need desperately to find ways in which nature can be saved, and the only likely contender at this stage is if the earnings are greater than the cost of the loss of conservation land to agriculture.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

The NG admins consider the previous post by P.Connan to provide background data for some earlier statements. However, do not use this as input to further off-topic discussion in this thread.