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Tip o' the Day

"Never shoot from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m."

"Seek wildlife subjects that are conditioned to human presence."

"Make sure there's a glint in the eyeball of your subject."

"Photograph people with wildlfie when possible."

All the above advice came from a few of the best wildlife photographers in America. It was during a panel on "Wildlife Photography" at a convention of Outdoor Writers Association of America, back in the 1980s (before digital cameras). I shrugged, smiled in chagrin, and sighed.

There was a time when I would've scribbled furiously at each pearl of wisdom falling from those photographers' lips (I once dreamed of becoming a successful wildlife photographer). That dream -- like a few others -- was discarded when facing reality: that my dogged pursuit of another way of life clashed with making a success of wildlife photography.

At the time of that OWAA annual convention I'd worked as an outfitter and guide in the Bob Marshall Wilderness for nearly two decades, and had been writing newspaper columns about those adventures for six years. Too, I'd photographed and written a coffee table book about that wilderness. But my occupation did not permit exercising the kind of patience necessary for becoming a photographer of wild creatures. To capture wildlife on film, a photographer's first commitment is to his photograph. In my primary occupation, my first commitment had to be the guests I was leading to adventure.

I sighed again. All those top photographers said they seldom use a normal camera lens (55mm). Instead, they use telephoto lenses to 400mm. But the higher-powered lenses are used only with a tripod or stock-mounted support device. Each sometimes shot from blinds -- usually ones they build themselves, going to considerable effort to construct a blend-with-the-surroundings way to stay hidden near a waterhole, meadow, or major game crossing.

Obviously the 10-to-3 edict is to avoid the flat light of midday.

Seeking wildlife subjects conditioned to human presence means shooting for the most part in National Parks or Wildlife Refuges.

The glint-in-the-eye injects life in the animal, but it doesn't mean not shooting a pack of wolves battling a grizzly bear just because you can't get them to stop long enough to capture the glint.

Three years later Jane and I sold our guide service and most of our horses and tack. I remembered the old dream, purchased two top-of-the-line Nikon camera bodies and a powerful variable lens to 200mm, then set out to add support photos to magazine pieces cranked out regularly to America's top outdoor magazines. It wasn't long, however, that I noticed something: the magazines were buying my stories, but they always used someone else's photographs.

My conclusion? Photographers should photograph, writers should write. And never the twain should meet.

 

WHO'S PRIMITIVE -- WILDLIFE OR TAME HUMANS?

We say we don't, but of course we do. Every day we ascribe traits and actions of animals in terms we understand, by trying to humanize them. When we train a dog to shake hands, do we really think Rover does so because he's happy to see us? He does not. Given his choice, he'd much rather lick us in the chops; he shakes hands because we wish him to do so.

"He's chasing rabbits," we'll say when the mutt jerks in his sleep. That's what we want to think he's doing. In canine versions of virtual reality, however, he's probably standing on hind legs purloining a pot roast from the dining room table.

Cats "suck the air from babies" when all they really do is cuddle in the softest and warmest spot. Lay the baby on a sheet of cold metal roofing and no cat alive will go near it.

Horses are "kid-spoiled," but what really happens is the pony does the kinds of things it prefers and the kids lack confidence, heft, or temperament to get his attention.

Our anthromorphic efforts are thrown into the highest gear when we refer to wild animals. The mule deer buck lying on the point of a big ridge might not be "surveying his domain." Instead he might be sound asleep after gorging on red-stem ceanothus before dawn.

The bull elk wallowing in a mudhole might not be "cooling down" after a wild rutting tryst with a swaggle-hipped cow. He might not be fighting flies, either. Instead, he might simply like to play in the mud. The point is, we don't know.

We do know the necessity to obtain food is the primary driving force controlling all animals. Safety from predators is also important for any but those at the very top of the food chain. Procreation has its seasonal adherents, too. And of course there's the biological need for occasional sleep. But food is the biggie, having a bearing on how long all animals sleep, what risks they take when hungry, even interrupting the mating process.

That's the way -- if we choose to believe fossil records -- it was for us during the paleolithic.

In fact, it's the way it still is today, no matter our false smugness at escaping the laws of nature. Yes we still procreate, still need protection from our own specialized predators, still need sleep. But it's in food gathering where even modern humans spend the bulk of their time. Today, of course, we do it different. Today we call it "going to work," but in reality, it's food gathering. Today we spend money we make at "work" for groceries from a food store. Then we wend our way home to cook, wash dishes, take out the garbage -- all part of the food gathering process.

Our homes are no more than havens providing security for we creatures who, in a careful analysis, are not as modern as we thought -- as a result, there goes one distinction about our separation from so-called "lower animal orders" that we've been so smug for lo these many years. Another distinction might be in the process of procreation -- isn't what we call flirting or dating or sex merely steps along the way to procreation? And to cap it all, what human (primitive or modern) gets enough sleep during any age?

All the above makes one wonder how we must look through an elk's eyes. Do they think us primitive because we have yet to learn to live near the place where we gather food?

What must wild creatures think of our insistence on changing bed linens when it would be easier to change bed grounds? And how funny they must find it whenever the wind blows and the temperature drops and we must stampede inside to change clothing. Why don't we do as they do and simply fluff up our body hair and turn butts to the breeze?

Have you wondered what they think about sewer systems, ground water depletion, and urban slums? About factories spewing deadly gases into the skies? About rivers that catch fire from pollutants dumped into it? About oil slicks covering bays and killing ducks and otters and clams and crabs?

Can you name one time a grizzly bear or a river otter or a Harlequin duck ever made a place so unfit other animals could not inhabitat it? Name one "Love Canal" in all the animal world. The "Exxon Valdez" is a name neither vile or violets to mule deer or musk ox because, to then, such a disaster to the world they love and depend upon is not only unknown, but incomprehensible.

Perhaps they can cope with volcano, earthquake, tidal wave, and tornado -- certainly they have for thousands, perhaps millions of years. There's good evidence they survived innumerable glacial ages, too; what's not so clear is can we? And what's far more uncertain is can they -- or we -- survive global warming, overpopulation, overfishing the oceans, or the nuclear arms race?

Just which creatures are advanced and which primitive?

Am I serious? Of coure I am! Where do we get off thinking we're so advanced we're the only species who feels pain, falls in love, has designs on a better life? We may operate with different paradigms to guide us, but are our paradigms better?

WAIT! Before you tell me ours are better, consider that as you read this there's probably some hulking, bewhiskered terrorist tying a belt of explosives around some ten-year-old kid's waist and pushing him onto a sidewalk where a several innocent families are spilling from a synagogue after their religious service.

That's the neat thing about grizzly bears -- all of 'em I ever knew needed no innocent youngsters to die fighting their battles for 'em.

 

Roland Cheek wrote a syndicated outdoors column (WildTrails and Tall Tales) for 21 years. The column was carried in 17 daily and weekly newspapers in two states. In addition, he scripted and broadcast a daily radio show (Trails to Outdoor Adventure) that aired on 75 stations from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. He's also written upwards of 200 magazine articles and 12 fiction and nonfiction books. For more on Roland, visit:

www.rolandcheek.com

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