Why I Can't Be a Wildlife Photographer
I know of a physician who takes Photography Safari vacations in Africa.She travels with huge lenses and several cameras and an attitude. No fear. No trepidation. "Bring them on."
Trophy photos adorn the walls of her office waiting room: zebras racing the wind, a bull elephant trumpeting, wildebeests, hippos lolling in the water, giraffes, hyaenas and even an impala. Each photo captures the animal in motion—save for the giraffe who stares ahead as if aware of being photographed.
Late yesterday afternoon I set my camera with a 60mm 2.8 macro lens on a tripod and honed in on a Rambutan. The small fruit remained in one position while I moved closer and closer until I manually focused in to several protruding spikelike points.
I heard a rustling in the woods—looked out and saw a rafter of wild turkeys. It took me a while to release the camera from the tripod. With a 60mm lens I wasn't terribly close—then the series of mishaps: I forgot to change the manual focus to auto, I forgot to change the shutter speed from 1/5 of a second.
Still I snapped away until I realized the error and began to make all the switches. In the meantime twenty or so turkeys ran across my field of vision. Finally one stopped—the last one and I quickly took the photo.
Upstairs in my camera bag—a telephoto lens.
In order to see the sole wild turkey I cropped and cropped a rather fuzzy photo. The entire rafter of wild turkeys had long disappeared.
I then returned to the rambutan which hadn't moved nor sighed nor altered since my encounter with a moving target. The sun did change somewhat, but I took my time resetting everything, placing my camera back on the tripod, settling in for a quiet photo shoot.
Trophy photos adorn the walls of her office waiting room: zebras racing the wind, a bull elephant trumpeting, wildebeests, hippos lolling in the water, giraffes, hyaenas and even an impala. Each photo captures the animal in motion—save for the giraffe who stares ahead as if aware of being photographed.
Late yesterday afternoon I set my camera with a 60mm 2.8 macro lens on a tripod and honed in on a Rambutan. The small fruit remained in one position while I moved closer and closer until I manually focused in to several protruding spikelike points.
I heard a rustling in the woods—looked out and saw a rafter of wild turkeys. It took me a while to release the camera from the tripod. With a 60mm lens I wasn't terribly close—then the series of mishaps: I forgot to change the manual focus to auto, I forgot to change the shutter speed from 1/5 of a second.
Still I snapped away until I realized the error and began to make all the switches. In the meantime twenty or so turkeys ran across my field of vision. Finally one stopped—the last one and I quickly took the photo.
Upstairs in my camera bag—a telephoto lens.
In order to see the sole wild turkey I cropped and cropped a rather fuzzy photo. The entire rafter of wild turkeys had long disappeared.
I then returned to the rambutan which hadn't moved nor sighed nor altered since my encounter with a moving target. The sun did change somewhat, but I took my time resetting everything, placing my camera back on the tripod, settling in for a quiet photo shoot.
Wild Turkey
Rambutan
Siiced Rambutan
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