I am in West Africa now, and have seen a number of wild Chimps and Gorillas, seriously far in the jungle. Rain, mud, fog, etc. play hell on the cameras, and I can only get to within a few hundred yards before I am told that's close enough and/or the animals leave.
The photos are worse than bad.
I just spent a week at a great conservation project where I was just a few yards away from many, many chimps for 30+ hours. (behind electric fence).
The photos are the best I have ever taken in my life. (not online yet, coming soon @theroadchoseme)
I have also struggled with getting great shots until I learned how many tricks are commonly used like feeding animals, cooling down insects so they don't move or shooting in a confined areas. It makes me feel a little better that rarely get any good shots without using these tricks.
I can relate to this on a slightly different level.
I've never really done wildlife photography, but I've done a decent amount of hunting, and spend a decent bit of time near game farms (but never hunted on one). Hunting here in New Zealand is very different from the USA, it requires a lot of walking and actually finding animals, so you end up covering a lot of ground and spend a lot of time looking at things through binoculars. I've seen a lot of animals from far away, getting close to them is a different matter.
In the open, it's seriously hard to get near animals. They have better sight, hearing, and smell than us, and can run faster up steeper terrain than us. This applies to most game animals. It's not easier in the bush, deer stalking is not an easy skill. They also tend to stand in annoying places that are hard to climb to, and wouldn't be very nice for photos.
Wild animals tend to avoid humans, because humans have guns.
On the other hand, one day, we were driving past a game farm, and there was a serious trophy stag just sitting 50 m from the road behind a deer fence, would probably set you back near 10 grand to shoot if that's what you're in to. We stopped and took a couple of photos of it. It just sat there. We waved at it, it just sat there. We tooted our horn at it, and it stood up but didn't move at all. It was not bothered by humans at all in the slightest. We got some rather nice photos of it, photos you'd struggle to get in real life, first because such a stag in real life is once in a lifetime, and second, because you wouldn't be able to get anywhere near a stag standing in an open field with no cover.
If I was in a mind for poaching, it would've been the easiest trophy ever. Without hunting pressure, animals get amazingly placid.
Another thing to note about wild animals (or animals in general), is that they tend to spend most of their day doing boring things, they usually just sit down and don't do anything.
Actual hunting is phenomenally difficult. My dad does "spot and stalk" bowhunting, which is what non-hunters think people mean when they say "hunting". Hunters always think my dad is kidding when he says he hunts that way, because the vast majority of "hunters" are using man-hunting rifles with excellent optics from quite a distance, or even paying a lot of money to sit in a tree-stand with feeders right underneath them, so they can shoot the (mostly domesticated) animal as it comes to feed. When people have that kind of "hunting" available, it makes sense that they'd think someone like my dad is crazy.
One thing to really point out for those who don't hunt is the style of hunting you indicated is only available in a few states. In Texas you can hunt over a feeder, I am not sure of any other states where it is legal. In many other eastern states there is limited public land so a lot of large game, aka deer, hunting is done via stands with bows. This allows people to hunt in smaller areas near more urban centers.
Out west (CO,UT,NM,NV,WY,MT,ID) things are different. There is a lot of public land so there is definitely a lot more long range hunting. Also the private land out west tends to be much larger than the private land tracks out east. So you will see a lot of pay to play hunting ranches.
When has professional photography ever represented itself as a strictly truthful, unambiguous, and simply decipherable medium?
What I mean is, who told you all those photos were of wild animals in the wild? Who doesn't know that models in the cover of Vogue are covered in makeup? Is the dress blue or gold?
But unfortunately there is a cross-cutting of two unrelated problems here: the populist view that art should be nothing but a strict representation of the real world, coupled with the elitist view that photography is not real art.
Journalists choose words and cherry pick quotes to create an impression they want. Painters have literally zero external constraints. But involve a mechanical contraption literally designed to bend light and suddenly we ask people to not bend light.
This sort of thing comes up all the time in the photography communities I follow. In particular, the idea of post processing. There are some purists who think that no photo should be Photoshopped because there's some sort of loss of integrity there. You didn't capture the moment, you made the moment.
But post processing has existed long before Photoshop. People who shot film did (and still do) alter their developer times, or do stand development over agitation, or dodge or burn prints. And every modern digital camera does some post processing in camera as well. White balance, color correction, or even more fancy stuff like film emulation modes...those are all forms of post processing.
I know a lot of photography contests require the submission of an unedited raw file in order to enter, but that's not what people want to see in the end. They want the Photoshop look without going into Photoshop, and that's very, very rare to pull off. So where do you draw the line?
Photojournalism is a fraudulent concept from the beginning. There is no platonically neutral way to present a scene, you are inherently making editorial decisions even before you snap the picture, with your choice of positioning/framing/focal length.
Which of these is the "neutral" way to portray this shot? And says who?
From there it's all a matter of degrees. Pulling a distracting highlight, desaturating a distracting visual element, cloning something out, it's all on a spectrum. But you could do the same manipulations by changing your positioning and perspective a little bit when you take the shot.
Even stuff like white balance and color correction is frowned on, which is incredibly stupid when using a filter or changing your film stock would have the exact same effect. And the fact that digital is inherently a processed format in itself - you're not seeing color, you're seeing black and white run through a Bayer filter and interpreted back to a color image.
Basically, photojournalism is a bunch of people jerking themselves off and handing out awards for getting "the perfect shot" in-camera.
"Purist" photography is lot more impressive to me, if there is such a thing anymore, as you mentioned in camera effects etc. I enjoy a good photoshop job as well though.
I think where it matters to me is when you are saying something is "authentic". Lets say someone is taking pictures of a beach for a resort advertisement. One could photoshop the sand to appear as some sort of rare pink color, but when you arrive that color will be nowhere to be found. Same thing if a news article has "beaches are more polluted than ever" and tint the beach to look green. That to me is akin to false advertisement.
I also agree people like and want photoshopped images since almost all photos benefit from a little tweek to saturation and brightness.
Just my 2 cents because I agree with all you said.
Sidenote if someone says "wildlife photography" and its not in the wild, its not wildlife photography.
Apples to Oranges comparison. If something says "wildlife (nature etc) photography" (vs "my pet dog's photos") then it is natural to assume it wasn't staged, right? Technically the title might not be a lie (maybe they shot it in one of these parks) but at minimum it is misleading. But Vogue probably doesn't claim "naturally beautiful" or whatever (not a Vogue reader, just guessing).
It might not be Vogue, but women's magazines often present folks as natural beauty. It is obvious (to me) that it means they have light makeup and/or the photo has been touched up, but the text will rave about how beautiful someone is without makeup. It gets worse with tabloids, who like to say someone is beautiful/ugly when they wake up. Diet and exercise can be the same - sure they look good and have a good diet and workout routine. They also have personal chefs preparing their meals, a personal trainer, and sometimes are naturally thin even without those things.
I'd really just like folks to be honest about this sort of thing. They could just say they got the picture at a nature park instead of acting like it was a lucky shot. It doesn't change the wonderfulness of the picture.
This type of article might be the step to demystifying photography. But the story I get told over and over again (not directly, but by exposure) is about the photographer that traveled miles and waited days to get that shot.
That wasn't quite as mind blowing as I was expecting. I guess after working on a lot of video projects I can sense when documentaries are taking a narrative license or using music and sound effects to enhance the scene, so that sort of thing isn't shocking to me. Planet Earth is still going out to remote locations to get some pretty amazing shots, rather than doing the work on one of these game farms or adding CGI. As long as they aren't interfering with nature while they do the work I appreciate their effort.
Thank you for sharing the video. It is well explained, and well balanced.
I know how edited are nature documentaries. But I like them anyway. As the video says that makes it more a story, that makes it more interesting.
The pictures with captive animals are a different thing. As chaining a wolf so people can take nice pictures is cruel. To make animals suffer to take a nicer picture without any scientific value is immoral.
This is true of a lot of nature films as well. I got first hand experience of this working as a field biologist in Panama. We had several well known film crews come through where I worked. Trapped animals (temporarily captured for research reasons, it would be highly unethical to trap animals just to film them) were filmed in cages with natural looking backgrounds was common. Several segments involving larger animals were filmed at a local zoo. Insects were often "tethered." A very thin clear plastic thread was glued to their bodies and attached to another surface so they could not fly again. One group wanted to film a tree fall in the forest, so they cut down a tree after attaching several cameras to it... It was an eye-opening experience for me.
Slightly related but very cool, there's a British photographer Tim Flach who takes photos of animals in his studio [0], they are openly taken in a studio and it takes nothing away from their beauty.
Ultimately, if you want to know whether a particular photographer's work is genuinely from the wild, you need to check into their body of work. Ideally, they'll be honest about the use of such animal parks - for the overwhelming majority of cases, though, if they claim the subjects to be wild, they will be.
That's not to say the photos won't have been processed, of course - that's entirely up to individual taste, whether that's casting it to monochrome, or boosting the contrast to bring out the skin texture of an elephant.
In photography circles, parks like those are promoted as a means for enthusiasts to see species they'd otherwise have to travel great distances for - rather like a cageless zoo. It's not something I've engaged in[1], but I can understand the appeal from a hobbyist perspective; and understandably, if you're looking for "wildlife" photography on demand, perhaps for an advertising campaign, you're unlikely to commission someone to attempt to obtain just the right photo out in the wild.
[1] My wildlife focus is primarily rabbits, eg "Momentary":
At a previous job, we talked a lot about managing the expectations of clients. If you promise someone an operating system delivered in two weeks, with a budget of $10k, they will be very upset when you don't deliver. It doesnt matter that it was an unrealistic promise. This is why engineers should double their estimates, and be proactive about communicating delays. People do not like to be disappointed when their expectations are not met.
I think that's what is happening here. People are expecting wildlife photos to be shot in the wild. A studio, or feeding the animals feels like a 'cheaper' or fake product. So they are upset. It doesn't matter if the footage is representative, or if the photos were of a better quality than what could be obtained in nature. It doesn't matter if baiting the animals reduces the cost of making the documentary, potentially increasing the amount of footage we can view. Their expectations were not met.
I've said it before, and probably will have to say it again. We are not logical creatures. We can expect people to behave logically, but we will be disappointed. Then we get upset ;)
EDIT: not saying you were upset
EDIT 2: this is why people don't want to pay for things on the internet. Their expectations have been set.
I think you'll find that a lot of people who enjoy wildlife photography are also those who stand for the preservation of all things wild. If demand for wildlife photography creates a profitable market for raising animals in captivity, it's a bit of a contradiction. There are of course sanctuaries that responsibly protect wildlife, but profitability is likely to breed some not-so-responsible organizations as well. It's not like orcas don't swim and eat fish, and yet public opinion has turned against SeaWorld because of the circumstances that came with commercialization.
Readit News
I am in West Africa now, and have seen a number of wild Chimps and Gorillas, seriously far in the jungle. Rain, mud, fog, etc. play hell on the cameras, and I can only get to within a few hundred yards before I am told that's close enough and/or the animals leave.
The photos are worse than bad.
I just spent a week at a great conservation project where I was just a few yards away from many, many chimps for 30+ hours. (behind electric fence).
The photos are the best I have ever taken in my life. (not online yet, coming soon @theroadchoseme)
I've never really done wildlife photography, but I've done a decent amount of hunting, and spend a decent bit of time near game farms (but never hunted on one). Hunting here in New Zealand is very different from the USA, it requires a lot of walking and actually finding animals, so you end up covering a lot of ground and spend a lot of time looking at things through binoculars. I've seen a lot of animals from far away, getting close to them is a different matter.
In the open, it's seriously hard to get near animals. They have better sight, hearing, and smell than us, and can run faster up steeper terrain than us. This applies to most game animals. It's not easier in the bush, deer stalking is not an easy skill. They also tend to stand in annoying places that are hard to climb to, and wouldn't be very nice for photos.
Wild animals tend to avoid humans, because humans have guns.
On the other hand, one day, we were driving past a game farm, and there was a serious trophy stag just sitting 50 m from the road behind a deer fence, would probably set you back near 10 grand to shoot if that's what you're in to. We stopped and took a couple of photos of it. It just sat there. We waved at it, it just sat there. We tooted our horn at it, and it stood up but didn't move at all. It was not bothered by humans at all in the slightest. We got some rather nice photos of it, photos you'd struggle to get in real life, first because such a stag in real life is once in a lifetime, and second, because you wouldn't be able to get anywhere near a stag standing in an open field with no cover.
If I was in a mind for poaching, it would've been the easiest trophy ever. Without hunting pressure, animals get amazingly placid.
Another thing to note about wild animals (or animals in general), is that they tend to spend most of their day doing boring things, they usually just sit down and don't do anything.
Out west (CO,UT,NM,NV,WY,MT,ID) things are different. There is a lot of public land so there is definitely a lot more long range hunting. Also the private land out west tends to be much larger than the private land tracks out east. So you will see a lot of pay to play hunting ranches.
What I mean is, who told you all those photos were of wild animals in the wild? Who doesn't know that models in the cover of Vogue are covered in makeup? Is the dress blue or gold?
But unfortunately there is a cross-cutting of two unrelated problems here: the populist view that art should be nothing but a strict representation of the real world, coupled with the elitist view that photography is not real art.
Journalists choose words and cherry pick quotes to create an impression they want. Painters have literally zero external constraints. But involve a mechanical contraption literally designed to bend light and suddenly we ask people to not bend light.
But post processing has existed long before Photoshop. People who shot film did (and still do) alter their developer times, or do stand development over agitation, or dodge or burn prints. And every modern digital camera does some post processing in camera as well. White balance, color correction, or even more fancy stuff like film emulation modes...those are all forms of post processing.
I know a lot of photography contests require the submission of an unedited raw file in order to enter, but that's not what people want to see in the end. They want the Photoshop look without going into Photoshop, and that's very, very rare to pull off. So where do you draw the line?
Which of these is the "neutral" way to portray this shot? And says who?
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/09/23/23/2CB1092D0000057...
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/09/24/23/2CB066F80000057...
From there it's all a matter of degrees. Pulling a distracting highlight, desaturating a distracting visual element, cloning something out, it's all on a spectrum. But you could do the same manipulations by changing your positioning and perspective a little bit when you take the shot.
Even stuff like white balance and color correction is frowned on, which is incredibly stupid when using a filter or changing your film stock would have the exact same effect. And the fact that digital is inherently a processed format in itself - you're not seeing color, you're seeing black and white run through a Bayer filter and interpreted back to a color image.
Basically, photojournalism is a bunch of people jerking themselves off and handing out awards for getting "the perfect shot" in-camera.
I think where it matters to me is when you are saying something is "authentic". Lets say someone is taking pictures of a beach for a resort advertisement. One could photoshop the sand to appear as some sort of rare pink color, but when you arrive that color will be nowhere to be found. Same thing if a news article has "beaches are more polluted than ever" and tint the beach to look green. That to me is akin to false advertisement.
I also agree people like and want photoshopped images since almost all photos benefit from a little tweek to saturation and brightness.
Just my 2 cents because I agree with all you said.
Sidenote if someone says "wildlife photography" and its not in the wild, its not wildlife photography.
Understand the sentiment though.
I'd really just like folks to be honest about this sort of thing. They could just say they got the picture at a nature park instead of acting like it was a lucky shot. It doesn't change the wonderfulness of the picture.
Deleted Comment
I had no idea.
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/sounds-natural/
How Nature Documentaries Are Fake https://vimeo.com/214023666
I know how edited are nature documentaries. But I like them anyway. As the video says that makes it more a story, that makes it more interesting.
The pictures with captive animals are a different thing. As chaining a wolf so people can take nice pictures is cruel. To make animals suffer to take a nicer picture without any scientific value is immoral.
[0]: http://timflach.com/work/more-than-human/
That's not to say the photos won't have been processed, of course - that's entirely up to individual taste, whether that's casting it to monochrome, or boosting the contrast to bring out the skin texture of an elephant.
In photography circles, parks like those are promoted as a means for enthusiasts to see species they'd otherwise have to travel great distances for - rather like a cageless zoo. It's not something I've engaged in[1], but I can understand the appeal from a hobbyist perspective; and understandably, if you're looking for "wildlife" photography on demand, perhaps for an advertising campaign, you're unlikely to commission someone to attempt to obtain just the right photo out in the wild.
[1] My wildlife focus is primarily rabbits, eg "Momentary":
https://www.flickr.com/photos/porsupah/9495186995/
I think that's what is happening here. People are expecting wildlife photos to be shot in the wild. A studio, or feeding the animals feels like a 'cheaper' or fake product. So they are upset. It doesn't matter if the footage is representative, or if the photos were of a better quality than what could be obtained in nature. It doesn't matter if baiting the animals reduces the cost of making the documentary, potentially increasing the amount of footage we can view. Their expectations were not met.
I've said it before, and probably will have to say it again. We are not logical creatures. We can expect people to behave logically, but we will be disappointed. Then we get upset ;)
EDIT: not saying you were upset
EDIT 2: this is why people don't want to pay for things on the internet. Their expectations have been set.
Its not clear how harassing wildlife living on the edge of survival is better than caring for animals, and taking pictures in return.