You can only shoot what you see!

I am going to start this blog post with a very simple and stark fact: you cannot control what wildlife is going to do. 

There are factors that are within the realm of your control; your camera and how you use it, and the position of the vehicle you are in (to a certain degree). 

One of the biggest frustrations I see with wildlife photographers is when an image doesn't conform to a preconception of what makes a "good" wildlife image. Personally (and I have been guilty of this in the past) I think this comes from the fact that we are looking for clean unobstructed compositions. The reality is, this happens rarely. You will always have a tree, a branch, twigs, grass, rocks, you name it...something to contend with.  You may not have the angel you want. You may be behind the animal not in front of it. You may see something spectacular off road, only to realise its not big game, its general game so the ranger won't go off road to view it.

Don't fight it. Embrace it!

If you try to fight it, you'll just become frustrated and that won't do your photography any good.

If you embrace it, you'll get creative and learn from it for the days when you get the view you dream of!

Here I am sharing two images of 3 female lionesses that were starting to hunt at dusk. We had tracked them when they came out of a block right in front of us. They had been separated and fanned out and they reconvened at this road. I took the first shot that you can see above. But the closest lioness has her tail cut off. There is absolutely nothing I could do about this. The vehicle was very close to these lions. They literally emerged right in front of us. I had to very carefully stand up as I was seated at the back to get a shot, and even then I had some of the jeep's bonnet in the frame, which I then cropped out. It is a shame about the tail. But what about the rest of the image? Well it says a lot to me in terms of how these three females had fanned out and regrouped on the hunt. I like the image. I am not bothered about the tail. 

We continued to follow them and this presented its own challenge. Fading light and a determination from these lionesses meant they were going further and further into the block. And the bush started to get thicker and it became more difficult for us to follow. Time to pack the camera away and just enjoy the sighting? Maybe. But this time I persevered. Earlier on, these lionesses had created some distance between themselves as they stalked Nyala. They effectively laid a trap but it didn't work out. However now they had come together and were sticking together en route to a herd of impala. I had one last photo opportunity of the day...

Now I am glad I didn't put my camera away! I'm sure you are thinking well it would be a better photo if we'd been in front of the lionesses. In fact no, it would have been a different photo! The fact is I managed to convey the fact these lionesses were going somewhere, away from me and they weren't stopping. If I had been in front of them, sure I would have got their heads and faces in view, but they would have been coming towards me. Different view, different photo, different story. Using a shallow depth of field (which I was actually forced to use because the 7D really doesn't allow you to go over iso 1600 to get a clean image) I managed to create some separation between the three lionesses by focusing on the trailing lioness who was closest too us. I also like the fact that the position of the lions is like a "Z" shape, again emphasising the separation. 

Very simply, I took a photograph of exactly what I was seeing. I didn't try and force something out of nothing, but used the camera settings and composition to do the hard work for me. As sightings go, tracking three lionesses is fantastic. But photographically 9 out of 10 photographers would tell you they'd prefer to be ahead of them for a walk by to get the shot than to be behind them. My point is, you can only shoot what you see. Better to focus on that, and do it justice than be left thinking what might have been.

cheers

Jon