First Light
Few wildlife photographers realise just how difficult it is to make purposeful use of the barely 15 minutes when the best orange light of sunrise falls into your compositions. At our latitudes, that window is incredibly short. And not only might your main subject – the animal – not be anywhere near you at that precise moment, but the first rays of sunlight may also be shining in a completely different direction.
After twenty years of photographing wildlife, I've had a bit of practice.
You need to anticipate a lot – the location, timing, direction, distance and the animals' behaviour – and put yourself in the best possible position to get lucky. You need to know exactly when and where the sun will shine once it clears the trees, and where and how quickly the animals are likely to move off (or bolt) when they spot you. I've practised this enough that I can usually keep it all under control.
The trouble starts when I have photographer clients with me and want them to get the same – ideally even better – photographs than I do. You can't have a group of eight photographers completely under control to make sure they don't spook wild animals. Around Białowieża, European bison are not like the ones grazing in an enclosure on a pasture outside Prague. Wild animals can be startled very easily. That's the best-case scenario. In the worst case, I really don't want to have to write to Jarda at the travel company's headquarters explaining that two photographers are lying in intensive care in Warsaw after being “flattened” by a bison.
We kept a safe distance, and fortunately nobody got hurt.
Exposure and focusing are a whole separate chapter. Try photographing and focusing precisely when you can barely see the animal in the viewfinder because you're shooting directly into the sun, and the autofocus has nothing to lock onto. I'm not complaining – I absolutely love this kind of challenge. And when I can drag my clients into it too, get them excited about these kinds of “silly” challenges, and then actually make it work (on the first morning, the bison disappeared into the forest), that's the best feeling of all.
Zubr evropský (Bison bonasus) European bison, Białowieża Forest, Polsko
Ondřej Prosický | www.NaturePhoto.cz, Sony ILCE-1, FE 300mm F2.8 GM OSS, 300.00 mm, f/3.2, @1/100 s, ISO 100, čtvrtek 30. ledna 2025 7:13:45, 2025-1-0562.jpg
Polsko
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