Today we can all focus on the wild: New tech drive a boom in nature photograph

BREATHTAKING insights into the world of nature were once the sole domain of intrepid television adventurers and their incredible cameramen.

nature photography, never before seenc reatures, attenborough, GETTY

Photographers line up to snap brown bear at the Lake Clark National Park, Alaska

Up close and personal shots of dangerous maneaters or spellbinding footage of never-before-seen creatures from the deep were captured with the same spirit of discovery and derring-do that put man on the Moon.

Who can forget Sir David Attenborough being welcomed tenderly into the realm of a silverback mountain gorilla? What about the brilliant camerawork that revealed the dangers faced by a million zebra and wildebeest as they swam the crocodile- infested waters of the Mara River on their annual migration across the African savannah?



Little wonder that nature programmes remain one of the BBC’s most popular genres, not only pulling in multi-million viewing figures but also achieving top marks for audience enjoyment. Where documentary-makers have trod, top-class photographers have been venturing for even longer. Edwardian snappers thought nothing of hiding for days inside a heep’s fleece to capture a shot of an eagle.

The advent of the single lens reflex camera with telephoto lenses later allowed wildlife to be captured as long as the person pressing the shutter button had patience, field skills and a hefty wallet to pay for vast ribbons of film.

A eureka moment changed wildlife photography in the final days of the last millennium, opening up the cloistered club to the masses and allowing enthusiastic amateurs to take shots that fly round the world on the wings of the social media network. The sensational shot of an inexperienced weasel riding pillion on the back of a flying green woodpecker became an overnight sensation last week.

Never before had such dramatic behaviour involving two stalwarts of the British countryside been witnessed, let alone framed for posterity.

Amateur photographer Martin Le-May’s pin-sharp portrait went round the world in a wingbeat. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds described it as a one-in- a-million shot. A million British birdwatchers, many armed with the latest digital cameras, looked on enviously wishing for the day they would see their own work reaching global audiences.

The likelihood is that many will. Since that serendipitous moment in 1999 when a birdwatcher placed his happy snap camera against the lens of a telescope, so obtaining the first “digi-pic”, wildlife photography has developed into a multi-billion pound pastime. A generation brought up looking at Archibald Thorburn’s exquisite paintings in The Observer’s Book Of Birds is today re-engaging with nature with digital equipment bought out of pension pots and inheritances.

For an outlay of £10,000 or thereabouts a budding photographer has an arsenal to produce glossy magazine-quality results.

Looking at the bulging galleries of internet sites such as BirdGuides and BirdForum the standard of work would not only have amazed masters such as Thorburn but also the luminaries of early bird photography.

The likes of Eric Hosking are ingrained in folklore with their wonderful nest shots and sacrifices made “getting the shot”.

Hosking lost an eye to a belligerent tawny owl.

His pictures now look positively archaic when compared with the beautifully composed and artistically delivered shots online today.

It is not just birds coming into autofocus. Macro lenses allow a peep into a microscopic world, while cheap foreign travel and laptop technology have also created the pShotographic safari.

PEAKING to one of our most celebrated bird photographers David Tipling after a major exhibition, I asked why the hobby has, like many of its subjects, simply taken off. “Instant gratification, I believe, is one of the main drivers,” he says. “The internet allows people to share their images sometimes minutes after they were taken.

“It is like showing the world your trophy. Just as a hunter wants to be photographed with a kill the photographer can present the fruits of the hunt.

 In fact wildlife photography most probably satisfies those primordial hunting instincts that still exist in humans.

“The quality from some is astounding. I think some people are born with a sense of design and can compose a picture that works without thinking too much about it.”

There is something ironic that back at the beginning of the last century “watch the birdie” was the despairing cry of the flustered photographer.

"In those days, bringing a wedding group to order or making a cantankerous child smile was about the biggest challenge for the happy snapper with a Box Brownie from a firm that boasted: “You press the button, we do the rest...”

A hundred or so years on, technology and the silver generation have dispelled another myth from yesteryear about never working with children... or animals.

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