Captive Photography

Shooting captive wildlife such as this fox image from the British Wildlife Centre is something of a problem for me, but should it be that way? 

To me, wildlife photography should mean just that, the animals are wild. Not only does that test your photographic abilities, but also tests your fieldcraft skills. So the decent images that result are doubly pleasing.

But more and more we are moving away from that ideal to a greater or lesser degree. I'd never post an image shot in a zoo, but somehow this one seems different. Is it because the centre was closed to the public and just a small group of photographers were given access to the actual enclosures with the animals? The images are much easier to come by (if you discount inadvertently laying in fox poo to get it) because the animals are used to people.

Then we come on to the subject of hides and also the number of staged shots that appear quite regularly.

Even some African safari images are of captive animals, although the vast areas covered by the reserves mean they are essentially wild and they do have to find their own food.

So does any of this really matter? Just like the view on individual images, the answer is subjective. If you get pleasure from the image, it doesn't matter. I know I'll always get the biggest kick out of a decent image of a fully wild animal, but that won't prevent me doing some more captive work. I'm less comfortable with it, but what I will always do is make it clear the animal is captive. Now that is another ethical question entirely!

Be Careful What You Wish For

Canon 5DS, Canon 24-70mm f/4L IS USM at 24mm, 1/8sec at f/11, ISO 800

The problem with a full time job is it leaves only the weekends to indulge our hobby at this time of year. With the last two weekends having bad weather and the good one prior to that being otherwise engaged, the trigger finger is in danger of seizing up. So I was glad I took the opportunity to take an afternoon off and spend it at Kimmeridge Bay in company with David Noton and fourteen other F11 members. Also along was Rob Cook from Canon UK with a boot full of cameras and lenses for us to try out.
The main cameras on offer were the Canon 5DS and 5DS R, along with a selection of lenses. My preference was to try the 5DS with both the 24-70 f2.8 and 24-70 f4 L series lenses. All I had to provide was a tripod and memory cards.
Both of these cameras boast 50 megapixel sensors and consequently record amazing detail, something we all want. But apart from the financial side of owning one of these, there are a number of costs to bear in mind. First and foremost is an absolute need to be spot on with focussing, anything slightly off will be readily seen. For that reason, it is a good plan to use high shutter speeds too and that is a luxury that we don't always have.
Supposing we have that aspect nailed, when we get back in front of the computer, the next set of costs hit home. The resulting file sizes are obviously huge and that extends the time it takes to download the images, to deal with them once you have them in your software of choice and finally it massively increases the amount of storage required.
The quality that can be achieved is beyond doubt, but is the price worth paying?

Storage and All That

The advent of digital photography has brought the pastime into the range of many more people than was the case in the old film days. I know I couldn't sustain the cost when I first tried photography in the 1980s and the levels to which we can, and do go to these days was unthought of.

But there comes with it the problem of storage, unless you can be very disciplined in what you keep and ruthless in what you discard. Rose and I are not good at that, so I've had to work on a system to keep all our precious pictures safe. I'm just about there now and pleased the hard work is behind me.

I took the opportunity to look back at some of the images I've made in the past few years and discovered two things. The early images that I thought were good at the time would these days probably go straight to the Recycle Bin and secondly, in amongst the files are some images that I either forgot, or worse didn't know, I had. This Siskin from January 2014 at Blashford Lakes is a case in point, even though I did post it to my Flickr account.

Storage sorted, hopefully I can get out and shoot some new images in the next week.