What five days in the bush taught me about photography

I took it for granted that I was on a photo safari trip with friends and didn’t realize that this particular experience was intense and very different. Indeed there’s a difference between being a wildlife photographer and a photojournalist out in the wild. It took time to understand that this time, me and my camera were the strangers in this habitat and I was the one who needed to blend in.

My photographer friends were selective in what they captured and they had cameras with the silent shutter option. This made me think they had a special privilege, but honestly, that wasn’t true and the debates about the economics of photography really don’t matter in the bush. Silence is how not to impose one’s presence, it’s much the same as the practice of documentary photography. The photographer has to immerse themselves into the community.

Often, engagement with a subject is the most essential tool to getting a good photograph, but on the first days I spent a lot of time shooting. Pressing the shutter can get so addictive that there’s not much time to think about what you’re shooting or where the actual picture in what you’re clicking on is. The aim of shooting is not to get a repetitive generic picture of an animal, but to get quality images that are unique from others and that show that I’ve spent some time trying to learn about animal behaviour. 

To get those quality images, I need to spend more time in the bush to get to know an animal’s behaviour and to anticipate their next movement without being so scared. Elephants, for example, don’t just spring at people because they feel like it. Instead, they are sensitive and scared of humans. That’s why they raise their trunks into the air first before venturing towards the water. They are wary of us because of poaching. Perhaps in a similar way, in documentaries, when being in a new community, people are also nervous and first need to learn that one is not a threat before they can trust and allow the stranger to photograph them.

The job of the photographer is to be a witness, to observe and document. This safari trip taught me how not to impose myself because although I’m an observer I can also be an invader. In documentary work, I’m the one who imposes myself on others because I’m the ‘new presence’ in someone’s everyday life. So I need to be more confident and aware of what my imposed presence does to others. Even with consent and familiarity, ethical questions remain; does the appearance of a camera make people guarded or more performative knowing that their life is being captured in a moment?

Wildlife photography is an intuitive craft; you learn to be quiet and to take the time to anticipate. But this is another lesson I learnt the hard way: you don’t always get the picture you search for. At first it was fun to search for lions since they’re not easy to find  and roam with their chosen pride. Hearing them roar through the night was scary, but exhilarating! Although a lion’s roar can be heard as far as 8 km away, I couldn’t help but think they were very close and a sighting was a real possibility. Seeing fresh tracks the next morning made the search for the big cats even more exciting, but day after day we’d see nothing but paw prints in the sand and miles of dry grass and thorn trees. On one occasion a non-photographer spotted lionesses in the distance but they walked into the grass before anyone else could see them.

Drone searches and meticulous scanning through binoculars and long lenses yielded nothing. The lionesses had found their cover in the brown grass and weren’t interested in giving us humans a sunset show. At this point, I finally gave up on the lions; three days of fixating on what I wanted to see meant I wasn’t fully appreciating the variety of wildlife I was actually seeing and capturing.