SUBJECT

KNOW YOUR SUBJECT!

Today wildlife photographers in the field find themselves in a similar position to that of Native Americans
and mountain men a couple of centuries ago. The better we understand the wild things we’re interested in,
the more successful we’re going to be. Granted, we can usually let our concentration and powers of
observation go dormant as soon as we put the cameras away without worry about losing our scalps or
going hungry. While we are peering through a viewfinder though, or even thinking about how to get a
particular shot, it helps to know your subject in great detail.

Bears, especially grizzly bears, immediately come to mind as a subject the
photographer had better know something about before attempting those
frame-filling images. The first thing that comes to mind is the importance
of recognizing an aggressive bear before it begins playing tug-of-war with
parts of your body. If you are photographing with a small group though,
your odds of being attacked go down drastically. There has never been a
documented attack on a group larger than 3 people. So the problem then
becomes how do you get close enough to photograph the bears without
scaring them?

At locations like Brooks Falls in Katmai, the bears see so many people
day in day out that it’s hard to believe they would ever be afraid us.
And I’ve never heard of a case where they were. Where there are
not so many people, the bears are usually considerably more cautious.
At Silver Salmon Creek, because bears are so dependent on their sense
of smell, we found that the wind direction played a big role in how
tolerant the bears were. It didn’t much matter what they were doing.
If we approached from down wind, they would stare at us for a short
while, then head for the forest. If we approached from up wind, the
bears would usually pay no attention to us at all, which can present
its own problems. Keeping the wind direction in mind though, we
could often work a particular bear for long periods of time at close range.

Our next example comes from the California Coast. It was our
first time photographing the wintering clusters of monarch
butterflies, and we were a bit frustrated. It was first thing in
the morning, and not a creature was stirring. Not a single
butterfly had opened its wings, and all we could see was their
drab underwings, which were hardly visible against the
eucalyptus leaves they were clustering in. Where
was the fantastic kaleidoscope of oranges and blacks?

As you can guess, the pre-trip research we did was very superficial,
and while it was not disastrous (we did get the shots), we made it
much more difficult than it should have been. It turns out that
monarchs are not very active until the temperature rises to about
55 degrees F, and the morning we were there was a cold one.
The butterflies did eventually put on a wonderful show, but we
literally had hours of standing around waiting until that time.
With proper research, we could have photographed sunrise on
the beach, or at least enjoyed a good breakfast before working
the butterflies.

Have you ever tried to photograph a black widow spider? It’s
a very difficult subject for a couple of reasons. First, they’re
nocturnal, and during the day they tend to hide in dark nooks
and crannies. Second, in spite of their reputation, these spiders
are very shy. When you do find one in the open, day or night,
they tend to scurry for cover as soon as you come close enough
to photograph them.

We had the perfect site picked out. The web was actually in a
cactus rather than something manmade where these creatures
often make their homes. Still, the spider would never come out
while we were there. This is where a little knowledge about
spiders came in handy. Dropping ants into the web worked
like magic. As soon as an ant hit the web, the spider would
race out, wrap it in silk, then drag it away. Cathy had only
to pre-focus on the ant with a macro lens, and she got great
action photos. I didn’t feel too sorry for the ants because
several of them had already stung me pretty good, with no
more provocation than standing on their hole.

By the way, it helps to know your spiders and your prey species if you try this. We tried the same
thing this past spring with a funnel web spider—different species of spider and different species of
ant. The spider did indeed come charging out to get the ant, bit it a couple of times and very little
happened, except that the ant got very upset and began attacking the spider, even though the spider
was a great deal larger than the ant. We ended up having to rescue the spider from the ant--not
exactly the shots we were hoping to get.

Many people have commented on some of our recent snake
photos, wanting to know how we got such colorful images of
snakes in flowers. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated
by reptiles. I’ve caught more snakes over the years than most
people ever want to see. Any time you see a picture of a snake
in the flowers, ours or anyone else’s, suspect that there has been
at least a minimal amount of animal or photo manipulation.
Snakes are no exception to the general rule that animals have
an aversion to flowers.

There’s usually a lot more to it than catching and dumping a snake in a bunch flowers. This will
sometimes work with more aggressive snakes like rattlesnakes. However, most snakes will do
their best to crawl for cover as fast as they can, and this can be surprisingly fast. Photographers
will usually get one or two shots as the snake heads for the underbrush, and that will be the end
of it. The trick is finding an assistant who is willing to hold the snake’s tail.

Here’s the small print. I do not handle poisonous snakes,
nor do I advocate doing so. Also, anyone who handles
snakes much at all, is going to get bit, and I’ve been bit
quite a few times. Once you do have a hold of the snake’s
tail though, the snake does not consider the hand holding
its tail a threat, and it pays no attention to that hand. This
makes it relatively easy to guide the animal through the
flowers or wherever you want to photograph it. Without
this knowledge of snakes, we could never have obtained
some of the images we’ve come home with.

Knowing your subject is often the secret to getting those contest-winning images, and more importantly,
knowing your subject makes it even more special to you (and less dangerous!). Have fun learning about
the subjects you want to photograph.