What you miss when you shoot

“It’s a dilemma really; do you try and take pho­tos or do you just look and take it all in — although as a pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher I know what you’ll think. What­ever, you never for­get the beauty of what you’ve seen.” - Janet Young

This write up is inspired by Janet, an ama­teur pho­tog­ra­pher, with whom i had some inter­ac­tion recently.

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Most of the wildlife i have seen has been through the viewfinder of my cam­era. Some­thing that i am not proud of. But it is the truth – it has hap­pened thus.

I realised this, about three years ago, when i was shoot­ing a fam­ily of Greater Crested Grebes in Gujarat. My local guide, a young bird­watcher, was squat­ting beside me and watch­ing the birds through his binoc­u­lars, while i shot away using a 500mm prime.

After 30 min­utes of picture-taking he whis­pered, “What do you see?”
I gave him a quizzi­cal look and after a moment’s hes­i­ta­tion, asked, “What do you mean?”
He repeated, “What do you see hap­pen­ing in front of you?”
“The par­ents are feed­ing their chicks, that’s what i see!,” I said, get­ting a lit­tle irri­tated by this aim­less Q-and-A ses­sion right in the mid­dle of my shoot.
Get­ting a bit impa­tient he said, “Ya, but what about the feed­ing do you see?”
Giv­ing up, i said, “I didn’t see any­thing. Say, what do you see?”

That’s when he explained how a chick com­pressed her neck as a sign of food refusal when the par­ent was try­ing to feed her. On get­ting the ‘i’m full’ indi­ca­tion the par­ent went on to feed the next chick. I looked back at my sub­jects and saw it hap­pen. I had not seen this through my viewfinder. I just saw the pic­ture. This inci­dent made me realise the lim­i­ta­tions of my pho­tog­ra­phy. I was get­ting good pic­tures, but was i get­ting the best experience?

When tak­ing pic­tures, i don’t observe wildlife. I am so engrossed in the pho­tog­ra­phy that i almost for­get about my sub­jects. And when i say ‘engrossed in my pho­tog­ra­phy’ i don’t mean i am busy set­ting aper­tures and shut­ter speeds, nor am i fid­dling with ISO set­tings. My entire obser­va­tion of the sub­ject is from a pho­to­graphic per­spec­tive – i am look­ing at the light, the cam­era angle, the place­ment of the sub­ject in the frame, its expres­sion, its actions, the pho­to­graphic value of those actions, the emo­tional value of the pic­ture, all the ele­ments in the pic­ture, their com­po­si­tional place­ment, the ele­ments to include in the pic­ture and ele­ments that i would like to keep out of the pic­ture. With all this run­ning through my mind within roughly 1/200th of a sec­ond, i actu­ally for­get the majesty of a wild tiger, or the naugh­ti­ness of a young monkey.

Over the last year i have started mak­ing a list of places that i want to visit with­out my cam­era tag­ging along. I just want to sit and take in the nat­ural beauty around me. Breathe in the fresh air, see the light shine on the peak of tall moun­tains and reflect off the rip­ples of mean­der­ing streams in the val­ley below, a cold wind hit­ting against me as the dawn sun sets in a twi­light sky. I can sit there all day and see the world slowly change colours, as the dusk melts away into the night. In this time­less set­ting, Time is not a fac­tor – your emo­tions are.