This alarming-and-yet-cute picture became an internet meme spawning altered versions in which the woodpecker is lugging all sorts of passengers from elephants and giraffes to Vladimir Putin and John Terry. Journalists and bloggers around the globe used it freely; Le-May politely asked mainstream media to donate their usual fee to charity.
Two months on, Le-May has no regrets he gave it away. “I take photographs for a hobby. I was lucky enough to see something that no one had been lucky enough to take a photograph of before. I hope this doesn’t sound too cringey, but if I’d been that lucky, I felt I should share it.”
The week in wildlife – in pictures
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This generosity might make the big beasts of wildlife photography roar with frustration. Earnings for this glamorous breed, who were once handsomely rewarded for spending months staking out snow leopards for National Geographic, have vanished in an era where everyone is a photographer. So, is the hard-pressed professional the woodpecker, and social media the weasel on its back? Or has new technology locked professionals and amateurs in a mutually beneficial embrace? And as technology changes what we can see, is it also changing our vision of the wild?
Photographers are experimenting with time-lapse and multiple exposures, which create amazing, impressionistic effects. Chris Gomersall, another award-winning photographer who started out, like many traditional wildlife photographers, in nature conservation (working for the RSPB), deploys a CamRanger, which enables him to wirelessly connect his camera to his phone and adjust exposures and other settings via his phone, in what amounts to a sophisticated camera trap. But Gomersall draws the line at drones. “It might be a good boy’s toy, but I can’t be everything – an underwater photographer and the drone photographer.” Drones are complicated – commercial users require an annual licence and a qualification that costs several thousand pounds and is rubber-stamped by the Civil Aviation Authority.
Such advances have opened up the once-exclusive worlds of aerial and underwater photography to the masses. With so many good photos around, do magazines need to pay for images? “We definitely do,”
Rosamund Kidman Cox was a judge for the Wildlife photographer of the year competition from 1981 to 2012, and still edits the book of the Natural History Museum exhibition each year. It wasn’t until 2004 that a digital picture won the prestigious contest. With so much amazing technology, can everyone take great wildlife shots now? “No,” says Kidman Cox. “The ability to take a good wildlife photograph requires background knowledge and perseverance, and an eye and sense of composition. Some photographers go on expensive safaris, take decent pictures and sell them. There’s a lot more of those now, which is why stock photography is so cheap.” But Kidman Cox wants more: “Truthful reflections of nature that are more than records, and have an aesthetic quality are in the next league, and the number of photographers who get that point are far fewer. But it doesn’t mean they can earn much of a living.”
It’s supply and demand,” he shrugs. He’s less phlegmatic about the rise of sub-agency deals, whereby one agency sell his pictures to another, and who sell to another, vastly reducing the photographer’s initial cut (50% at best). “It’s a murky world, and something that photographers never really challenge – they are all worried about upsetting the apple cart.” Despite that, however, Tipling stays positive: photos are much cheaper, but he sells far more because there are more outlets – more than 100 agencies sell his photos.
Camera club Dulux competition: William Richardson
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“Lots of people call themselves a professional wildlife photographer, but I’m not even sure I’m a full-time professional anymore,” says Gomersall. “Like the music business, people have tried to diversify and find other revenue streams.” Despite the flood of free images produced by amateurs, Gomersall and Tipling are not critical of these hobbyists: they are now their clients. “I write articles and books about how to photograph wildlife and I’m taking people out for photographic workshops,” says Tipling. “As far as I’m concerned, the more the merrier.” Like most professionals, Gomersall survives by running wildlife tours and workshops, as well as training sessions for institutions and corporations. “You have to be quite hard-nosed. You can’t think of what’s enjoyable for you, but what the amateur photographic community requires – what’s the service you can provide that appeals to their vanity or love of gadgets? Setting up photographic competitions is a good one.”
Now I have to do what’s popular. A lot of subjects, such as reptiles and invertebrates, don’t get the attention. We’re in danger of neglecting biodiversity.
http://www.theguardian.com/environmen...-changing-art-of-wildlife-photography
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