African Wildlife & Environment Issue 76 FINAL

FAUNA, FLORA & WILDLIFE

Since the camera was invented, photography has played an important part in conservation and has helped to get the message out there. With the birth of social media platforms, the sophistication of modern mobile phones, and the easy access through the internet, sharing of any video or photo can happen at the touch of a button. This is both a blessing and a curse. In my conservation career photography has played a major part. A picture is worth more than A THOUSANDWORDS

that wildlife photography has become accessible to a far greater proportion of the population, and the only limit to what is possible is your bank balance. Good camera equipment is not cheap and the mainstay Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) cameras can cater for the needs of all people. Mirrorless technology has also brought huge strides to the industry and is most likely what the future will look like. As a young schoolboy I was always fascinated by photography and spent much time with my father in a darkroom developing film. The smell of the chemicals and the muted red light created a surreal effect, as the photos were passed through the different containers until the image appeared, as if by magic. The process was a laborious one, but that you had to accept because there was no alternative. When I was young, I was fascinated by snakes and tried my hand at photographing them with my father’s Pentax film camera. Some of the slower-moving snakes were easy to photograph, but some of the faster snakes almost got me into trouble. The poisonous Rinkhals was prevalent in our area, and as a spitting snake one had to be careful of your eyes. I remember focussing on a Rinkhals that had spread its hood and was throwing its head forward. I could not manually focus no matter how hard I tried. Only when checking the front of the lens, did I realise it was coated with venom, and that was why I was getting that 'shooting through a fishbowl' type of effect. Once I was trying to photograph a large Brown House Snake when I moved my hand to try and make it get into a striking pose. To my absolute horror while looking through the viewfinder I felt a pain inmyhand and realised that the snake had latched onto my fingers. Instead of capturing all the action and pushing the shutter button, I jumped up, screaming like a stuck pig with the snake attached to my hand. Fortunately, they only have fixed teeth and no venom, so apart from a couple of scratches and hurt pride, I was fine. There is a fine line between wanting to get 'the shot' and putting yourself in danger. The 'Daryl Balfour Incident' with the large elephant bull called Tshokwane was a wake-up call for many of us in the Kruger National Park. Salios Baloyi was my trails assistant on the Napi Wilderness Trail, and he was one of the field rangers who investigated the scene after the incident. Taking a photo of a charging elephant bull will always be impressive, assuming that it will only be mock-charge and stop. In Daryl's case he was on foot, and after being mock-charged repeatedly, he continued after the elephant and then it finally carried through with the charge and injured him severely. Hewas incredibly lucky to survive. Salios said that the large tusks had gouged deep into the earth in the elephant's attempt to get to him. The details of this incident have been written about by Daryl in his book, and having his

BRYAN HAVEMANN PHOTOGRAPHS: JOHNWESSON

It is a 'miracle' that one can capture a moment in time and have it immortalised. Filmcameras in the 35mmanalogue format were the mainstay of most wildlife photographers in the early days. The frustration was that once a roll of film was finished, you had to wait until it was processed in a darkroom or laboratory before you could see the results of your work. This waiting period created much anticipation to see the results, but also made you careful of your shot before pressing the shutter button, not only because you wanted a good photo, but also because of the significant cost of the film and the processing! The digital revolution has provided technological breakthroughs that would have seemed impossible a couple of decades ago. Manual focusing was the order of the day before; however now there are ultra- fast automatic-focussing lenses that can track moving subjects, keeping the image pin-sharp and firing off bursts of 12 frames per second with ease! This has meant

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