As I alluded to when I wrote about red squirrels, I’ve been lucky to have photographed some pretty amazing animals, from seals and puffins in the UK to orangutans and poisonous spiders in Borneo. But when it comes to flat-out amazing I doubt I’ll find anything to beat gorillas.

I photographed mountain gorillas in Rwanda, and the statistics are amazing. Of the things I’ve photographed, gorillas are by far, far the most endangered: there are fewer than 800 mountain gorillas on the planet; there are no mountain gorillas in any zoo, anywhere on Earth. If you want to see them, you have to earn it.

It certainly felt earned. Leaving Rwanda’s capital at four in the morning for the drive to the north of the country to start the trek, followed by a two hour hike over rough, slippery ground with a deadweight of camera gear on your back leaves an impression. A word to the wise is those little cereal bars you can get: stuff your pockets with them as they’re spectacular for a quick mid-trail energy boost.

Once we’d finished the climb there was the small matter of a six foot wall to shimmy over, which is fairly complicated when you’ve got a camera dangling off each shoulder, and then the world’s most aggressive stinging nettles to negotiate the other side. All of which fades away, of course, when you come face to face with an actual, wild silverback.

I’d worried about the photography for days. It’s not unusual, having put in all the effort, to come away with a scant handful of obscured pictures of distant gorillas, which would have been a huge disappointment – I had flown to Rwanda specifically to see the gorillas and to come away with nothing would have been tremendously difficult to come to terms with.

As you’re probably detecting, we had no problems getting good looks. After a ropey start (the silverback of the group was most unhappy with a Belgian photographer who came with us and took a swing at him), we moved up through the underbrush to find a small group of gorillas, including males, females and – the holy grail – infants.

I have never felt so relaxed photographing anything in my life. Opportunities presented themselves and were in the bag before I realised I’d lifted the camera. There was no fighting camera settings or the light and compositions more or less put themselves together. Lovely.

I also had the chance to get this sequence of portraits. This is Igitangaza, a three and a half year old who was recovering from losing the fourth finger on her right hand after being attacked by a lone silverback gorilla from outside her group. She was very nervous when our group met her, staying close to the dominant male of the group and worriedly monitoring her surroundings. Wildlife photographers sometimes get in trouble for anthropomorphising their subjects too much; this was a case where it was impossible not to.

The good news is I also got this shot of Igitangaza eating, which as any parent who’s had a sick child will tell you, is a promising sign.

Muddy and knackered, the return hike down Rwanda’s mountains held a final surprise, this time in the shape a tiny chameleon. The hills are lined with – no joke – Irish potato fields, and our guide reached into the bushes and plucked out this chipper little fellow.

That picture in particular’s gone great guns, appearing on MSNBC and, my crowning achievement, Pick Me Up magazine, much to my Gran’s delight.

Shooting gorillas

Photographing gorillas is a snap, or at least it was when I was there. Technically speaking they’re very very dark, which means your camera wants to over-expose them, so pegging your camera’s exposure compensation back by up to a stop (have a look at your camera manual) is a good look if you don’t want loads of weird, washed out primates.

Lens wise you really, really don’t need anything big or clever. Most of the shots here were done on Canon’s 70-200mm f/2.8 IS. The only reason I can think of that you’d need anything longer than 300mm would be if you were keen to get absolutely frame-filling headshots.

A few of the wider shots here, including the pic of the smiling chameleon, were done with a Zeiss 35mm f/1.4.

Here’s a picture of a sweaty, sleep-deprived camera-clutcher.

More
If you’d like to know more about Igitangaza, click here to read the account of a group of vets that look after Rwanda’s gorillas: Gorilla Doctor Blog.

If anyone has any more recent news of Igitangaza, please feel free to share it with me via the contact page.

Don’t forget you can follow me on my Facebook page, and if you like wildlife photography and would like to be better at it, see my Tours page for details of the day courses I’m running at London Zoo and Whipsnade Zoo this year.

I used to think of wildlife photography as being hard. Then I did a bit and it turns out that once you’ve got the technical bit nailed, getting good images is as simple as having a good idea, following through on it properly, and showing a bit of patience. The rest – including getting published – is basically down to luck and tenacity.

Then I went to photograph the red squirrels off the coast of Poole on Brownsea island, and my conceptions about how difficult wildlife photography is were completely shattered. I’ve been lucky enough to photograph some pretty interesting animals in the wild – tigers, gorillas, puffins and a fair bit more – but red squirrels are, by quite some distance, the toughest thing I’ve ever shot.

Click the image for a closer look

The pics on this page took the better part of two days to get in the bag. Much of that time was spent under a tree with a Kindle, waiting for the weather to get out of the way and the squirrels to come out to play. They’re diurnal – i.e. active during the day – but they spend a massive chunk of daylight hours in their nests, only coming out to gather nuts and undertake other squirrelly tasks in the morning and later afternoon.

I spent an entire day on Brownsea island and came away with precisely one image worth anything at all. Luckily it was this one.

Click the image for a closer look

I wasn’t enormously fond of it at first, but it’s grown on me – I like the inquisitive eyes and the squirrel’s claws clinging on to the branches. At the time I wasn’t sure of it – I was feeling a bit frustrated at spending so much time to get such a brief look, but the more I look at it the more I like it. The Guardian liked it too, running it as a “Week in wildlife” pic.

Day 2
The “perseverance” bit of photography came the next day. Over on the first ferry, I spent an entire day perched under various trees and bits of undergrowth waiting for a squirrel to pop its head up. My bacon sandwiches came and went (HINT the smell of bacon does not appear to interest squirrels), then my coffee, then lunchtime came and went. By two in the afternoon as I was ready to give up, but stuck it out.

Click the image for a closer look

Thank goodness. At four in the afternoon all the squirrels’ tiny alarm clocks went off at once and four of them started zipping around in front of me. This is where the photography got incredibly tricky. Without getting too technical, red squirrels are tiny little fellows – smaller than their grey counterparts – which means getting your camera’s autofocus to successfully grab one requires excellent reflexes and not a bit of luck. It also needs a bit of shoulder strength – for technical types these were done on a 500mm lens. Combined with the size of the reds it their exceptional turn of speed, as they zip across the forest floor, pause for a heartbeat, then zip across the floor a bit more. Every now and then they dart up a tree, which in combination with the light filtering through the leaves above makes getting a successfully exposed shot really quite a bugger.

Click the image for a closer look

In total I would guess I had about half an hour actually looking at red squirrels, and perhaps a solid five minutes where there were actually any good pictures to take. Not sure I’ve worked harder for any set of pics in my life.

Fancy seeing red squirrels?
You can! Head to Brownsea Island off the south coast of the UK. It’s a five minute ferry trip on Brownsea Island Ferry, then about a fiver a head as it’s a National Trust property.

Click for a closer look

If you’d like to see more photographic tidbits, pictures and other random nonsense, I’m on both Twitter and Facebook.

These are a few of my wildlife pictures from the last few years. Some of them are available to buy as prints – click above for more info. Click on an image to see it larger…

I take wildlife photography quite seriously – I like animals (luckily) and I wouldn’t like to think my presence is too much of a hindrance. So, when I’m out, I abide by the RPS Nature Group’s Code of Practice, which you can find here.

My images aren’t “Photoshopped” beyond the kind of editing you see in the papers every day. Nothing added or removed!

If you’re a keen wildlife photographer, or you’ve just embarked on photography as a hobby, you can meet me, hear me speak about wildlife photography and my pick brains a bit at a photography workshop at London Zoo and Whipsnade Zoo. These are day-long photography courses designed to push your photography onwards and upwards, whatever you level. Click here to find out more.

Some of my landscape images are available as prints  - the thumbnails below link to information pages where you can see the full version of each image, as well as a link to buy a beautiful, professionally-produced print. For more information about my prints, please click here.

For those less interested in the ins and outs of ISO (believe me, I get it), scroll down to find a gallery of pics to click on
One of the benefits of this really quite odd job is that your name starts to crop up on the lists people use when they’re inviting journos and photographers to launches and such. And while ZSL’s announcement of a new tiger enclosure didn’t sound like a visually stunning event (it was a press conference, there was coffee), the offer of a behind the scenes look at the existing tiger enclosure sounded too good to be true.

It nearly was, with the PR telling me and the other photographer (from the Ham & High if I recall) we wouldn’t be able to photograph in the tiger enclosure. A few well placed pouts and the restriction was lifted.

The behind the scenes enclosure smells a bit like a barn, which makes sense given the amount of straw. The difference is that the most dangerous thing you’re likely to find in a barn is an annoyed horse. Here the most dangerous thing would take your arm off if given the chance. The enclosure was crowded; full of journalists, two photographers, a keeper, zoo staff and an ITN film crew.

And it was dark. Very dark. I had an f/2.8 lens and yet all of the internal pics you can see here were shot at ISO 6400. The light was also a sort of weird dark orange, which was fun and games during processing. Lightroom lets you change white balance settings across multiple images at once; it earned its money here.

I use these pictures now when people ask me about ISO. Yes, there’s some grain in there, but they’re sharp and focussed, two things you wouldn’t be able to say if I’d used a lower ISO. And, despite the grain, these ran in the next day’s Telegraph, which suggests sharpness and newsworthiness are more important. The moral of the story: if it’s dark, raise the ISO until it hits the roof. Don’t use a lower ISO and assume you’re an uncommonly stable person. I’ll admit to giving myself some headroom – pics that look sharp on the back of the camera can throw up nasty surprises in processing, so it’s best to nudge the shutter speed up beyond what you think you need in the name of really freezing stuff.

NB all the pics in this post can be clicked on if you can stand seeing them larger.

I’ve had a theme over on my Facebook page this week, rounding up some of my pics featuring arguably less photogenic critters.

First up was this hammerhead worm. Hammerheads drown their prey in mucous, which isn’t very nice, but they’re covered head to tail in mucous, which makes them slippery little customers. Not a dangerous animal, but nor one you’d like to pick out of your hair.

(1D, 100mmL macro, f/8, 1/160th, ISO 2000)

Next up was this giant Bornean spider. I mind spiders a lot less now than I used to, not least because when you do a lot of travelling you’ll frequently have to catch and release absolute monsters – this is by no means the biggest fella I’ve seen.

(1D, 100mmL macro, f/2.8, 1/125th, ISO 2000, off-camera flash)

Arguably the only animals in this group that are actively dangerous, I had all of five seconds to shoot these mating rat snakes in India before our guides bottled it and we sped away. A lesson in reacting fast.

(1D mkIII, 100-400mmL at 1/80th, f/5, 200mm. ISO 1600.)

From something with not enough legs to something with a handsome surplus, this millipede was a cracking find halfway up a tree at night. Love the armoured shell.

(1D MKIII, 100mmL macro lens at f/8 and 1/125th of a second. ISO 800, off-camera flash)

I quite often shoot fluffy things that are nice to look at, as well as multi-legged monsters, so give my Facebook page a “like” to stay up to date. A few giveaways coming up in the next few weeks as well…

D

So June was a pretty good month.

(Actually, May wasn’t bad either, what with my orangutan pics hitting the newspapers. Jus’ saying.)

June was good partly because my book came out. I’ve contributed to photography books and websites for years, but The Pocket Guide to Digital Photography is ALL MINE, and the talented folk at Dennis have made it look stunning. I love the concept: a big, bold picture on one half of the page, then a detailed explanation on the other half describing how to create pictures like it yourself. All but about four of the images are my own, which is a pretty good feeling, and if there’s someone in your family who’s just bought a DSLR and could do with a nudge in the right direction, this is the book for them.

(For a sneak peak at one of my favourite pages, my Facebook page has the page on how to shoot animals through fences. Click here to have a gander.)

The other Interesting Thing that happened in June was that I heard back from the judges at the Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year, otherwise known as the huge extravaganza of spectacular photography that occupies the Natural History Museum from October. Hearing back in June isn’t great news, as it means you haven’t won. Still, checking in with the website my image of a sitting tiger made it as far as the semi-finals, which is a very tidy result, particularly since getting a striking image of a tiger can be tricky (they’re photographed a lot). This was also my first year in the competition, so fingers crossed for at least as good a result next time around.

In celebration, I’ve knocked a fiver off the price of an A4 fine-art print of the image, and £30 off the price of a huge A3 print. Both images are signed and professionally produced on fine-art paper. For more, click here.

Other interesting stuff to click on

I’m lucky to follow a host of great photographers on Twitter, and I was by no means the only one of our little group to do well in WPOTY. Among the other finalists was Richard Peters, who landed four pics in the semi-finals, Amateur Photographer dep ed Mat Gallagher, who placed two in the semis, and David Lloyd, who had a spectacular year with nine semi finalists and three in the finals. Healthy competition doesn’t even begin to cover it…

The most enjoyable aspect of writing The Pocket Guide to Digital Photography was rifling through my stock of photos for pictures to accompany the guides.

And a fine set of guides they are too.

But not every chapter had pictures that fit, so a quick call to the nice folk at the British Wildlife Centre in Lingfield and a visit the next week produced all the artwork for the section on shooting wildlife at the zoo.

Among my favourite pics are these of the centre’s marvellously active otters, which have well and truly learnt when feeding time comes around. They’re very habituated to humans (unlike the shy and retiring types I photographed in Mull earlier this year) and will come all the way up to the fence if they so much as suspect you might be hiding something edible on your person. All of which means you can make lovely images with virtually any lens, while the low fences mean you won’t struggle with composition. The BWC also has a who’s who of British wildlife, including some of the most ridiculously habituated red squirrels you’ll ever see.

ANYWAY the reason we’re all here: otters doing Cute Stuff, including my personal favourite of an otter scaling a keeper to get at the food. Click any of the thumbnails below to have a look. Camera types, there’s technical bumpf in the captions.

The Pocket Guide to Digital Photography is available here.

Buy a print
These pics from the BWC aren’t for sale, but if you fancy hanging an otter on the wall, check out the Scottish otter in the print store

I was recently fortunate to head to ZSL London Zoo to make the most of the recent snowfall and shoot a feature on how the zoo’s animals were reacting. Despite freezing weather and some cagey animals (not everyone likes the snow!) there was some great action, with the otters a particular favourite and landing on the front page of the next day’s Daily Mirror.

NB – these images aren’t available to buy as prints, sos. There’s plenty on offer in the print store, though.