Wildlife photography – when are you too close? (Ian Plant)

One of the greatest challenges in wildlife photography is getting close enough to your subject to get a good shot. But another challenge is avoiding getting close. This dilemma raises not only artistic, but safety and ethical issues as well.

On the artistic side, I try to avoid the standard tight wildlife portrait.  When appropriate, I prefer to show wildlife in the context of its environment. And sometimes, I like the various elements of the scene to dictate the composition, instead of having the wildlife subject do so. Both concepts are illustrated by this shot of bald eagles in a tree with the full moon setting behind them. A tight portrait of the eagles would have been far less effective, in my opinion:

Getting too close to wildlife can also be hazardous to your health, especially when dealing with large, dangerous, or ravenously hungry animals. I’ve (too often) found that I misjudged how close an animal would let me get, and I’ve even been charged by a moose once! The following picture of some bighorn sheep illustrates the concept well; although this group did not charge me, they looked like they were thinking about how many sheep it would take to pulverize me into smithereens:

And now the thorny ethical issue: you’ve gotten close enough to get your shot, and you are not at risk of being eaten by a rampaging animal . . . but have you gotten so close that you are unduly disturbing your subject? Many of the wildlife shots that I have taken have ended with the animal seeking to get some distance from me. In some places, animals are so habituated to humans that you can shoot them all day long and they don’t seem to mind. But in the wild, most animals don’t like us, and if they see us, they want to leave, sooner or later. Most of the time, I don’t think it is too big of a deal; whether you are kayaking, hiking, driving your car, walking out of your front door — or photographing – skittish animals will try to get out of your way. Whenever you are outdoors, scaring away some wildlife is inevitable. We shouldn’t stop all of these activities, including wildlife photography, just because animals are doing what they do naturally. And for the most part, the animals don’t suffer any more than some mild and temporary discomfort.

But sometimes wildlife photographers can have a more substantial negative impact on wildlife. For example, if you stick your lens in the nest of the wrong kind of bird, the parents will never return, leaving the babies to die. Or if you use flash to photograph baby turtles hatching at night, they might head towards the flash and never make it to the safety of the sea. Get too close too long to a coyote, and it might become habituated to human presence, increasing its risk of becoming roadkill, or worse, attacking someone. And so on. Some park managers, and even some photographers, are of the opinion that if you have disturbed the animal at all, you have gotten too close.

For the following shot of brown pelican chicks, I entered a pelican colony and used a wide-angle perspective to show the chicks on the nest, with adult pelicans circling in the sky behind. I was only a few feet away from the chicks. By walking into the colony, I scared all of the parent birds into flight. Why did I do this? First, I researched whether pelicans were likely to abandon their nests if there was a brief intrusion. Since biologists often enter pelican colonies to band chicks, I knew that pelicans were reasonably tolerant of intrusion and would not abandon their nests. Second, the image was to be included in my book Chesapeake: Bay of Light, which had a strong conservation and educational theme. This was a “journalistic” image that was intended to educate the public about a large and unprotected pelican colony. Third, I kept my intrusion minimal: I was in and out in less than a minute. Shortly after I left the colony, the adult birds returned to their nests, and the colony’s natural rhythms resumed.

But does this image, and others like it, go to far? This is an issue I struggle with every time I photograph a wildlife subject. I can’t provide any good answers. As with most things, there are no bright lines, rather just fuzzy grey areas. I try to be as responsible as possible; if I obviously disturb an animal, I try to back away. Better yet, I try to learn enough about an animal so that I avoid getting too close in the first place. But sometimes it happens, and the damage — whether mild or severe — is done.

Do the ends justify the means? Is it all right, figuratively speaking, to break a few eggs in order to make an omelette? I’m interested to hear what others think about the issue. I look forward to your comments!

Ian Plant

~ by mountaintrailphoto on July 7, 2008.