Amateur Photographer - UK (2021-11-13)

20 http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk

Marsel van Oosten

Marsel van Oosten was born in The Netherlands and

worked as an art director for 15 years. He switched

careers to become a photographer and has since won

Wildlife Photographer of the Year and Travel

Photographer of the Year. He’s a regular contributor to

National Geographic and runs nature photography tours

around the world. Visit http://www.squiver.com.

Adding context

to subjects

Marsel van Oosten explains how the main subject of

your pictures can be put in context, even if they’re not

the biggest creatures in the frame

W

hen you think
about wildlife
photographers,
and the gear
they use, you immediately
think of huge telephoto lenses.
As much as they’d want to,
wildlife photographers usually
can’t photograph their subjects
with a wideangle lens because
the wildlife would run away
if they tried... or you could
die trying. When you’re
photographing an elephant
seal, a rhino or a polar bear,
you might get away with a
short lens and still get the main
subject at a recognisable size in
the frame. But, especially with
smaller subjects, you need a lot
more focal length to get them
to show up at a decent size in
the image.
This is one of the reasons why
I prefer to photograph large
mammals – they enable me to
use shorter lenses and that
means I can include a fair
amount of the habitat. My
favourite wildlife images are
so-called ‘animalscapes’, so the
habitat is very important to me
and I don’t always want to

The beauty and the beast,

Botswana. Oxpeckers are

after the ticks on their

hosts so, originally, they

were thought to be an

example of mutualism –

interaction between

individuals of different

species that results in

positive effects for each.

However, evidence

suggests oxpeckers are

actually parasites

Nikon D8 10 , 600mm f/4 lens, 1/1250sec

at f/ 5. 6 , ISO 320

reduce everything to a blur. Yet

that almost inevitably happens

when you’re using long

telephoto lenses – the longer

the lens, the more shallow your

depth of field. This is also why

I don’t photograph birds

much... most of the time the

habitat is reduced to a few

branches and leaves, and the

backgrounds tend to be a

smooth blur. From a purely

artistic point of view, this

doesn’t excite me much.

When I photograph small

subjects, like birds, I’m always

The tower, Botswana. This

giraffe was annoyed by the

red-billed oxpeckers that were

harassing it. Every now and then

it would violently shake its head,

which made the birds fly off,only

to return a few seconds later

Nikon D8 50 , 180-400mm f/4 lens, 1/400sec at

f/ 5. 6 , ISO 200