damselflies in the New Forest, and
I set out the exact area I was going to
work in, and stuck to just two lenses.
But I love the 36-megapixel Nikon
D810. I love being able to crop,
change colour and be very creative,
doing the kind of things I could only
dream about when I was shooting
transparency film.
What about the issue of Photoshop
in wildlife photography? It’s a
controversial subject...
I do use it, and Lightroom, and will
remove distractions or even do some
comping, but I am always very open
about it. You should never pretend
that you haven’t used Photoshop
and try to lie.
You are a regular competition
judge, and see a lot of wildlife
images. What kind of errors do
you tend to see repeatedly when
sifting through the entries?
One of the biggest errors that I see
is choosing the wrong format –
horizontal or vertical. You really need
to think of the best format for the
subject, and to be prepared to t wist
the camera around. Also – and this is
a really important point – don’t just
take a photo of the opportunity; you
need to see the photo in the
oppor tunit y. You have to be able to
interpret it, personalise it, and put it in
the image. Take an image of one
creature killing another, for example.
That is the opportunity, but where is
the photograph in there? You need to
really think about it.
I also see a lot of over-processing,
with cartoon-like images that end
up looking they could have been
produced by Pixar. When choosing
images to shor tlist, the impact of an
image is more important than the
technical aspects, too.You wrote a book about travel
photography called 100 Things
that Caught My Eye. Why did you
call it that?
The point was that the camera
doesn’t take the picture, you have
to think about it in advance. For me
photography isn’t a technical thing,
it’s a thinking thing – working out how
I am going to use that environment to
create an image.You’re giving a talk at The
Photography Show in March.
What will you be talking about?
I’ll be discussing how I work, how I get
ideas (often when I’m stuck on the
motorway!) and my particular
approach. If I was going to photograph
elephants, for example, I’d go online
and look at thousands of images, until
I’d familiarised myself with how they
tend to be photographed, then I
would go and do something different.
So my photography is about thinking
in advance and not just producing
replicas. I’ll also stress the
impor tance of taking risks. I’ve been
shooting birds recently, straight into
the sun, to really make use of lens
spots. It pays to choose the hardest
option sometimes, as you end up with
a more interesting picture.Chris Packham will be talking
at The Photography Show in
Birmingham, UK, on 20 March 2016.
For more details and tickets visit
http://www.photographyshow.com.
To see more of Chris’s stunning
nature and wildlife images visit
http://www.chrispackhamphotos.com“I photographed
this Otter at the
British Wildlife
Centre in Surrey.
I’ve no qualms
about working with
captive animals so
lo n g a s th ey a re we ll
looked after. For me
it’s about the final
image. I never lie,
though – that’s
when it becomes
cheating.”“I ‘built’ this row
of birch trees in
my garden to
photograph this
young Tawny Owl.
I have a fetish for
peeping animals
which afflicted me
after I saw Jim
Brandenburg’s
image of the
peeping wolf.”http://www.digitalcameraworld.com March 2016 121
CHRIS PACKHAM
NEXT MONTH: WE SPEAK TO LEGENDARY LANDSCAPE PRO CHARLES CRAMER