I can picture the scene. In the past month thousands of devoted followers will have been frantically googling my blog in search of new and juicy topical articles on the wildlife photography issues of the day, only to be disappointed, trying again a few hours later.
Time to roll out the excuses, fully aware of sounding a little too much like a racing driver. My last post was on the 29th of November, with my term ending on the 11th of December, complete with a flurry of deadlines. This rendered me a little to busy to dwell in the blogosphere
Time to roll out the excuses, fully aware of sounding a little too much like a racing driver. My last post was on the 29th of November, with my term ending on the 11th of December, complete with a flurry of deadlines. This rendered me a little to busy to dwell in the blogosphere
After arriving back late on Christmas Eve I discovered myself to be not quite as dedicated a blogger as Niall Benvie, so did not publish a Christmas day post before shooting up north for a whirlwind tour of the family. Excuses over and back to the matter in hand.
Those of you following photography forums and other blogs will be aware of a whirlwind of controversy blowing up around this years winner of the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition... again!
The earlier controversy related to Jose Luis Rodriguez's use of a camera trap to take the photograph, a matter I discussed in an earlier post
In this post I stated that I believe "the primary duty of the photographer is to inspire and inform members of the public by showing them images of animals and behaviours they would not normally see". Camera traps allow photographers to do this in a non-intrusive way and my opinion is that if a photographer uses significant field craft and technical ability to produce such an outstanding pre-envisaged camera-trap image, then presenting them with a wildlife photography award is justified.
This commentary was aimed largely at Jose Luis Rodriguez's image of a leaping wolf. At the time, all evidence suggested that this was a pre-envisaged image of a wild wolf that had been baited over the course of many weeks such that it would enter a field by leaping over a gate, triggering a waiting camera trap. This would be a huge technical achievement and is certainly is the story Jose has been telling at events such as WildPhotos. If this is the case then I think Jose definitely deserves the title of Wildlife Photographer of the Year.
However, evidence collected by a group of Spanish photographers, and published in a Finnish photography magazine, suggests that the photograph was taken of a tame, and possibly even trained, wolf in a wildlife park.
This has in no way been confirmed, and neither the competition nor the photographer have released official statements. However, I feel I can still comment on the ethics of this were it the case.
In my earlier post I mentioned that to educate, inspire, and inform members of the public with images of wildlife they would not normally see, a photographer needs to be honest and trusted. This is because many wildlife photographs and wildlife spectacles seem, at first glance, to be simply unbelievable.
If I saw a photograph, and was inspired because it showed an unbelievable spectacle in an unbelievable way, only to find out later that the photograph was unbelievable not because of the spectacle itself nor the techniques used to capture it, but because the spectacle does not exist, or because undeclared pre or post capture techniques were used, I would feel cheated. I am sure the same is true of most other people.
If it turns out that Jose Luis Rodriguez's image does not show a wild wolf displaying unusual behaviour in a new unusual way, then I will feel cheated. This is probably a lot less strong a feeling as would be felt by those who were pipped to the post in the competition by an image of a captive animal that was not declared.
I have nothing against photographers taking images of captive animals assuming it is done with the animal's welfare as a foremost concern and it is immediately obvious that the subject is captive. If the image turns out to be of a trained wolf it is still an unbelievable technical achievement and a stunning image.
The problem is that to fail to present a captive animal's photograph as such is highly misleading to the point of lying, not to mention that in this case £10,000 of prize money is at stake so it would amount to fraud.
I sincerely hope that the image is proven to be of a wild wolf, for the photographer sake, the sake of the competition, and of wildlife photography as a whole. If this is not the case, then the trust of all wildlife photographers will surely take a hit.
The rules of the 2010 competition have been altered in a way relevant to this post. The competition no longer accepts images of captive animals. No reason for this has been given, so it is up to us to judge whether this is a reflex action to this controversy or not. This has been discussed in more detail in this post by Paul Harcourt Davies.
