Climbing Mount Improbable

The title of this blog post comes a 1996 Richard Dawkins popular science book and is, like many of his titles, an extended metaphor whose theme is extended throughout the book.

Think of Dawkins what you will but he is undoubtedly a master of metaphor and climbing mount improbable is one of his best. It counters the well known creationist metaphor of Paley's watch. Namely, that life, much like an intricate pocket watch, is too complex to have come about by chance. Life, like the watch, Paley argued, necessitates a designer.

One metaphor for evolution is of an N-dimensional adaptive landscape. Any mutation moves a species through the landscape. If a mutation improves a individuals' competitive ability it will rise higher. If it decreases its competitive ability, it will fall lower. Over time, those individuals 'higher' up the landscape and therefore better adapted are favoured by evolution - perhaps imagine a flood drowning those lower down - until, millions of years later, every surviving species towers over the landscape upon its own mount improbable.

Paley viewed the ascent of mount improbable as impossible without the conscious hand of a designer, God, placing each species on the top. Evolution ignores the height and cliffs of mount improbable, simply, slowly, and blindly climbing around the back.

Evolution does not have a goal - it is a mindless algorithm favouring better adapted individuals - but I do. Sometimes, becoming a wildlife photographer seems as remote a possibility as climbing my own mount improbable. My adaptive landscape contains peaks dominated by the giants of the business and each seems very remote.

My challenge, like anyone else's, is to doggedly fight my way around the landscape rejecting less successful ventures and accepting more profitable ones. It is not to waste time finding a non-existent magic bullet ride to the top nor to follow someone successful else up their peak. Hopefully, in this way, I will eventually find myself blinking in the light on a deserted peak with a view to die for.

Oh and, in case you had not guessed, one of my new years resolutions is to blog more frequently.

When location is not enough

Wherever possible I have been discussing the Exposing The Wild captioning system with fellow photographers. Some have been skeptical and others enthusiastic.

One peer commented that she sees no benefit in the classification of wild and captive animals, stating that she would rather include the location the photograph was taken in the caption. This, she believes, gives people enough of an idea about the situation a photograph was taken in to make the Exposing The Wild captioning system irrelevant.

However, is this not assuming a huge knowledge base? There are a huge number of deer parks and animal parks in the UK. Is a viewer expected to have heard of all of these? Even mainstays of the wildlife photography community such as the British Wildlife Center are not well known throughout the general public.

Perhaps my colleague assumes viewers will be able to guess the nature of a location by its name. However, this also has its problems. Is it immediately obvious that the Cotswold Wildlife Center, for example, is effectively a zoo?

There are also situations where even knowing the nature of a location will not be enough to get a flavour of the of the animal's situation. A perfect example of this is WWT Slimbridge. Slimbridge is famous for having the largest collection of wildfowl in the UK. However, spread throughout these captive birds and visible from Slimbridge's hides are an equally large number of wild birds. Some of these are even the same species as the captive birds!

How is a viewer supposed to judge whether an image shows a wild Tufted Duck on the estuary or a collection bird with clipped wings? It is usually immediately obvious to the photographer, so is adding six little characters really too much to ask?

Chance encounters

Some days, for whatever reason, a day's wildlife photography will just not go to plan. Perhaps the weather will be against you, perhaps the subject will be a no-show, or perhaps worst of all, you will miss the shot.

This is all part and parcel of being a wildlife photographer, and something we just have to get used to. It is however something that can put a downer on your day if you are not careful.

I first got into nature photography because I wanted to show people how I see the natural world, and to try to inspire in people some of the passion I feel for the delicate, intricate, interdependent, ruthless, and yet beautiful products of evolution all around us. I have always seen nature in this way, and love being surrounded by it and exploring it.

If I have had a bad day's photography I simply remind myself that even during a bad day of photography I get to see infinitely more of the things I love than I do in a good day in the office. Getting the shot is secondary.

A perfect example of this is yesterday morning. I headed off to Attenborough Nature Center in time for sunrise, mistiming it slightly and arriving almost half an hour early. With time on my hands I was lucky enough to spot two kingfishers zipping by in a blur or blue and orange and my first swallow of the spring, all in the beautiful pre-sunrise light of dawn.

Shortly after sunrise I was sat poised on a fishing platform next to the reserve's Heronry, waiting for a long-legged gangly adult to fly by. This was the plan at least, but as often happens, the plan failed. However, after about five minutes a large dark shape emerged from underneath the platform a meter from my feet, running perhaps five meters down the bank before disappearing underwater. An otter!

All of this happened within about a second, no time for even the 300mm F2.8 lens I was carrying to focus and expose a sharp photograph on the dark shadowy bank. But, to be honest, I simply did not care.

I left Attenborough with no original or unusual images*, but with a massive smile on my face. Sometimes we can get the shot and bring smiles to the faces of others, sometimes we cannot. That is the joy and challenge of wildlife photography.

*only the Swan image in this blog post is from yesterday's visit, the others were taken in 2009.