Exposing Nature

By Frank Greenway

The Natural History Museum, 160pp, £16.99

ISBN 056509193X

The best photographic advice I ever received came from Terence Michael Shortt, the noted Canadian bird artist, whose paintings my company published. He told me:  “Decide on the composition of the picture within your rectangle and then forget about it.  Concentrate only on capturing the drama of the eyes.”  This is exactly what I did when, with some trepidation, balancing myself on the bonnet of a Land Rover I directed my driver to steer straight at a pair of mating lions on the Serengeti Plains.  The shot was my best-ever wildlife shot, as the disturbed male glared at me with real hatred and peeled himself off his snarling mate.
           
Frank Greenaway, who has worked for 38 years in the Photographic Unit of the Natural History Museum, is best known for his extraordinarily dramatic photographs of bats. He has produced a lavishly illustrated handbook for the photographer who wants to achieve better wildlife images. Although Exposing Nature focuses more on the natural history behind the subject and the photographer’s approach to it than on the technical aspects of photography, it nevertheless contains vital information that any photographer must know before setting out to improve his skills.  Photography itself, as Greenaway points out, “is best viewed as a technical pursuit blended with an artistic approach”.  The careful choice of equipment according to the type of nature being photographed, rather than solely for the equipment’s ease of use, is a major part of success in nature photography.

However the book certainly covers the technical basics of both film and digital cameras, close-up work and elements of composition. There can be few photographers who will not learn from Greenaway’s expert advice.

The advent of high-quality digital photography has been a godsend to the photographic industry. Today it is not a good idea to buy a film-only camera, as it seems inevitable that film will rise in price rapidly as the mass market for it disappears. All my photography has been done on film, so I am a little sad to find Greenaway stating that the best aspect of the current 35mm film camera ranges is that with most of them you can buy a new digital body fittable to one’s existing range of film camera lenses.

The maximum size of a sharp print made with a digital camera is governed by the number of data points (pixels) that make up the image.  A small camera will have about four megapixels, while a large one has up to 22 megapixels.  The result is a staggering four million individual bits of information from the smaller cameras and over twenty million from medium-format ones.  However, the choice of a specific digital camera is still important: as Greenaway explains, matching a camera to a specialist interest (such as bats) is not too difficult, but finding a model suitable for the broad area of nature photography is tricky.  His table of  technical requirements for the major types of nature photography is particularly helpful.

The author gives further excellent advice on how to get the most out of compact digital cameras, which are increasingly popular with nature photographers because they avoid the complications or impossibility of re-shooting that occur with film.  The correct specifications of lenses for nature photography—autofocus systems, aperture, depth of field and focal length—are all discussed in detail, but in choosing a digital camera the prime consideration remains to decide on the chief purpose to which it will be put.

“Composition”, “Style and collections”, “Birds”, “Mammals”, “Reptiles”, “Insects”, “Water”, “Plants” and “Habitats” each get a chapter, making for fascinating reading with brilliant illustrations by the author.  But his most important advice lies in the introduction to this invaluable book.  What is imperative for both the fledgling and the professional photographer is to understand his or her motivation.  This preliminary self-examination requires absolute honesty.  Once revealed, motivation can lead to a much more effective approach to the taking of pictures and, even more important, what to do with them afterwards.  Just as university lecturers have to understand their motivation in choosing photographs to illustrate specific points in a presentation, so too must the wildlife author when choosing images for a book.