It’s time to talk about the potential impact of using additional lighting when photographing wildlife
Words and images byDOUG GIMESY
When I started out as a wildlife and conservation photographer, I never used additional lighting. Over time, I started playing with flash here and there, adding one light, then sometimes two. As my skills improved, I began using flash more and more frequently, but only in the field, only during the daytime, and only as ‘fill’.
Fill light exposes dark areas of a subject to reveal more detail. Of course, there are lots of other reasons to use flash: to control the direction of light; the colour of light; the amount of light on your subject; and how dark the background is. And there are more ways than flash to do this, such as reflectors, strobes or LED panels. But for me, I used it simply because I liked the result of a little fill now and then.
Then one night about six years ago, I was photographing the little penguins of Melbourne, trying to capture their silhouettes in the dark against the city skyline. Not far from me was a group of tourists trying to photograph the birds before they entered their burrows. Some were using on-camera flashes, others just their mobile phones, with the built-in flashes going off.
There were signs that said ‘No Flash’, and the volunteer guides did what they could to educate the visitors, but the relentless explosions of light continued throughout the evening. Bothering me in the distance, I could only wonder what it must have been like for these little penguins close up.
What I saw that night got me thinking about the impact a photographer’s lighting could have on wildlife – whether using flash in the field or even on captive animals. Having trained as a bioethicist, I really wanted to make sure I was doing the ‘right thing’. And having a zoology degree, I wanted the ‘right thing’ to be evidence-based. I hoped I could develop a simple checklist to guide me, but as I delved deeper, I found little research to draw on. Even defining the ‘right thing’ was a challenge.
For example, could it be justifiable to potentially stress an animal if the resulting image might significantly help its species? Many field researchers capture, tag and release animals, knowing this process stresses the individual animal, in the hope of gaining knowledge for the greater good. And did working with scientists and researchers (ethically approved ones), provide
