After 4 days of set construction and camera rehearsals, we were getting closer to the shoot day. I had been commissioned to direct a television commercial for a leading underarm deodorant client. The basic scenario was: A Tarzan-like character swings through the dense foliage of the African jungle, his cry reverberating across the valleys. He lands on a jungle platform and starts applying a roll-on deodorant, as he strolls casually towards a chimpanzee sitting on a huge branch. The chimp jumps excitedly into his arms and they both swing down to the lower platform, where a beautiful parrot is perched in a tree. The Macaw, obviously impressed by the fragrance, joins Tarzan and the chimp and the three of them swing through the trees, disappearing into the jungle. I would like to make it quite clear I had nothing to do with the concept.

We built a jungle set in Johannesburg, South Africa. The set was constructed in a 900 sq metre studio with three levels of scaffolding, the top level being almost 10 meters above the ground. The pressure was on, so I decided to commission a stills photographer to help me capture the three action sequences and the pack-shot set-up, while I directed the commercial.

Just to give you some of the pre-production insight, my choice of Tarzan was based on original Hollywood characters like Johnny Weissmuller, but unfortunately in the final cast selection I was overruled by the client, who chose an Arnold Schwarzenegger lookalike with an ego larger than his biceps. I must admit, he had an incredibly muscular, well-defined body that suited the character perfectly, except for one thing – he was gay and you could tell it by his walk – anyone who’s seen Priscilla Queen of the Desert would know. Now you have to understand I’m certainly not homophobic, but I found a mincing Tarzan quite bizarre.

I booked two studio cranes, one for my Sony 700 and the other for my stills rig. I’m sure most of you are aware that unless you are shooting moody production stills, movie lighting is not ideal for ‘classic’ advertising stills; it usually requires a re-light. As an example, if I was shooting on 35mm Eastman Colour film in low light conditions, I would need an aperture of around 2.8 on a 50mm lens, 25 frames per second for television introduced a further consideration. Selecting a suitable aperture and speed for the stills was tricky as well, because of the unpredictable movement of Tarzan and his menagerie. The photographs had to be pin sharp for magazine and poster blowups, so I figured with an independent crane, the stills camera would be reasonably steady and accessible to the action as well as not being locked into the radical moves of the movie crane. All round it was going to be a difficult shoot, not only for stills.

Okay, while you’re working out the technicalities, the story gets worse. The reality is that I find myself working with a gay Tarzan, a neurotic chimpanzee who should be on Prozac and a rare Macaw, who is only doing it for the money. I was so pleased we were not shooting sync sound, as on every rehearsal (and there were many), Tarzan’s cry went up a musical pitch every time he swung on the vine. After 25 camera rehearsals, he started sounding more like Celine Dion on crack. The entire setup was not looking conducive to a great shoot – Tarzan was allergic to animals and broke out in a rash, and the chimp took an instant dislike to the parrot and kept attacking it.

It was a 4.00am call on the day of the shoot and as I arrived at the studio, I got a frantic call from my stills guy. It was bad news; his studio in downtown Johannesburg had been burgled during the night and all his camera gear and other equipment had been stolen. He was beside himself losing a couple of Hasselblad and Nikon cameras, as well as studio 4X5’s. I was in trouble – Tarzan was already dressed and made up and we were due to start rolling in an hour. Trying to reach professional photographers at this time of the morning was impossible as most had just got home. Then I suddenly remembered I had my closest buddy in the trunk of my car – my Nikon Cool Pix 5700, which I bought back in 2002.

Don’t fall about laughing, I cannot tell you how many times this camera has bailed me out of trouble – simply by taking great pictures. It is a 5.0 Mega Pixel camera; I only had 2 Gigs of memory, so I would have to shoot on ‘fine’ grade instead of ‘high’, which would give me more pics but less quality. It was not ideal, but there was nothing I could do about it, not at this time of the morning – I was on my shoot deadline. It’s hard to believe, but I promise you this story does have a happy ending.

I had no option but to shoot a movie take and then duplicate the action for a stills take, as I now had to do both mediums. I ditched the second crane and worked from behind the Sony 700. It was hectic, but I was getting some great footage up until the second last hour of the shoot when suddenly, once again, the chimpanzee attacked the Macaw. In an attempt to escape, the startled bird flew off the platform, forgetting that his wings were clipped and fell onto the studio floor, breaking his neck on impact. As you can imagine, there was pandemonium on the set.



I walked across to sympathize with the young man who had brought in the parrot in response to an ad we had run in a local newspaper. He was visibly in shock, holding his head in his hands. Turns out, he was house sitting for some wealthy people who had gone on vocation and decided to make a couple of bucks on the side when he saw the ad. He called my production team, offering the parrot out for hire at a fee of US$ 1 000.00 for the day – enterprising but no cigar.

The happy ending is that the commercial and the stills turned out exceptionally well.

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As I’ve discussed on previous blogs so many things come into play when trying to get the perfect picture. Your approach to each picture is never the same for a very simple reason – taking a picture is a ‘living thing’ it’s an emotion, technique, gut feel, knowledge, commitment and most of all passion. In many cases your subject is on the move so your composition and light source changes constantly.
In still photography much like film production, it is rare to find an all rounder who is great at all types of photography; you gain experience and tend to specialize in what pushes your boat out. I don’t mean to generalize but I doubt if you will find a great paparazzi or news cameraman with a penchant for still life. I don’t think a bowl of fruit or a vase of flowers will turn on an action man.
One of the many key elements to all photography is focus. Although subjective it is critical to your picture but also depends on what type of story you wish to tell. You as the artist may not require a sharp image for your shot, you may need a blurring effect to depict motion, but in most cases you will need a sharp image somewhere in the frame.

Industrial photography ranks high as being one of the most difficult to master, believe it or not great shots of bridges, architecture, high tech equipment or technology are tricky but still one of the most rewarding types of photography.
I cut my teeth as one of the industrial photographers contracted to Phillips (South Africa) and gained a huge amount of experience, also had a lot of fun at the same time. Industrial photography is taxing and it is important to have the right attitude, you have to realize its not fashion, or advertising or newsreel, and is seldom glamorous.

Lighting interiors of high tech control rooms, without picking up reflections of yourself, your camera and your client or getting rid of green casts from fluorescent lighting is a challenge.
With this kind of photography the end product has to be a perfect picture, in focus 3 inches in front of camera right to the end of the control consol 5 meters away – everything in the frame has to be pin sharp with no grain or as it’s referred to in video – noise. You can imagine how difficult that is! Industrial photographers tend to rely on bigger format cameras. I got some wonderful results from a Linhof 4X 5” studio camera.

After a few years, although rewarding, I personally found it too regimented and creatively restrictive.

Focus is critical no matter what you’re shooting but nowadays with the great digital cameras available your life is made a lot easier. With cameras like the Hasselblad H3D the Nikon D2X you have access to tools that keep your images sharp and do a million other things without you even having to ask, so how can you not get a great shot with all that back up?
All of us who can’t afford the expensive gear mustn’t get disheartened, these are expensive high end cameras but you can still achieve incredible results from entry level digital equipment, it depends on you, your eye and, of course your budget.

Most professional photographers are not crazy about auto focus for one reason – you lose control of your creativity. It’s like two guys taking a picture on the same camera at the same time. ‘Hey Frank, I think we should focus on the tree in the foreground and not the Lion?’ ‘No ways, it’ll make a better picture with the tree soft and the Lion sharp’

Well with autofocus the camera does exactly what the computer tells it to, it will only focus on images in the foreground – and if you’re a professional, it’s unlikely you’ll get the shot that you want. You must be in control of the focus.

With the more expensive sophisticated cameras available today, there is a wonderful facility whereby you can hold focus on a moving subject even if other objects are passing through frame.
This offers you the facility of panning with a Lion running at high speed to make a kill, without the focus changing. The Lion will retain its sharpness regardless of what other images pass across the frame.
For those of you who do not have that calibre of camera can still learn a trick or two from our infamous Paparazzi and news cameramen.

Trying to frame and focus on Charlize Theron at the Oscars whilst being pushed and jostled by henchmen or holding focus on a Helicopter evacuating wounded troops while under heavy machine gun fire is hectic, extremely difficult and sometimes dangerous.
A friend of mine who was a well known news cameraman who hated autofocus taught me how to cheat focus. As you have gathered by now I do not like Autofocus unless you’re taking happy snaps, manual focus is difficult because it gives you more things to do and takes more concentration but allows for more creativity.

Scenario: Let’s take Charlize Theron arriving at the Oscars. While you’re being shoved around, keep your cool and focus on a stationery object, any object, somewhere en route from where she arrives to where you are standing.
It could be a bowl of flowers or a statue next to the red carpet. Don’t use a person or moveable object because in all probability they will move in the hustle and bustle and your point of reference will disappear.
Make sure she has to walk through your ‘allocated’ focus point towards you or past you. As she walks into your focal ‘range’ i e close to the statue – fire away, you’ll be amazed at the results. Because of the homework you have done prior to her arrival, you’ll be reasonably calm and if you’re really lucky she will pause next the statue or somewhere within your designated focal point to talk to someone – if this happens, enjoy it’s your birthday and a bonus from the universe. Fire away Dude.

The same applies to the helicopter evacuation or any other situation where you are not in control of your subject, calculate your own focal reference and work within it.
Try it at your local baseball game, you’ll have great fun and might just crack a good pic.

As my news editor used to shout after me as I left HQ ‘Get the pic or don’t come back’

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Have you ever wondered how press photographers and television news reporters get those amazing action shots in hectic and often life threatening situations?

Often press reporters are killed in war zones around the world and you’re not surprised when in the middle of shoot out between the good guys and the bad guys a cameraman appears, glued to the lens of his Sony. In the comfort of your couch you pop another Bud and wonder what the hell is going through this idiots mind. He’s in the centre of the crossfire bullets and shrapnel flying everywhere and he is framing for the perfect shot. You wonder just what possesses a person to choose this as a career. Talk to any professional news cameraman and he’ll tell that when you’re looking through a lens you are not part of this world, you’re in a vacuum, there is no reality, you are part of your camera and nothing else matters – apart from possibly an award winning shot.

I was also a press photographer during the seventies in the apartheid years in South Africa and I remember traveling through Hillbrow late at night capturing news pictures for the morning addition. The danger is the rush and has an unbelievable effect on you. On one occasion I was confronted by an armed Junkie who was high on methylated spirits. I found myself between him and a police squad car and will never forget the feeling of alienation, Through my Pentax camera I was looking down the barrel of a gun divorced from reality, even the audio track of the city street became distant and quite, at no stage was I afraid – all that was important was keeping him in focus. The effect of the experience only became evident when I returned to the newsroom to hand in the roll of film and change my underwear.

During a battle in a Beirut street a news cameraman was following a contingent of frontline troops when he was hit by a rocket. The missile hit him in the pelvis ripping his leg off. Fortunately paramedics who were close by managed to get him into an ambulance and evacuate him. He turned the camera on himself and told the world what had happened and how he felt before slowly slipping into a coma. The world saw the graphic footage on the 6.00pm news that night.

Rick Lombo, one of South Africa’s top wildlife cameramen who was passionately dedicated to the preservation of Tigers traveled thousands of miles around the globe caring and monitoring Tigers in distress. In a freak accident in Mozambique he was walking away from a maltreated Tiger in a Zoo in Maputo where the attendant had accidentally left the door of the cage unlocked. Rick was walking away with his camera on his shoulder when the Tiger struck him from behind killing him instantly in front of a television news team.

The very species of wild animal that he’d fought so hard to protect ended his life.
My good friend Tony Wasserman was an internationally renowned news man who’d covered many of the world’s trouble spots and war zones. He was a very cool guy with a great philosophy on life and had an incredible nose for being in the right place at the right time. One of his favourite stories that he’d dine out on regularly happened in one of the civil wars in Africa. He was taking cover behind a bullet riddled wall on a side street, peeping around occasionally to sneak footage of an intense battle in progress between warring factions. There was a lot of heavy gunfire along the street with shells bursting overhead and off the wall that was his only protection. During a lull in the deluge he stepped out into the open momentarily to shoot off some footage. There was a jarring thud with everything turning to black before him, as he was thrown back against the wall the impact forcing him to his knees. A shell had hit the camera he was carrying on his shoulder – all he was left with was a piece of the zoom lens. He suffered minor injuries but lived to tell the tale.

But as you are aware God does have a sense of humour. After chasing the most dangerous news from every part of our globe and surviving it, Tony had taken a short break from his hectic schedule and was window shopping in London where he dropped dead from a heart attack. So the next time you see a crazed gunman holding 12 Catholic nuns hostage on a 24th floor window ledge, you can rest assured that somewhere there’s a newsman that will get the shot.

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You have to understand something when taking pictures of wild animals, they never sit still unless they’re stuffed in a museum and we don’t want to go down that road. Wild animals are naturally nervous, highly strung, twitchy, unpredictable and permanently in survival mode.
There is no such thing as ‘chilling out’ for a wild animal in its natural habitat; it is constantly on the look out for possible danger and does not make an easy subject for a sitting of portrait photography. No matter how professional you are and what state of the art camera equipment you have. Go down to your local Zoo one lazy Sunday afternoon and try to get a great portrait shot of an animal – any animal, not necessarily one of the Big 5.
I can almost guarantee you, if you pop off a 100 frames the chances are you’ll delete 90 of them, and that’s shooting a caged animal that sadly doesn’t have anywhere else to go – a captive audience.
If you’re shooting on a 200mm or longer lens and the light is good you should be able to get a reasonably composed shot of your subject. A geriatric Lion makes the perfect shot because he’s asleep most of his life and every day at 5.00pm somebody tosses a Zebra carcass into his cage – what a life, if he really pushes the envelope he’ll get a Martini as well.
But that is not wild animal photography – trust me. Let’s run a fantasy here.

I want you to visualize the same male Lion 15 years younger sitting in the middle of the Kruger Park with his pride of wives and baby cubs. Instead of reclining with a Cuban cigar and his Martini – this Mutha is on red alert, he’s pacing with muscles rippling and flared nostrils sniffing down wind – he’s not taking shit from no one.
He will kill anything that gets in his way and he’s certainly not going to sit in one spot for longer than a second – posing for some dumb ass photographer.
So, guess what? – holding focus on a long lens with very little depth of field is not easy even with the aid of a tripod, so I suggest you change to a lens with a more accommodating focal length. A 75mm will make your task a little easier and you can still get a great shot.

In Africa it is a great honour to be allowed into the space of a wild animal and one must never take that for granted. If an animal grants you an audience while you’re clutching onto your Nikon and a 300mm lens, rest assured, He is busy assessing why you are there, what kind of threat you pose to his family and how you might taste. You must understand, if he so chooses, he will attack you without warning.
If your heart rate hasn’t doubled by now there’s something wrong with you. Your adrenaline is pumping and you’re trying to anticipate what his next move will be. Which way is he going to run? Will he attack me? Will he pack up the family and leave? Will he send his wives off to pull down a Buffalo for dinner?. Whatever he does, whatever move he makes, ask yourself, am I prepared? – The answer is simply no, you are not.

The most cumbersome stuff you can have around you in a hectic photographic situation is cameras, bags and equipment and the more you try to sort out the gear whilst planning the shot, the worse it gets.
If you’re trying for that one in a million shot – you really only need your eye and a camera..
So, with the African sun roasting your bald patch, sweat burning your eyes and African army ants marching around your crotch – you might be considering changing careers.
Okay, here’s a tip that’ll help you. It does not matter what camera you are shooting on, the end result is entirely up to your creativity, you are the artiste, so capture the subject in the best way possible – grab the moment and don’t get caught up in too much technology.
Don’t worry about the mega pixels or gigabytes – just feel it, love it and get the Goddamn shot before you lose the light.
I would recommend that you use a camera that allows you to override the automatic focus, this gives you the freedom to manually pull focus as the subject moves.
In simple terms if you are panning with a charging Lion that runs behind a clump of trees and you’re not on manual focus, the camera will automatically change focus from the Lion to the clump of trees in the foreground, throwing the Lion out of focus – chances are it is not the shot you want.
Don’t forget, framing, focus and depth of field is all part of an award winning picture.
Hey Bill can you ease up for just a second so we can catch our breath!

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There is a famous expression in the stills and movie industries ‘Stay away from Children and Animals’. I’m not sure who should take the credit for this profundity, but whoever he was, he knew what he was talking about. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to prevent you from taking pictures of your young children, your favourite Labrador or maybe Peefer the parrot, if you’re doing it for fun. That’s one thing, but if you decide to take more serious pictures, you’re going to need some help.

Photographing inanimate objects like colourful juicy looking apples placed on a black velvet cloth with a

stained glass backdrop casting multi-coloured washes across the image is relatively easy – oops, what have I just said? I can just hear hundreds of ‘still life’ and portrait photographers saying ‘Easy did he say? Did I hear correctly, who is this guy?’

Nevertheless folks, it is a fact that if you are in a controlled environment – with your camera mounted on a tripod, assistants moving in and out tweaking the lights, makeup and props dressing your shot through the lens – it is a lot easier than shooting a Leopard chasing an Impala that he plans to eat for lunch. Here’s a good example. Hitting a static target at the shooting range is difficult enough, but it takes a special skill and a lot of experience to hit the same target if it’s on the move. Moving objects create a whole new set of problems and mindset. Instead of the luxury of a composed lit frame with exact apertures and wide lenses, you are thrown into unpredictable moves that directly impact on your film speed, your focus, the amount of available light and the choice of lens. It also drastically increases the production of endorphins that jack up your adrenaline level.

Without getting hugely technical, for you to get a good shot of a moving Leopard, you have to be on a rapid-fire camera with a 100mm to 300mm lens, which is extremely restricting even for the more experienced photographer. If your subject is moving fast you have to frame, focus and fire on the fly (as they say) the majority of time, hoping to God you got it. Longer lenses need more light than wider lenses. Most wide angle lens lenses have apertures of between 1.8 and 2.8, whereas 300 to 500mm lenses start with an aperture of between 5.6 & 11– so you do need light. If there isn’t the required light aperture, you need to be on a minimum 400 ASA film in order to enhance the available light and capture a hit-and-miss series of frames that you will either ditch or leave the podium carrying the award.

Okay, so where are we going with this? I suggest you start practicing on Peefer the parrot to get the feel of a moving object. You must understand that Peefer, your Labrador, your child or any other uncontrollable subject is not going to do what you want them to do – so if Peefer offers you a great profile shot, you can put money on it that as you hit the shutter, he will drop out of frame or give you a beautiful close-up of the back of his head. It takes a lot of practice and even more patience.

If you really want to learn about composition and action framing, take yourself and your camera off to the local sports stadium and snap at athletes or baseball players in action – it’ll be your first step to shooting wildlife stills.

And of course when you join us for on a wild adventures trip I’m all too happy to give a helping hand.

Here’s a great Digital Photography Book to start you on your way.

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