Behind the Lens: The Art of Wildlife Photography with William Fortescue | InnerVisions

[Music] I feel very lucky to do what I do you know last year I think in the space of 6 months we were able to see snow leopard tiger lion cheetah leopard polar bears gorillas and super tuskers I mean I want people to feel like they were there when they're looking at it I think if you get close enough you can almost give that impression of what it was like to be there and I I get it quite often when we host exhibitions and someone goes oh how far away were you from this elephant when you took this and you're kind of standing 5 ft from the picture and you go oh about me to you my name is will fiscu I'm a wildlife photographer I've been doing it for about 10 years now it started off in in sport it's now kind of slowly migrated through to Wildlife the change kind of happened in my early 20s a lot of what I do now takes place across Africa little bits of Asia and we we go up to the Arctic as well a lot of my creative process is driven by a desire to photograph animals as if they were people so this is what I've been focusing on for the last few years and so I really try and stay away from using these mega long telephoto lenses and I really try and use portrait style lenses are typically in my camera bag will have a 35 mil a 50 mil an 85 mil which is not typically what you might take out to go and see these animals but by doing that it just really allows me to to capture the subject in its big natural environment and and for me that makes the photo so much more engaging there's two sides to working in in that kind of proximity to the subject the first is obviously you've got to have a great deal of respect and knowledge about what you're photographing I would say the knowledge side I'm I'm very reliant on the people that I work with so I work with some phenomenal guides I try and do everything from inside a car it makes life a lot easier for me and for the subject elephant photography has definitely been my bread and butter for the last few years I think anyone that's been following my work will realize that it's been a lot of black and white elephant photography so I've been going to amberi now for four or five years the elephant population there is staggering it's absolutely amazing but within that elephant population you have a little group of super tusky elephants now these are elephants whose tusks both weigh over 45 kilos so these things are huge they know they properly will touch the ground and when you see one of those you really know you're seeing something quite special I love all elephants but these guys are something else I think the wildlife came before the photography uh we went on a family Safari when I was about 134 and that definitely really took hold of me and I borrowed my Dad's camera a bit and I I got a real kick out of photographing what you were seeing my mom she B me on a photography course it was led by a guy called Michael BL it was so good I'm on the verge of calling it life-changing because it really got me hooked on photography but his whole thing was don't worry about the technical aspects don't worry about the camera itself all you've got to think about is how you compose a picture how you see the world around you once I left school I left school at I just I was almost 18 and went and got a job out in Kenya working for a safari company as an intern and I've never looked back since [Music] I think a lot of what I do is you get many kind of moving moments and moments that you kind of think oh I'm going to bottle that one up and and and remember that for a while but one that I'd really really craved for a long time was gorillas and so I went to Rwanda back in 2019 and I went trekking there the difference with gorillas is you literally walk in to see them and then you sit amongst them and you only get an hour it's quite a it's very calm but you're really on your toes for the entire hour and the first time I saw them it was absolutely incredible I've been lucky enough to do it several times since to the point that I've now been I've been punched by a gorilla I've had a gorilla drag me down a hill I was just sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time and they were walking past me I had my eye to the camera looking somewhere else and this gorilla was just going just so you know I'm here it wasn't anything more than that but it was right in the kidneys and when a gorilla punches you you know about it you do feel that kind of sense of kind of a share connection it's the eye contact as well you're not meant to make loads of eye contact with especially the dominant males but every now and then your eyes will lock and you just feel they're looking at you in a completely different way to any other animal looks at you the emotional side for me actually comes in more when when I'm printing as opposed to when I'm actually in the moment but if I if I had to nail down specific moments I think the first time I saw a polar bear in the Arctic so going back a couple of years ago go now that's the one time I've actually genuinely been moved to tears just because it was top of my bucket list and actually it wasn't one bear it was three it was a male it was a female and it was a cub but the mother and the Cub came all the way across the ice they came right to the edge and they walked all the way along the ice Edge and we were able to follow for maybe an hour just as they walked along the ice Edge and we sailed along near them I'd been taking pictures for so long that I hadn't actually realized how cold my hands had got so when I stopped taking pictures my hand was almost frozen into a claw so yeah that's a different experience altogether when I look back at all of my favorite photographers they've all shot for magazines they've shot for books they've shot for prints seeing it on a screen is is cool but actually seeing it in print that's when I get a real Buzz yeah I mean I wouldn't even say I'm reliving the moment I would say I'm almost getting it for the first time I think this is my favorite photo I love this one his eyes just follow you wherever you go I think cuz he's staring straight down the camera barrrel they just they follow you everywhere and you can see he's still got like the scars on his nose I don't usually love my work but there's just something a bit different about this the the angle the light kind of the way he looks so calm despite how close I was to him but as soon as you start seeing these scratches on the nose the scars things like that all these dreadlocks in here you know that you're looking at a pretty Grizzly wild line [Music] yeah Rhino are a funny one to photograph they are very photogenic but White Rhino in particular are a grazers their day-to-day activity is not that disimilar to a cow which is probably not what you should say about one of the world's most endangered species but I went to go and photograph the northern white rhinos in Kenya and there's literally there's two left both females it was this kind of genuinely bizarre experience to see an entire species population in front of your eyes of two is a humbling and B pretty sad I wasn't sure what to expect these guys are under guard 24/7 and I was sort of photographing the relationship between their keeper and the and the rhinos and it I still don't really know how I feel about it if I'm honest with you it's quite hard to sort of Judge I guess success in what I do the big way I kind of strive to utilize my work is through my Partnerships with Charities for the last few years I've done lots of work with the David sheeper Wildlife Foundation in particular I've done a bit of work with the Zoological Society of London we've raised just shy of 150 Grand in that time all for a variety of of organizations I get loads out of that and I I really enjoy the concept that what you're creating can kind of give back to what you're photographing there is a lot of Doom and Gloom in in conservation talk right now and there's a lot of trying to inspire change through guilt photography so has that power to be a tool for good and kind of document the amazing side of the planet it's also got the power to show the pretty horrendous side and there's amazing photographers doing that as well so what I'd quite like my work to be is is a more enthusiastic approach to go look we still have phenomenal Wildlife okay it's not what it was 100 years ago 200 years ago but we have something here that is really special and let's keep protecting it and let's not always hear about the doom and the Gloom yeah we're going to have to at points but let's try encourage that change through positivity and not through people going we've done it it's not down to we've done it it's up to we can change it [Music]

Channel: Cultur Art

Views: 8,637

Keywords: cultur.art, art, culture, wellbeing, wildlife, William fortescue, photography, photographer, elephant, lion, gorilla, polar bear, rhinos, africa, asia, arctic circle, wildlife photographer, conservation, endangered, animals, interview, will fortescue, elephants, lions, gorillas, polar bears, cheetahs, leopards, rhino, nikon, amboseli, mkomazi, kenya, tanzania, Adventure, safari, hiking, forests, tigers, sustainability, extinction, cameras, guide to photography

Id: 0pYe5aanSjo

Length: 9min 0sec (540 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 25 2024