Suzi Eszterhas: Wildlife Photographer

Yesterday, I was lucky to listen to Suzi Eszterhas talk about her experiences and how she got into photography. Some of the things she mentioned were pretty eye-opening. The dedication of photographers is something a lot of us are aware of and are in awe of (have you not seen the ‘Planet Earth’ series?!). Still Photography is no different.

Suzi specializes in wildlife photography and she works on stories, not pictures. That is, she follows a family, watches them grow up, watches them learn to hunt, migrate – everything! She spends many months, sometimes years on a story! Briefly summarizing some of the things that stuck in my head (and of course, there are so many parallels to design or rather, principles which are applicable to design)

• Understand your subject(user). Bears yawn when they are stressed while lions yawn when they are happy. A crucial difference to know.
• Observe their daily routine until you see patterns and can predict.
• Do not abuse their trust. Once you lose their trust, it is a lot harder to win it back than it was to win it in the first place.
• Even pros make mistakes. A lot of them. But the experience and learning from mistakes helps them get over it fast.
• She uses 1 in 1000 photos (i.e. it is an outstanding photo) and also remarked any pro who said otherwise was lying.
• She was very unaffected and modest. Asked how she managed to capture some amazing pictures, she attributed a lot to luck, underplaying the amount of time she waited for that one shot. While on photo we see the “moment”, which is the perfect shot, there’s hours and hours of waiting, of positioning, of being aware and ready. And all her experience and knowledge from understanding her subjects play into this.

Amazing photos and talk. I highly recommend checking her site out.

Update: One of the not-for-profit organizations Suzi vets is called Wildlife Direct. The problems of poaching, wildlife endangerment, loss of biological diversity is unchecked due to lack of funding. And there are a lot of grass-roots level organizations which make many small pocket areas safe. And wildlife direct ensures that your money gets to them, without taking a cut.

Another thing she mentioned and I am interpreting – if you want to leave a small footprint when you visit Africa, visit one of the expensive resorts. They are expensive for a reason. In East Africa, a resort might accommodate 200 beds. In these resorts, there might be 30. So, it will be more expensive. But you are not gonna torture animals by hounding them in these places, as you might in over-crowded locales. She recommends Botswana coz they do a lot of things right.

Photography