A safari is a magical thing, it really is! And a photographic safari gives us the opportunity to focus on capturing images of animals in the wild, exactly as they should be and exactly as they are. It’s a great time, to talk shop with different photographers from all around the world and of course your Wild Eye Photographic guide. All the gear, all the amazing sightings and all the amazing memories that have been created or those that are currently being created. It’s a time to appreciate the natural world, and when I say natural world, I mean all of it.
If I had a nickel for every time, I saw another leopard shot being uploaded to Instagram, well I think I would be quite rich – I am not sure really, we don’t have nickels in South Africa. However, after opening Instagram again this morning, I felt just a little spark of a rant coming on. I get it, we all want likes, we all want shares, we all want people to think we take amazing photographs. Not realizing that in a world of perfect leopard images, all we are doing is creating noise by posting another. After all, it really isn’t hard to take an image of one of the most beautiful and striking animals on the planet. Is it?
Ok rant over, I think.
I know, I know you are proud of your images as am I but I guess what I am trying to get at here is this… Pay respect to all the wonderful wildlife out there, post an impala image for goodness sake. Life is way to short to chase leopards and lions around all day, life is to short to post another golden hour cat in a tree with “insert meaningful caption here". Your images are gorgeous, all of them. So, let the world see them. Don’t feed into the mindset of “leopard images get more likes”. For a second forget about all the social media aspects of showing the world your photos. This is about the wildlife, think about the scenes and moments you have captured, you know, those ones that really excited you but never got to see the light of day because, well you just couldn’t hold your nerve and at the very last second you swiftly moved your hovering finger to that of another cat image.
Cats are gorgeous, I will never dispute that. I love photographing them as much as you do, believe me. At the end of the day learn to appreciate it all though, after all, I have found that the less I chase cats the more they come to me. So, next time you go to post your 8th leopard image of the week, give a little thought to all those other critters that would oh so love to be featured!
Until next time, happy snapping,
Luke
