Why We Keep Going Back
There is usually a moment on every trip when I ask myself why we are doing this again.
It might be before sunrise, when Michael and I are climbing into a vehicle in the cold and darkness. It might be after hours of watching an empty hillside where we have been told an animal could appear. Or at the end of another long day when the animal we traveled thousands of miles to photograph simply never showed up.
Wildlife photography involves a lot of waiting.
And I have learned that the waiting is part of the experience.
We can choose where we go. We can research the animals, work with people who know the land and bring the best equipment we have. We can get up before dawn and stay out until the light disappears.
But we cannot make a wild animal appear.
I wouldn't want it any other way.
You Never Know What the Day Will Bring
Some of our journeys begin with a particular animal in mind. But the wild rarely follows our plans.
A leopard can disappear into grass almost before I have focused the camera. A tiger can remain somewhere in the forest all day without ever revealing itself. A gorilla can turn away just as the light becomes beautiful.
And sometimes we see almost nothing.
Earlier in my photography, I think those days frustrated me more. Now I find myself noticing other things.
The first light coming across the landscape. The sound of birds before sunrise. The excitement in a guide's voice when he sees a track we would have walked straight past. The sudden silence when everyone realizes something may be nearby.
I have learned that looking for wildlife and finding wildlife are two different experiences. Both have become important to me.
And Then It Happens
Every once in a while, everything changes.
An animal appears.
Suddenly, the hours of waiting don't matter.
I remember those moments with surprising clarity. A mountain gorilla looking back at us in Uganda. A jaguar appearing along the river in the Pantanal. A puma moving through the vast landscape of Patagonia.
And then there was the black leopard in Kenya.
There are encounters you hope for and encounters you never quite believe will happen until the animal is standing in front of you.
When they do happen, there isn't much time to think.
I raise the camera. I watch the animal. I try to anticipate where it will move and wait for the moment when light, expression and composition come together.
Sometimes I get the photograph.
Sometimes I don't.
I've become much more comfortable with that.
Katrin WEiss
“There are encounters you hope for and encounters you never quite believe will happen.”
“Every photograph has a story outside the frame.”
I Don't Want to Simply Collect Photographs
Michael and I have traveled to extraordinary places, but over time my reasons for going have changed.
I still want to make beautiful photographs. Of course I do.
But I don't want to move through the world collecting pictures of animals as if they were items on a list.
I want time.
I want to watch how an animal moves through its environment. I want to understand something about the place where it lives. I want to know the people who spend their lives there and see things that Michael and I, as visitors, would otherwise miss.
Sometimes that means sitting with one animal for hours.
Sometimes it means putting the camera down.
There are moments when I would rather simply watch.
The Places Are Changing
The more we travel, the harder it is not to notice how much pressure exists around many of the wild places we photograph.
Habitat disappears. Human development moves closer. Wildlife has to navigate an increasingly complicated relationship with the people living nearby.
Photography cannot fix that.
I don't pretend that it can.
But I do believe photographs can make people stop and look.
When someone stands in front of one of our photographs and sees the eyes of a gorilla, the shape of a leopard emerging from darkness or a polar bear crossing an immense white landscape, I hope they feel some of what I felt standing there.
Maybe that connection matters.
It matters to me.
The Moments I Remember Most
Some of my favorite memories from our travels aren't represented by photographs at all.
They are the quiet moments between sightings.
Michael and me sitting in a vehicle as the sun rises. Sharing coffee somewhere far from home. Laughing with our guides after hours of searching for an animal that apparently had very different plans for the day.
The exhaustion at the end of a long day.
And the anticipation of getting up the next morning and doing it all over again.
Those moments are difficult to explain when someone only sees the finished photograph hanging on a wall.
But they are part of it.
Every photograph has a story outside the frame.
Why I Keep Going Back
I know there will be more early mornings.
More uncomfortable roads. More long flights. More waiting.
There will be days when nothing happens and days when everything happens in thirty seconds.
And somewhere out there is an animal I haven't seen, a landscape I haven't stood in and a moment I couldn't possibly plan.
That is why I keep going back.
Not because I know what I am going to find.
Because I don't.
Katrin Weiss
Captured Images | Field Notes from the Wild