JUNGLE PHOTOGRAPHY

Evening Star, Issue 22873, 3 February 1938, Page 9

JUNGLE PHOTOGRAPHY

MOST DANGEROUS HUNTING One day, possibly, nobody will ever shoot a wild animal except in selfdefence, wrote the London correspondent of the ‘ Manchester Guardian ’ recently. Certainly Lieutenant-colouei 0. H. Stockley, when lecturing to the Society for the Preservation of tbq Fauna of the Empire, made on© feel that hunting with a camera was the best hunting of all. As he put it, getting close to the quarry is the only sport in hunting, and tjie photographer must get much closer than the man with a rifle. There may obviously he danger in this, and mpre danger jn the fact that the hunter is cumbered with a large camera as well as a rifle, and still more danger in the photographer’s preoccupation with his viewfinder when he is in the presence of a large wild beast which has already seen him. Colonel Stockley holds that both elephants and lions are much more dangerous to photograph than to shoot, largely because when they do attack they do it suddenly while the hunter is possibly busy with his camera. Bufr faloes, on the other hand, which have the general reputation of being the most, dangerous of all, he considers harmless to people who are not trying to shoot them, except occasional lone bulls. It should he added, however, that Colonel Stockley takes care to be near a sizeable tree when photographing. a buffalo, and h© described one unsatisfactory morning’s hunting which seemed to consist almost entirely of being “ chivied ” by a buffalo from tree to tree and thorn bush to thorn bush. His notions of what constitutes a good animal photograph are exacting. It must be good artistically (in composition and so forth), it must show the animal in its natural haunts, including the natural vegetation, and it must illustrate some characteristic habit of the quarry. The obstacles are many —difficulties of background, protective colouring, lighting (most of his pictures seem to be taken at sunrise or sunset), and the possibility that the quarry may be scared away by some hostile animal.

This last misfortune may, of course, befall the photographer, too. Colonel Stockley has never, for instance, got a photograph of a bush-buck; he did' once get within photographing range of one, only to find, before he could take the picture, that it was sharing a small patch of bush with a rhinoceros. For some creatures, too, infinite patience is needed; ho showed us one picture of a waterbuck which he spent two years trying to get. But the rewards, as Colonel Stockley showed them to ns in the form of some of his are great. Odd bits of knowledge have come his way in the course of his hunting. One day be found himself driving a car behind two ostriches which were running down the road, and he was able to time them by the .speedometer. To his surprise their speed was only 28 miles an hour. By the same method he has timed the hart© beeste and one or two other animals to ran gs fegt as an Jurap,