Animals on the Edge

23 September 2009

Club Report 23/09/09.

It is said that the main purpose of a photograph is to inform people or evoke an emotional response. When Chris Weston of Weymouth visited Dawlish and Teignmouth Camera Club on 23 September, he did both in a presentation where he used his images of endangered species to illustrate how precious they are.

Unlike many wildlife photographers who use a long lens from a distance, Chris likes to get up close and personal to his subjects with a wide angle lens. One image showed a tiger swimming towards him only six feet away, another with a silverback gorilla asleep at a similar distance. He illustrated how he used elephants to gain access to the interior of forests and to get close to his subject. Orang-utans, who have a big maternal bond with their offspring, also featured in many evocative images which ended with a photo of one 25 year old creature who was later shot and died only a couple of days afterwards.

Chris was clearly passionate about his subjects spending much office time to study his ‘prey’. As he said, it was 90% biology and 10% photography. This enabled him to learn about habitat, body language, and activity so that he could set up the ‘shoot’ both in his mind, and later, on location. He also bore in mind photographic and compositional skills, pointing out that, whilst painting was the art of addition to a blank space, photography was about the art of omission – the object being to home in on what was necessary to convey the message. This was clearly illustrated by way of a silhouette of a chimpanzee forming a heart shape.

The message behind the entire presentation was that if your income was less than a dollar a day, and your children were dying, you might be tempted to kill a rhino, at great danger to yourself, for a ‘fee’ of $250.Thus a little money spent locally could go a long way to alter the situation. The trick was also to provide habitat and water for prey in protected areas so that endangered species could thrive and become a valuable tourist commodity. Alongside this humans needed to be protected from marauding wild life and given alternative sources of income. Despite its recent history, Rwanda has set an example by providing basic infrastructure to enable humans and wildlife to coexist at no threat to each other whilst encouraging tourism.

By way of photography, the members and guests present were educated as to how economic and social factors in marginal areas of existence impacted on both humans and animals. They were left with the thought of how to save endangered species for the benefit of future generations.

In furtherance of his aims Chris has co-founded a charity. Details can be found at: www.animalsontheedge.com