Springbok

I like using wide angle lenses for wildlife photography because it enables me to include a lot of habitat, and I like the perspective of wide angles. Obviously it is not easy to get close to wild animals with a wide angle, which explains why you don't see it very often.

Here I wanted to capture the animals that visited this small waterhole in the Namibian desert. In order to be able to shoot from closeby, I used a radio-controlled remote to trigger the shutter from a distance. I chose a position where the sun was shining over my shoulder and put my tripod in the lowest possible position. I made my composition and focused manually on an area just in front of the other side of the waterhole. I selected my aperture and let the camera choose the shutterspeed. After that it was all a matter of waiting. Long waiting, actually, because the first animals that arrived at the waterhole were very cautious when they saw the tripod. When the first brave springbok decided that the tripod did not pose a threat and started drinking, I clicked the shutter. Nikon shutters are not particularly subtle, so I was back at square one with the animals keeping their distance from that strange clicking thing.

Eventually most animals came to drink and I was able to get a few good shots. When I noticed that the birds would still fly away the moment they heard the shutter, I decided to make use of that and shoot two to three frames each time. Here I like how the birds form a band across the frame.