Hits and Misses: Animal photography - her secrets

How does marine mammal researcher Alexandra Morton get such great action shots of wildlife for our magazine? Here are her secrets.

Speedy dolphins are hard to catch in the act.

As the dolphin exploded to the surface for a lightning breath of air, I swung the camera just in time to catch the last falling droplets. The next explosion whirled me in another direction and I hit the metal frame of the boat's window with my 300mm Nikon lens. Fortunately I have found most Nikon equipment to be very tough, but the contact sheet from that day confirmed my suspicions. There was not one dolphin fin visible amongst the 36 frames of fascinating splash patterns. Perhaps my friend, the whale expert, was right: photo-identification of dolphins was not possible.

Photo-identification is a powerful research tool using photography to "capture" animals. With a good photograph, researchers can identify individual elephants, gorillas, many whales and other species without touching them. It is a relatively new concept using naturally occurring marks on an animal to distinguish individuals. This technique benefits researcher and subject, because it does not impact the animal like attaching a tag to its body, and it allows the researcher to individually identify far more in a population than could be accomplished with the much more expensive and laborious process of tagging. When you can recognize each whale, elephant or zebra in a population, a door opens to understanding the details of their lives and societies. But it all hinges on taking a good picture.

The lenses I use almost exclusively are a 300mm and 24mm. 300mm is the longest lens I can reliably hand hold on a boat and I use it for my research photos and general wildlife. I wish I could use a longer focal length to make those whale dorsals a little bigger, but in a small boat, which is always moving, that is simply not possible. A 24mm lens captures the expansiveness of a seascape beautifully. Light is almost always in short supply on this misty raincoast and so the faster the lens, the better. A 2.8 300mm is too expensive, so I have settled for a 3.5.

Auto-focus is a nice feature and I eagerly purchased an auto-focus 300mm lens, thinking the days of fuzzy whale images were over. But shortly thereafter I nearly threw it over board when it went searching off into infinity as a whale breached close-by. The auto-focus I have needs hard edges to focus. Neither the water, nor the black expanse of an orca fin have hard-edges, unless I luck out and get the edge of a moving fin directly dead-center. If the center of the image, where the lens is busy trying to focus, slips into the middle of the fin or off onto the water, nothing can be done. By the time focus is regained, the whale is gone. So I have never turned the auto focus switch on again.

Whale ID photos are all taken in black and white because there is generally not enough sunlight to shoot a crisp image in colour. There are several excellent black and white films, but I have become stuck on Ilford 400 which I push to ASA 1600. I send all my film to Abbott and Tincombe in Vancouver for processing I have grown to love the timelessness, depicted by black and white. Increasingly, colour looks garish to me and I now shoot more black and white than anything. One word of warning it you try to photograph the ancient red pictographs found along this coast in black and white you will he disappointed. On the grey scale, the red-ochre of the paintings, matches the grey rocks so well, the artwork is often invisible in black and white. Perhaps a filter would combat this.

Because the motion of my boat is always working to blur my carefully focused image, I try not to shoot below 500/sec. I prefer to shoot at 2000 - 4000/sec and my favourite camera goes to 8000/sec. A diving eagle at 8000/sec is an amazing image. At less than 2000/sec, it's a blur. When I take a picture, I exhale squeeze my elbows against my body, and try not to move the entire camera when I press the trigger. Many of my colleagues have mounted their camera on various types of gunstocks but since I always work alone I can't steer, run out out of the cabin and point without hitting something when using a gunstock . They are an excellent accessory however. I always keep two cameras on hand, one loaded with black and white and one with colour. I try to remember to shoot colour now and again for use in slide shows. I like the Fujichrome 100, a film which loves black and green, two strong themes on this coast of whales and trees. I also like the slightly higher speed Kodachrome 200. This Kodachrome isn't as good at capturing whales, but it is incomparable for capturing 'wet'. Many of the photographs I take of my community of Echo Bay have been with this film and it portrays the rich hues of this-rain-soaked environment beautifully.

Having two cameras gives me the luxury of having one loaded with electronics and the other not. Cameras with auto-wind and rewind have a terrible habit of dying. Electronics and saltwater are not compatible. I'll never forget a friend describing how, after dripping his cine camera into the ocean and not having fresh water to rinse it, he licked it, inside and out, clean of salt But even this was not successful. When the fancy camera dies I pick up old trusty and if I had to pick between the two I'd go with manual. If your camera is sealed in plastic try to air it out daily as even fresh condensed moisture will cause cameras to stop working

I finally learned how to take a picture of a dolphin's fin. Instead of running around my boat like a caged gerbil popping in and out of hard-edged windows, I sit at the wheel, focus on the perfect spot and wait. If I can successfully ignore even the most spectacular splash noises, a little wet fin will eventually emerge and all I have a to do is press the shutter.

Shots like this are worth the wait

There are a thousand tips on how to take a good wildlife picture, but I believe the most important one is simply having the fortitude to pack the gear around. For this reason when choosing gear, try it on like clothing. If you can live with it, you will get good pictures. If it is too heavy, clunky, delicate, or expensive to keep with you at all times, you might as well forget taking pictures and just enjoy the wildlife with some of the finest optical equipment on earth, the human eve.

I know from experience that photographers harass wildlife more than any other group of people. There's a kind of insanity, which can take hold when a camera slips around your neck. People who otherwise would never bear down on a whale with their boat. Will chase whales as if they are prey to get a "good" picture if your whale images arc small black blips on a spectacular marine vista don't be disappointed? You can look at that whale and know you didn't harm it, you let it pass unmolested. If you want to take the best whale shot there ever was -- quit your job, devote your life to it and have the patience to take your photographs at the whale's convenience. Enjoy your time in the wilderness and remember the memories you capture in your mind will give you as much enjoyment as those on film.

Alexandra Morton is a marine mammal researcher and writer.
Story and Photos by Alexandra Morton ©