Iwago Q&A
Watching animals, do any of their actions ever strike you as pointless?
In the case of India, I don't feel I've managed to observe closely enough yet to be able to say. In Africa for example, let's say a lion goes hunting. It's commonly assumed that lions only hunt when they are hungry, but actually a lion will go hunting even on a full stomach. The same applies to hyenas. Even if the beast's stomach is almost dragging on the ground, it will still attempt to hunt and devour the prey. From a human perspective, this seems pointless, doesn't it?
Then you have creatures like the Thomson's gazelle, and gnu, which give birth to their young all within a very short period of time. In areas inhabited by large herds of herbivores, tens, or maybe hundreds of thousands of young are born within the space of a week or two. Yes, many of these new arrivals will be attacked and eaten, but still they go on being born. This is to ensure the perpetuation of the species, and is far from pointless. Being attacked and consumed is just another of the complex interconnections in nature.
Animal populations of certain species decline, so a call goes out to protect it. But saving just one or two won't be enough to ensure that creature's survival. To survive, animals need to be in groups, and in the places and environments that suit them. When you observe animals, you begin to understand the kind of comfort and natural environment they seek.
It's also very important, for example, to watch the wind. The wind brings clouds, and everything moves. For us humans, I suspect these days our senses have become somewhat dull. I think we need to reclaim our innate senses as human animals. For adults that may be too late already, but when it comes to children, I say tell them to exercise more, get out there and play more. Because moving our bodies sets our minds in motion as well. Without that kind of rich input from our senses, our output will also inevitably be limited.
One of your photos showed two lions locked in ferocious combat. Why do animals of the same species kill each other?
Animals are quite volatile I think. For example, when you approach an African elephant, I guarantee it will look decidedly unhappy. An elephant will be extremely indignant if it spies a human standing next to a tree where it wants to go. In other words, it will "lose its temper." This is very common. I suppose elephants do think of themselves as the biggest and strongest. When humans assume animals have to act a certain way, or that this is how a nature reserve should be, now that is what I call pointless. All animals ever want is comfort. Imagine for example if they refused to eat something because they didn't fancy its taste. They'd never survive.
How do you choose the theme for your photographs every year?
I have all sorts of themes on the go, and don't restrict myself to any single one in any particular year. Take the "animals and flowers" theme, for example. Whenever I spot an interesting connection between animals and plants, my shutter goes into motion.
Last year I went to India and Africa. Actually twice to Africa. The trip to Kenya was my first one there in about 15 years, and I found the animals simply beautiful, and felt a real bond with them. When you really find yourself, and just you click away, marvelling at just how beautiful the flora and fauna are, the resulting photos simply shine. It's as if the quality of the photos changes depending on how the photographer sees the subject.
In the wild, eye contact between mother and child is truly instantaneous. Unlike humans, animals in the wild don't gaze endlessly at their offspring dazzled by how cute they are. They've no time for that: creatures in the wild have to be constantly on the alert, apart from anything else, if they want to preserve their safety. Because they never know when or from where an attack might come. That is why animals have to restrict their eye contact to a brief moment, and in that moment, be able to understand each other.
In Africa, I decided to make capturing that moment of eye contact my theme: recording the fleeting second of eye contact between mother and baby, male to male. You have to be primed for every possible shot. I took both an Olympus E-1 and E-3, but for this kind of shot, the E-3 is overwhelmingly superior. It allows you to capture the moment with no shutter lag whatsoever. I intuitively knew that I could rely on it to get the shot every time.
Now compared to animals and their young, eye contact between human parents and their offspring seems interminable (laughs). It's an indication, I suspect, of how dull our senses have become. Which is why I think we have to expose children to the elements a little more. They need to feel the wind on their skin from time to time. They'll grow up even if their mother's not there. Our young need to revert just a bit back to the animal in us, from a physical perspective.
Tell us about the E-3 commercial footage that "looked cool"
It seems that some of my film footage has been used in a TV commercial as well as the promotional video. Interestingly enough, I have not heard a single comment from any men, but lots of women have been telling me how "cool" it looked (laughs).
That aside, people are always asking me about photographing elephants, like whether it's dangerous, and for sure, whenever I drive in front of an elephant and get out of the jeep to photograph it, I make sure to take a good look around me first. Cows and calves in a herd will react differently in different families. On the occasion of that particular footage too, I searched for a family having a doze, and decided that group looked liked one I could get close to. I told the driver, and as we slowly drove toward them they didn't react at all, so first of all I stuck my leg out of the vehicle...
If it had only been just me disembarking to get some movie footage, matters would have been simple. However animals react very differently when two people get out of a vehicle, as opposed to only one. So I kept one eye on the cameraman alighting with his hi-vision camera, and the other on the elephants as I shot the footage. We're talking a distance of maybe three meters here, at the most. Close enough for an elephant to give you a hard smack with its trunk if it wanted, so I confess I was pretty nervous. But when you see the commercial, that doesn't come across. Instead they make it look really bold.
The photos on display are chosen from around how many shots?
Good question! (laughs). I snapped more shots in Africa than in India. About 200GB altogether. Both JPEG and RAW formats are quite big. Four to five megabytes for the JPEGs, and about 30MB for the RAWs. So the question is, how many shots does that equal? Even in India I have a feeling it must have been around 80GB. I took a PC and a couple of external hard disk drives, and that worked out about right. Which makes my approach to photography sound a bit scattergun... not that I'd deny it (laughs).
I've just taken up photography. How much time do you need to photograph a single scene?
It varies. When you first start taking photos, there is one thing above all else that you must avoid, and that is to decide in advance the kind of photo you want to take. If you're determined to take a particular sort of photo, or decide on a particular composition and reel off shot after shot, you'll never end up with any photos that are fun or interesting. The best photos are not the ones you plan articulately, but the ones you snap on the spur of the moment. These are usually the photos your friends and family will find most interesting. Dozens of photos of virtually the same scene are rarely very interesting. I don't know if it's because the person wielding the camera has put too much thought and not enough feeling into them, but that's what it feels like. In any case, it's best to be as relaxed as you can, and not try too hard.
