What inspired you to get into wildlife photography?
From a very young age, I have always liked animals and wanted to photograph them. In the film age, I mainly photographed landscapes because of the limitation of the equipment and cost. It was when the digital camera entered our life, the low cost and advancing of technology making photographing fast-moving objects possible, I switched to photographing wildlife, around 2009-2010.
How do you look at nature and the world around you from before and after getting into wildlife photography?
Doing wildlife photography made me research animal behavior and their relation with habitat and humans, changing my view of the importance and urgency of conservation. It is clear now that human population growth and the need for more lands and natural resources, is the biggest threat causing many wildlife to lose their habitat, and if we do not do anything we will send more and more species one the way to extinction.
How have your work and art contributed to helping nature and wildlife?
Besides promoting wildlife photography and conservation on social media, I do three things to directly contribute to conservation.
1. For any photographer who joins my pro-photo tour, part of their payment goes directly to the conservation fund.
2. I sponsored other research and conservation projects, like Elena Chelysheva & Jeffrey Wu Cheetah Research Project.
3. Writing articles for magazines like Africa Geographic, Chinese National Geography, and SWARA, etc., to help readers understand nature and conservation.
Besides leading tours, I will focus my next five years work into making documentary films, to bring awareness of the urgency and importance of conservation to the general public.
As a contest judge, what are the first thing you look for in an image?
I always evaluate an image from three aspects:
1. Technical aspects: exposure, focus, color, image quality, etc.
2. Organizational aspects: composition, distraction, clear intention of the main subject, etc.
3. Emotional aspect: Story-telling value, mood , visual and emotional impact.
Besides the basic rules and technical correctness, what are the main element or elements that an image should contain?
To me, a good wildlife photography work should contain at least one, better more elements of four aspects:
1. Image is storytelling, shows behavior of the wildlife to help viewer to understand them
2. Image shows wildlife emotion that can resonate with its viewer
3. Image has aesthetic value
4. Image shows true habitat environment of the wildlife
When judging, do you score an image from your own style and taste point of view?
A trained judge will always judge images from technical and organizational aspects first, which is pretty standard, on emotional aspects, judges’ score will start to vary, for instance, as a professional wildlife photographer, I see a “heron catching fish” image which is not very exciting to me, I will give it a score of 7 out of 10, but if another judge is a landscape photographer, who is barely doing wildlife photos may score a 8.5 out of 10. It is common in photographic competition and it is necessary, as long as your way of scoring is consistent. The point here being: when a really great image shows up, it will impress all judges professional or not, and that will score high marks across the board, so a good image will win in the end.
How much post processing is too much? What is the border?
Different competitions, and different categories of a competition have different rules and parameters of what you can or cannot do with the post-processing, it is complicated, so as a photographer you are going to enter a competition, make sure you read all fine prints of the rules carefully.
Personally, as a professional wildlife photographer, here are the principals of my guide in terms of post processing:
Principles of Professional Post-Processing
The purpose of post-processing of professional nature photography is not creation, it is an enhancing tool to help the photographer to realize the vision when he took the photograph, so enhance, adjust but do not manipulate!
a. Do not add or subtract or relocate the contents of the image, you can crop, but the content of the image must match its RAW file, that’s the bottom line.
b. Do not change the physical characteristic of the image pixel, i.e..
like blur
c. Partial adjustment with clear intentions
d. Enhance the color naturally
e. Do not change the logic of the light
How do you manage with the emotions of witnessing a hunt, a kill and the dark side of the wildlife?
It was disturbing at the beginning, but after years of photographing wildlife hunts, I accepted it as a fact of nature, as inevitable and necessary, and it is crucial for species to survive. We must learn that we should not judge any wildlife behavior according to human moral code, to accept the fact, that the wildlife world has completely different rules –The rules of the jungle.
What is your favorite animal to photograph? And why?
Cheetah, to me they are graceful, beautiful cats, and every time to witness the fastest land animal running at full speed is just spectacular!
Logistically, what is the hardest scene to photograph?
All aerial photography because the cost of the chopper is just too expensive.
How do you narrow THE image out of series of a images of the same subject, barring the image quality?
It is hard, I usually choose the one that clearly captured the eyes of the subjects, or with the fully extended limbs to show the strength of the animal or the tension of the scene, still, sometimes it is difficult. I will choose 4-5 similar ones, and put aside for a few days, then view them at the same time side by side, and pick one instinctively.
What advice or advices do you have for new wildlife photographers?
1. Do it because you love it, and have the passion for it. Not to win the award or for the fame, please yourself first before pleasing others
2. Always try to capture the UNIQUE image, the one which will define your style, your signature, do not imitate or copy the images other people have already done a million times, that only makes your work mediocre. Always try to find your own perspective.
3. Never, never be satisfied by the images you have achieved, always try to find new, better unique imagery.
4. Never stop learning, never stop advancing.
What is your primary gear? Body and lens.
Still image:
Body :
Nikon D6, Nikon D850, Nikon Z7
Lens:
180-400mm F4 with build-in, 1.4X TC, 70-200mm F2.8, 14-24mmF2.8
Video:
Body:
Nikon Z6, Nikon Z7, Panasonic, GH5
Lens: as above
What is the image you have been seeking for years but yet to capture?
The great white shark jumping out of the ocean to catch a seal mid-air.
