It was a glorious Autumn sunny Sunday and my parents had popped down to see how I was doing at Uni. After a quick stopover to my new favourite restaurant Sprinkles for waffles (it had to be done!), I persuaded them that we should all go for a walk in the New Forest (aka I wanted to photograph the ponies!). I love wildlife and one of the reasons I am studying photography is to learn more about the skills required to become a better story teller in my favoured field of wildlife and natural history photography. I want to get insight from photography experts so that I can learn to convey my passion and emotion for the beauty of the natural world so that others can see how important our natural world is to us now and to help save it for the future.
One of the my favourite wildlife photographers is Andy Rouse. Rouse is considered to be our top British wildlife photographer and regularly wins prizes in the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. His is known for getting in really close to his wildlife subjects as he has accumulated immense fieldwork knowledge and is able to use natural light and camera angle to create unique images with a different perspective to the norm.
I’ve taken quite a few wild bird images but as our woodland animals are quite elusive I haven’t taken many wild animals in their natural habitat so I was amazed how close you get to these ponies even the mums with a foal in tow…
© Hayley Salmon
I plan to go back to the New Forest yet again as I want to photograph the ponies interacting with their habitat and the dangers they encounter as too many of our wild ponies are killed on the roads. As a photographer, I can use my images to highlight my wildlife concerns to the general public – but I can’t possibly convey these messages without showing their habitat and the threats they face everyday.
- ROUSE, A., 2008. Concepts of Nature: A Wildlife Photographer’s Art. London: Argentum Press
- ROUSE, A., n.d. The Wider View [online] [viewed 16 October 2014]. Available from:
http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles0505/ar0505-1.html
Visual Exploration 