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Nov. 17—COEUR d’ALENE, Idaho — From big game in the most inaccessible of foreign lands to hummingbirds on a feeder in the handiest back yard, the principles of good wildlife photography can be translated to success by those willing to put in the work.
Learning to capture images that capture imaginations has been a quest of decades for the Mountain West’s Tim Christie. Christie divides his year between Idaho and Arizona, spends his days outdoors in the areas where critters are found and is rarely afoot without camera gear in hand. His advice for those who want to take the show-stopping photos of their dreams, whether for fun or profit or both, is condensed in three essential tips.
Know your gear
“The first step is to make sure you understand the technology of the camera in your hand,” Christie said. “While modern cameras are meant to be bulletproof, allowing you to just point and shoot and have everything come out perfectly, that doesn’t work reliably if everything is not right. If your subject is backlit, if there are obstacles between you and it to distract the autofocus, the camera won’t do it for you.
“More than just working out how the camera works, it’s well worth your time to learn photography from the ground up. Don’t let the fact you can do some things with the camera keep you from learning to do everything with the camera. Whether you take a class from someone who knows what they’re doing, or find a good book that outlines the basics and builds from there, it’s important to understand lighting and composition, to know how shutter speed and aperture affect your depth of field and so on. It’s simple stuff, but if you don’t know why things work, you’ll limit your ability to create the sort of magic you otherwise could.”
Elements of the art that are unchanged from the days of Ansel Adams are still important to understand today. In fact, they’re the key to unlocking the gear’s greatest potential and, in so doing, your own as well.”
Know the critters
“Like many photographers I know, I started out not planning to be a photographer but was introduced to the outdoors early on,” Christie said. “My mom and dad loved the outdoors and really liked to camp. I got interested in hunting and my dad, who didn’t hunt, would take me hunting and hooked me up with people who knew how to hunt. That’s something for which I’m immeasurably grateful, something I only partially appreciated at the time. He went out of his way to do for me what’s proven one of my life’s greatest favors.”
Christie was teaching classes on public speaking and interpersonal relations at North Idaho College when his interest in the science and art of real photography began to grow.
“I had a Kodak Instamatic, a little fixed-focus camera I was using to take well-composed photos of just the crappiest quality you could imagine,” Christie laughs. “I had a friend who taught a photography class and, when I signed up for one of his sessions, the first thing he told me to do was arm myself with a ‘real camera,’ which meant a 35 millimeter. I bought one second hand from a student in one of my classes and really impressed myself with the quality of the photos it took. Pretty soon, I discovered I was spending more time with the camera in my hand than I did with a rod or a gun. I invested in some decent lenses and went from there.”
The ability to put himself into position to see critters to photograph in the first place is one skill Christie already had.
“One of the true gifts hunting has done for me is, it’s let me see the world through the vision of an animal or a bird that makes me say, ‘Wow!'” he said. “It’s hard to describe to someone who doesn’t love the outdoors, but people who hunt, birds or elk or whatever, when you see an animal in a certain situation in a certain light, it takes your breath away, and that’s a gift I was given by hunting.
“I’ve learned to anticipate what’s going to happen next, and I can put myself into a position to make the most of what’s going to happen.”
Know the goals
Good photography of wild critters requires the same elements a good photo of anything would need, which means a good photo can be deconstructed by someone who looks at it from the photographer’s point of view.
“Look at magazines that have the sort of photos you’d want to capture, then figure out what makes that photo what it is,” Christie said. “The composition, the light, the expression on the critter’s face, all of those play a part. Great photographs create great emotional responses, the reaction that makes people say, ‘I wish I could have been there,’ or that makes them think of experiences they’ve had themselves. That’s what you’re after.”
Christie’s first show-stopping photo of a critter in the wild brought all three of those key elements together.
“I knew where some mountain goats were, in a national park in Canada,” he said. “It was March, and the temperature was 25 degrees below zero when I left my car. I could see the goats, and I climbed for an hour to get onto their ridgeline and be on the same level they were.”
The minute he got into position to take his first photo, the goats began moving away and both his effort and opportunity seemed lost.
“They didn’t run away exactly, but mountain goats don’t have to run,” Christie said. “They walked away until they had put a shoulder of the ridge between us, and I knew they’d be walking across the top of an avalanche chute where they were going.”
Christie followed carefully, taking his time. When he rounded the corner he found himself face to face with the billy of any hunter’s dreams.
“Mountain goats in the winter have some of the most glorious hair anyone could ever see,” Christie said. “They look like they’ve just been to the beauty parlor and gotten blow dried.”
Yards away, a record-book goat stood in the mountain breeze, his long, wispy hair floating against a background of royal blue on a day so clear you could see forever.
“I was so close, I’d made the goat nervous, so I carefully backed away, and that made him calm down,” Christie said. “He was standing on a precipice with all of the Canadian Rockies behind him, and I shot every frame of film I had.”
When the editor of American Hunter saw the images that had met Christie’s eye, his first cover photo was sold. The world was introduced to Christie’s photography with the magazine’s April, 1981 edition. Since then his work has appeared on magazine covers more than 500 times. From big game to birds on the wing, Christie’s mastery of the art is one he hopes to always continue to grow and improve.
“Any kind of photography can be really exhilarating, or you can wait around a lot and hope something happens and, when it does not, you can know at least you’ve been alive today and free on the Earth,” he said. “It’s a great way to enjoy a life.”
To see more of his work and to purchase his latest book, “Stories painted with light: Amazing wildlife photographs and how they were made,” visit www.timchristiephoto.com.
Kevin Tate is the weekend edition editor for the Daily Journal. Email kevin.tate@journalinc.com.
