‘Being a wildlife photographer is a dream
come true – I am literally living the dream. I travel around the world to wild
lands and aim my lens at truly beautiful creatures and breathtaking scenes. It
never grows old and it never gets dull, simply because it is always changing.’
Wildlife photographer
Elliott
Neep photographing from canvas hide, England, UK
Elliott Neep (www.neepimages.com) is a professional
photographic explorer who embarks on some incredible adventures around the
world. With an infectious passion for the wild and its inhabitants, Elliott’s
love for what he does is without a doubt the driving force behind his hugely
successful career. Leaving behind his desk job in IT over seven years ago,
Elliott has since established himself as a recognised wildlife photographer,
with his inspiring work being published in various mediums across the world –
even featuring as part of Apple’s desktop image selection.
For Elliott, his work is a way of sharing
the remarkable sights he has witnessed with others, ‘Since I began my career,
I’ve really wanted to reveal the beauty in nature. Even if it’s a tiny beetle,
I’ve aimed to make it look like a jewel so that somebody, somewhere would fell
inspired by it.’ As Elliott’s career has progressed, so have his photographic
goals, and he adds, ‘I now feel that I’m now standing on a cusp, looking at the
natural world with a different eye. I’m turning away from pretty portraits and
waiting to capture something raw, images with drama or life and death
survival.’
Massai
Lion
His regular excursions to the African
continent provide plenty of opportunity to photograph the realities of the
wild, as Elliott say.’ Africa is safari. It’s the home of wilderness adventures
and it’s all because of the sheer immensity and raw nature of the wildlife
that’s there. It’s not a place of fluffy birds and seals, or timid little
hedgerow critters. It’s the land of the lion pride versus the hyena pack, the
fastest land animal, the biggest land animal, the most elusive and beautiful
leopard and so on. And if that isn’t enough, you also have the drama that
unfolds in the vast open wildness with the dust and the storms and what is
arguably the best light on the planet.’
Black
Rhinoceros in the Mara
Out on the savannah, it’s the big cats that
Elliott really thrives on photographing. He says, ‘The range of imagery you can
capture in the single day is just phenomenal. Bring a few cats together, like a
pride of lions or cheetah cubs, and it all explodes with drama, action, emotion
and surprising unpredictability.’
It’s because of their capricious nature
that Elliott recalls an encounter with a Bengal tiger in India as one of his
most hair-raising experiences, ‘I was onboard an elephant looking for a rather
bad-tempered tigress that had disappeared in the tall pampas grasses of the
meadow. We found her seemingly asleep, until my girlfriend spotted something
small crawling nearby – it was a cub. They were only a couple of weeks old and
she was suckling while we watched. It was the most emotional scene I’ve
witnessed. Then, without any notice, our elephant decided to rip up the grass
from right underneath the tigress! She span over and leapt out the grass
roaring and snarling. Our elephant span around with fright, both my girlfriend
and I nearly fell off the top. The tigress withheld from an outright attack,
but sat back and roared in our faces. My heart was hammering so hard, I only
managed one photo of her snarling face before I demanded we leave. I was
ashamed that our presence had caused this stress – the mahout however thought
the whole scene rather amusing.’
Emperor
Penguins
Even after many years of wilderness
exploration, across 11 countries, there are still plenty of wild subjects on
Elliott’s photo wish list. He says,’ Lemurs, wolves, jaguar, and mountain lion
are all high up on my must-photograph list. But if I have to pick just one
animal to photograph right now, it would be the Arctic wolf. As much as I love
cats, the Arctic wolf is still the epitome of the wild.’
As a career choice, the genre of wildlife
photography is notoriously hard to break into. Elliott’s suggestion to
enthusiasts is to get in as much practise as possible. He says, ‘Practise
doesn’t mean waiting for your yearly safari, or the weekend wildlife workshop.
If you wish to make a career out of it then you need constant practise so that
you know your equipment inside out and can operate in the dark, or even without
moving the camera away from your face. You also need to become as much of a
naturalist as a photographer and learn all you can about your subjects. This is
the only way to gain that extra insight in order to anticipate the action and
behaviour for great wildlife photographs.’
