Steven Leong’s Blog

Yeah… a short-little-rant…

It’s been quite sometime since my last post and it’s definitely been quite some time since I have written anything that is a bit more personal to me. You see, I am an avid reader of National Geographic magazine, which happens to be the only printed item that I read regularly.

Following their amazing shots of the small animals and plants of the sea that won them an award, June 2008′s edition saw this:

Very nice imagery isn’t it?

While a typical photographer would scream, “Studio shots~!” for these with the white background and nearly shadowless shots but these were taken more or less “on-site”. How? Flip to the last page of the mag and you will find this:

Studio shots these are not, underwater location photography it is.

A couple of years ago, I had complained to a group of budding bird photographers in Malaysia that all their shots are just pristine, clinacal “bird portraits” and not real bird photography. Fresh in my mind, I still rememeber that I misunderstood them and it is implied that they are already doing the best they can.

Well… dear birdie-photographers, have you tried shooting on location underwater? If another photographer (yes, I know a NatGeo photographer but photographer nonetheless) can do it, why can’t you? This photographer did this location shoot just because he wanted to shoot them in the least obtrusive way to the nudibranches whilst showing-off their glorious colors.

Now… do tell me why can’t you shoot creative, interesting shots of birds that are not bird perching on a branch doing nothing in the most uninteresting pose?

… end of rant.