Wild Life Flash Photography

Extract

For some twenty odd years I have been a photographer of wild life in the Malayan jungle with some measure of success in the daylight field. But not until eighteen months ago did I turn my attention to night photography—after watching a large sambar stag, hind and fortnight-old fawn one moonlight night from a hide near a salt lick.

My cameras are an Agiflex III, 2¼ × 2¼, with a 24 cm. tele lens and a 35 mm. Kine Exakta VX with a 13·5 cm. tele lens. These cameras are used side by side on a brass bar which is fitted on to a turn-tilt head on a very heavy solid tripod. The tripod is firmly established at one observation window of the hide. At the other window two flashguns are mounted either on tripods or posts driven into the ground. A third flashgun— an extension unit from one of the two main flashguns—is mounted on a post at the corner of the hide some 8 feet away from the cameras and 6 feet above them.