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I've recently had a conversation about pre-visualising or planning out the kind of pictures you want to take, so your better prepared to take them when the opportunity arises. I just came across these news stories which I think take this up another notch, the photographer put his body on the line (and caught some nasty stuff) to take his pre-visualised pictures.

The pictures are great, but I doubt I'd do the same for such a long period (3 months to get his desired shots), given he was getting some other cool animals along the way I guess thats kind of encouraging.. what do you reckon, was it worth it ? Would you do something similar ?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldne ... onths.html

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... imals.html

Hmmm.... not sure if the title of this thread should be "Committed" rather than "Commitment"!

Was it worth the life threatening or at least life-shortening issues he now has? In my opinion - no. The shots are great but I fail to see how he couldn't have set up a basic tripod and remote system to capture precisely the same shots from the same spot, without having to spend hours in the water himself. What's the worst that can happen - rust?!! He risked so much for the shots and, in my mind at least, the cons far outweigh the pros. JMHO

Only just seen this, if he really sat in there in just his clothes as pictured, he's mental. Aside from the suggestion above of a remote setup, which granted isn't ideal given you don't know where exactly they'll drink, he could have easily given his body more protection that that. A dry suit would have been a good start, so any parasite wanting to attach him would have to come through plastic, something I suspect they wouldn't do!

It is a hard one to answer is it not. We have the fortune of hindsight in responding to this. The original photographer wanted that special shot and to him whatever it took was going to be worth it. The value he places on these shots are known and understood only by him, our frame of reference will always be from our personal. There have always been and there will always be people who chose to go to the extremes for their passion and we are the richer for it. Sure in this case there may have been alternatives that he could have tried but from reading his blog, you are led to believe that being in the water was the only way. It is easy for us to sit here and say use a 500mm from the other side blah blah blah but he was there, he lived there and he knew the behaviour. The shots are wonderful would I have been in the water? I do not know, probably not for three months may have tried once but I have been at the end of a jetty in a fierce storm to get an awesome lightning shot and everytime we do rallying shots we are at some sort of risk no matter how careful we are in placing ourselves in the safest position. Are our shots improved by these risks - you bet they are as you get that different viewpoint.