Photographer Dean Newman has always managed to capture the nature shots he wants, and sometimes he must come up with some creative ways to get them.
The California resident offered a behind-the-scenes on how he manages to shoot photos of birds and animals in nature for publications during a lecture titled “Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Nature Photographers.”
The event was part of Historic Sotterley’s People & Perspectives series.
“I’m not concerned with danger,” said Newman, who has photographed jaguars, bears and caimans and found himself in more than a few hair-raising situations during shoots. “I’m just concerned with art.”
“He is so talented and so engaging that when you see some of the pictures you’re going to swear he had to Photoshop them, but he didn’t,” Historic Sotterley Executive Director Nancy Easterling said.
He has photographed Cape Buffalo (“I was afraid they were going to roll over into my blind”) and zebras (“They’ll just come at you for no reason at all. They’re vicious”) along with cheetahs and giraffe. He once leaned out a vehicle going 40 mph to get a shot of a bison.
“[Editors,] They just think that you walk out in the woods and somebody opens a gate and an animal walks out before you,” said Newman, who declined to name the publications he shoots for. “You have to come up with ways to satisfy them, satisfy your own pocketbook, keep your job and not do terrible things to the animal, so it’s all a balancing act.”
He said one of his favorite places in the world to shoot is the Pantanal in Brazil which he said is like a “swamp about the size of New Jersey where bugs can carry you away, but it’s full of life.”
It’s also a prime location to shoot jaguars, who sometimes will jump into the water to subdue a caiman and then carry it up a 10-foot bank which he said is “one of the most phenomenal things you can see.”
But he added that photographing in the jungle takes work.
“If you’ve ever been in the jungle you won’t see anything,” he said. “No picture I’ve ever taken in the jungle is something I’ve found. Every time [it was] one of these [guides] that found something.”
He told a story about his Pantanal guide Eduardo and his lack of boat maintenance, and said in case of an emergency in an area fraught with dangers “I would have been the second man in the world to walk on water.”
He also told of an assignment in the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea off Alaska to shoot birds. In 35-degree weather he lay in soupy mud for more than three hours to get his shot.
He said he came closest to death while photographing bear cubs in Alaska. The cubs were about 100 yards away and playing on a sandbar when the sow suddenly appeared a few feet behind him.
“I know this is it and I’m thinking any minute the breeze will shift [and the bear will smell me],” said Newman, who added the appearance of his guide defused the situation.
But sometimes when nature is not playing nice, Newman has to think outside the box.
In South Texas he heard of a kingfisher at a holding pond. Knowing them to be wary, Newman pushed a metal stake into the pond and attached tree branches for a perch. He purchased a small wading pool, added water and a few fish and covered it with netting attached to a line to shore. When dawn broke, he pulled the netting off, the bird grabbed the fish and he had his shot, for which he was paid $35.
Regarding elusive snowy owls, he said, “I hate to say this but the way we photograph owls like this and get action shots is we put live mice out there and the owls eat the mice.”
He also once set up a diorama complete with rocks and water to get a photo of a raccoon.
“I know there is a lot of opposition to that,” Newman said of staging areas.
Newman also gave several photography pointers, including never zoom in when you can walk in closer, getting down low to the subject and take lots of photos, “because you never know. Don’t just take one and walk away. Sit on that shutter button.”
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