In Wildest Africa, Vol. 2

by C. G. Schillings

THIS PHOTOGRAPH BEARS WITNESS TO THE DESIRABILITY OF HAVING PERFECTED FILMS TO WORK WITH; FOR GLASSES PLATES ARE APT TO BREAK AND GOOD PICTURES TO BE QUITE SPOILT IN CONSEQUENCE.

You often miss splendid chances, of course, simply through not having your camera at hand. A few moments’ delay may lose you an opportunity that will never come to you again. Then, again, you are just as apt in Africa as elsewhere to make the mistakes so well known to all photographers—wrong focussing, using the same plate twice, not getting your objects properly on the plate, etc. Nor can you always avoid having a tree or bush or branch between you and the animal you want to photograph. These things are often enough to quite spoil your picture. The weight of the camera, too, is in itself a hindrance. It is not every one who can handle a 13 × 18-cm. telephoto camera. Even a 9 × 12-cm. is heavy enough. It must be remembered that on one’s journeyings through the wilderness it is almost as much as one can do to carry with one a sufficient supply of water—that most essential thing of all. And one has to be most careful of the apparatus, for mischances may occur at any moment.

Though my experiences and those of others will have had the effect of smoothing the way for all who go photographing in future in Equatorial Africa, still, hunting with the camera will remain a much more difficult thing than hunting with the rifle. The practised shot needs only a fraction of a second to bring down his game—often he scarcely even sees it, and fires at it through dense shrubs or bushes, whereas the photographer can achieve nothing until he has contrived to secure a combination of favourable conditions, and he wants in many cases to “bring down” not just one animal, but a whole herd. His most tempting chances come to him very often when he is unprepared. That is why I insist upon the desirability of his shouldering a camera like a gun. At short range you can secure wonderful pictures even with an ordinary small hand-camera, but for this kind of work you must of course have good nerves.... It was in this way I took the photographs of the rhinoceroses in the pool reproduced in With Flashlight and Rifle, some of the best I ever secured. One of these, taken at a distance of fifteen or twenty paces, shows the “rhino,” not yet hit, rushing down upon Orgeich and me. In another instant I had thrown my little hand-camera to the ground, and just managed to get a bullet into him in the nick of time. He swerved to one side and made off into the thicket, where I eventually secured him. He is now to be seen in the Munich Museum.

A fruitful source of disillusionment lies in the fact that the plates are sensitive to the light to a degree so different from our eyes. As the blue and violet rays chiefly act upon them, they cannot render the real effects of colouring. It is greatly to be desired that we should manage to perfect orthochromatic plates, sensitive to green, yellow and red rays of light. I myself have been unable to secure good results with orthochromatic plates with the telephoto lens, as I have found them always too little sensitive to white light for instantaneous work. Latterly there has been produced a new kind of panchromatic plate which only needs an exposure of one-fiftieth part of a second, and I would strongly recommend its use for the photographing of animals for this reason.

C. G. Schillings, phot.

A PLATE WHICH I EXPOSED TWICE BY MISTAKE—SUCH MISTAKES WILL HAPPEN SOMETIMES, HOWEVER CAREFUL ONE MAY BE. IN ADDITION TO THE GNUS AND ZEBRAS WHICH STAND OUT CLEARLY IN THE PICTURE, FAINT OUTLINES OF HARTEBEESTS (ON A SMALLER SCALE) MAY BE DESCRIED.

In the animal pictures of the Munich painter Zügel, we see admirably rendered all the many shades of colouring we note, under different conditions, close at hand or far away, when we have the actual wild life before our eyes. There we note that the upper part of the animal’s body often reflects so strongly the cold blue of the sky that its own colouring is, as it were, cancelled, or at least very greatly modified. We note, too, that an animal in reality reddish-brown in colour becomes violet owing to the blue in the atmosphere. Refinements of form and hue are lost in the glare of the sun, and only the stronger outlines and more pronounced colours assert themselves. Sometimes the sun’s rays, reflected from the animals’ skins, produce the effect of glowing patches of light, sometimes they are absorbed; sometimes the animals look quite black, sometimes absolutely white. Photographs of animals taken under such conditions do not, of course, give a good idea of the normal colouring of the animals. The success of a photograph depends, therefore, very largely upon the nature of the light.

For an effective picture you need to have a group of animals either standing still or in motion, and this you can very seldom get at close quarters, though now and again you may happen upon them standing under trees; and when this occurs you may hope for good results, because the way in which the blue rays of light are reflected from the trees has a favourable effect upon the bromide-silver plates.

While it is true that there can be nothing more disappointing than the discovery, when developing one’s photographs of animals in a country like Africa, that negatives of which one had great hopes are no good, this very possibility adds to the fascination of the work, and is, as it were, a link between the sport and that of our fathers and grandfathers. The kind of rifle-shooting we go in for nowadays has nothing in common with that of the hunter who was dependent upon a single bullet the effect of which he could only get to make sure of after long experience. To the true sportsman the camera is the best substitute for the old-fashioned gun, inasmuch as it involves very much the same degree of difficulty and danger.