C. G. Schillings, phot.
JACKAL TAKING TO FLIGHT, STARTLED BY THE FLASHLIGHT.
The impossibility of securing sharp, clearly defined impressions of the animals with the telephoto lens at a hundred paces or more, and the few chances I had of photographing them close at hand by daylight, were responsible partly for my determination to go in for flashlight pictures by night. At first my idea was discouraged and opposed by expert advisers, but the Goerz-Schillings apparatus was evolved out of my experiments and makes it possible now to secure excellent representations of wild life.
As I have said already, I did not succeed with my flashlight photographs on my second expedition. And my third expedition, on which I managed to take a few, was brought to a sudden end by severe illness. At that time I had not found a way to combine the working of the flashlight with that of the shutter, essential to the photographing of objects in rapid motion. My cameras stood ready for use in the dark with the lens uncovered and the plates exposed, the shutter being closed automatically when the flashlight contrivance worked. To my surprise and disappointment this arrangement proved too slow; the exposure was too long in the case of animals moving quickly. Jackals emerged from my negatives with six heads, hyenas with long snake-like bodies. Unfortunately I destroyed all these monstrosities, and cannot therefore reproduce any of them here. Now and again, however, I was fortunate enough to get a picture worth having—for instance, that of a hyena making off with the head of a zebra, and that of three jackals, included in the illustrations to With Flashlight and Rifle. The first photograph I succeeded with in 1902 was that of a mongoose coming up to the bait placed for him. On page 657 the reader may see this marten-like animal taking to flight among the thorn-bushes. I secured a number of other pictures, notably of hyenas, both spotted and striped, and of jackals, in all kinds of strange positions, moving hither and thither in search of prey.
What a state of excitement and suspense I used to be in at first when the flashlight flamed out—until I got to realise that owing to the rapid movements of the animals most of the photographs were sure to be failures.
My illness and return from this expedition proved really an advantage in the long run, inasmuch as they enabled me to get the apparatus brought to such perfection as to render possible the photographing of even the most rapid movements. This was brought about in the Goerz Institute, Herr M. Kiesling contriving to secure the simultaneous operation of the flashlight and the shutter.
Equipped with this new apparatus, I set out on my fourth expedition, betaking myself for two reasons to districts with which I was already familiar. In the first place, success was much more likely in a country the speech of whose inhabitants and all their habits and customs were known to me; but my chief reason was that I wished to achieve a pictorial record of the wild life of the German region of Africa. As a matter of fact, with this kind of object in view, a man might spend a lifetime in any such region, and find that, however narrow its boundaries, it could always offer him fresh subjects for study and observation.
C. G. Schillings, phot.
LIONESS FRIGHTENED AWAY FROM CARCASE BY THE FLASH-LIGHT.