Nature photography is one of the most difficult jobs in our field. It involves standing, sitting, or crawling for hours on end just to take one shot that in the end might get down to luck. As important as it is to recognize and praise the photographers that go through all of this just to bring us joy, it’s also important to point to the ones who aren’t considerate to nature itself. News site mothership.sg shared the shocking video below on their Facebook page:
Nature photographers in Singapore allegedly stuffed fish with …
We have received this video showing a group of nature photographers allegedly using live fish stuffed with Styrofoam bits to bait critically-endangered Grey-headed Fish Eagles.All this, so they can take better photos of the fish eagles.The incident took place on Aug. 16, 2015, at Little Guilin, a park in Bukit Gombak.Story coming up.
Posted by Mothership.sg on Sunday, October 25, 2015
The men in the video are part of a group of nature photographers, and they’re shown tampering with fish in the hopes of getting a great shot of an eagle. The danger to what they are doing is twofold: first, they hurt the fish, and second, they hurt the eagle itself. After eating the fish, the endangered eagle will likely die.
A man caught on film injecting air into a fish
In the photo above we can see how the man injects air into the fish. This is so that the fish will float on top of the water, drawing the attention of the eagle. If this should fail, they also put styrofoam into the fish’s mouth.
The bait now set, photographers wait for their moment.
Here we see the photographers waiting for the eagles to swoop in. Their telephoto lenses at ready for that one moment.
It’s a shame that this practice is happening, and hopefully by raising awareness on the issue we can bring it to an end.
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Where exactly does this occur? If it’s in Pennsylvania I am particularly interested. Because if I observe that behavior I will arrest them.
OUT OF ORDER !
This practice is disgusting. It is against everything a TRUE photographer strives to get, that perfect photo due to his or her own effort.
I will make it a new goal NOT to buy any calendars of photos of wildlife until I am sure how the photos were taken. I urge others to do the same.
This is akin to baiting wildlife and then killing it. There is NO skill involved. And those that take photos this way should NOT call themselves photographers.
As mentioned in a previous post, there should be very large fines and jail time for those caught doing this.
This is disgusting beyond belief and violates every ethical principal for wildlife photography. Anyone engaging in such activities should be reported to federal fish and wildlife officials and their images should be banned from ll publications and other media.
If we, as wildlife photographers, do not police ourselves, who will?
A photo should not be worth a life.