Page 93 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #10

Behind
the
image

A lock and

a hard place

by BEN HALL 2007

Photographing lamingos in their habitat is
tougher than it sounds – particularly when
that habitat is the windy Chilean Andes.

photograph can evoke
a vivid sense of place –
but one thing that’s tricky
to capture on camera is
Awind. Yet it has a huge
impact on animals and photographers
BEN HALL
alike, as Ben Hall discovered while
is an award-winning tracking flamingos in the Torres del
wildlife photographer
with a passion for Paine massif in Chilean Patagonia.
“We drove up to a point on Mont
protecting wild places,
particularly Britain’s Almirante Nieto from where we hiked as
fragile ecosystems: high as we could, up to about 1000m,”
benhallphotography.com he recalls. “The temperature dropped as
we climbed – but it was the driving wind
that made conditions most testing.”
These jagged peaks experience
powerful katabatic winds that Chilean
flamingos must battle when migrating
between alkaline lakes – and Ben found
himself fighting the same icy blasts.
“I tried using a tripod, but gusts of
up to 50mph made it impossible to
compose accurately. So I increased the
ISO and shutter speed to reduce camera
shake, changed to a more manageable
100–400mm lens, and hand-held the
camera to capture this shot.”
This adaptation to the tough
conditions proved serendipitous: “The
smaller lens meant I was able to include
more of the environment in the frame,
highlighting the relationship between
the birds and their dramatic habitat.”

Think pink
The most southerly flamingo species
is found from Peru and Uruguay down
to Tierra del Fuego, and from sea level
up to 4,500m in the Andes. Gregarious
birds forming flocks of many thousands,
Chilean flamingos migrate between
shallow alkaline lakes where they feed
on tiny diatoms. They’re classified Near
Threatened due to illegal egg-harvesting,
hunting and habitat loss.
“For me, this image speaks of both
the beauty of the birds and of the hostile
conditions they endure in this harsh but
spectacular environment,” says Ben.

October 2018 BBC Wildlife 93