“I would rather have a general who was lucky than one who was good.” Napoleon

In a sense, every wildlife photograph is a matter of luck. These are wild birds and animals we’re talking about, not fashion models working in a studio! You can’t tell wildlife subjects to pose, and bears and big cats are too dangerous to get close to.

So does that mean to be a great wildlife photographer, you just need a bit of luck? No, of course not. You have to have the combination of technical proficiency and artistic vision needed to take original images that provoke admiration and a powerful emotional reaction. As Gary Player once said, ‘The more I practise, the luckier I get!”.

There are many different types of shots that you might call ‘lucky’, but you won’t be able to take advantage of the opportunities unless you have a certain level of knowledge, skill and experience.

Let me tell you what I mean…

Timing

Sometimes, the timing is everything. It doesn’t matter what kit you’re using or what settings. You just have to be in the right place at the right time. This is the ‘f/8 and be there’ approach. As long as you have enough depth of field to keep everything sharp, you should be fine.

I see a lot of newspaper photos that fall into this category. They’re usually in a special section, taken by ordinary members of the public with whatever camera they happen to have with them—which I’m sure is just a smartphone most of the time!

In the case of this lioness being mobbed by her cubs (see above), all I had to do was stand there and take pictures. The quality of the photo had almost nothing to do with my skill as a photographer, but it was good enough to appear in Mothering Sunday spreads in both the Sunday Express and the Daily Star!

Is that a problem? Are these photos somehow ‘not as good’ as the ones photographers wait days, weeks or even months to capture? No. I’m not a purist. I believe every image should be judged aesthetically on its own terms, not by the degree of difficulty or the level of patience required.

This issue has actually cropped up in a couple of photo contests I’ve been asked to judge. The other judges have been impressed by how hard it must’ve been to take a certain photo—but I’ve always had to shoot them down in flames…!

People differ, of course, and aesthetic judgments are especially subjective, but anyone who goes to the trouble of going to the right place at the right time should be congratulated, not criticised. I love cheetah kills, for example, and they’re incredibly rare. I’ve only seen around eight in more than 350 game drives. But that’s why I keep going back to the Masai Mara…

There are several photos I’ve taken that have relied on a large portion of luck, but at least I was spending time in a likely place. The shot that immediately springs to mind is the one of a lilac-breasted roller at the top of this article. I happened to be on a game drive in Tarangire National Park in Tanzania when I saw the bird. It was just perching on a bush, so I got into position to take a portrait.

It wasn’t going to be anything special (or so I thought!), but just as I pressed the shutter, the bird fluttered its wings. When I looked on the back of the camera, I realised how lucky I’d been—especially when I noticed that it had a grasshopper in its beak!

Of course, the real issue here for a wildlife photographer is how much time you can spend in the field at the most productive places. If you’re successful or wealthy enough, you might be able to spend months on safari in the Serengeti or scuba diving in the Maldives, and that would give you a massive head start.

I was lucky enough to spend four months as the resident photographer at a few safari lodges in Tanzania and Kenya in 2019. I gave them pictures of the local wildlife in exchange for free board and lodging, and it was a heaven-sent opportunity. Of the photos I took on that trip, around 65 ended up in my Top 100 gallery—and even now there are still 23 of them!

The bare fact is that the more time you can spend photographing wildlife in premium locations, the more great wildlife photos you’ll end up with—as long as your equipment and technique are up to scratch.

Sadly, spending months abroad is just not possible for most people. I love spending time in Africa, and I have once-in-a-lifetime experiences every time I go, but I can’t afford to stay at safari lodges for very long—at least, not if I have to pay $1,000 a night for the privilege!

Rarity

Another type of luck is the kind you get if you happen to spot a rare species. The IUCN Red List provides a guide to the most endangered species. There are nine separate categories (in ascending order of threat):

• Not Evaluated

• Data Deficient (eg killer whale)

• Least Concern (eg Thomson's gazelle)

• Near Threatened (eg white rhino)

• Vulnerable (eg lion or leopard)

• Endangered (eg tiger or African savanna elephant)

• Critically Endangered (eg African forest elephant or eastern black rhino)

• Extinct in the Wild (eg Barbary lion)

• Extinct (eg western black rhino)

I’ve seen a few Threatened species (ie in the Vulnerable, Endangered and Critically Endangered categories), and it’s always given me a thrill. While you’re pretty much guaranteed to see some of those if you go to the right places, such as the Bengal tiger, others do need a large slice of luck.

I particularly remember one occasion during my annus mirabilis in 2019. I was on a game drive at Cottar’s 1920s Safari Camp, and one of the other guests thought she saw a warthog. Our driver reversed the jeep, but we still couldn’t see anything. Fortunately, we did eventually find it, and it turned out to be a ground pangolin!

The local Masai believe finding a pangolin is good luck—but only if they build a little model ‘boma’ or village out of grass! So that’s what they did. I helped out, and one of the guys told me it meant I’d have ‘many cows’.

The woman who’d originally seen the pangolin tried to get involved, too, but she wasn’t allowed—because she was a woman! She shouldn’t feel too bad about it, though. My cows still haven’t turned up…

The sighting was pretty special, though. Someone even stood up at dinner that evening and told the whole story—which led to a spontaneous round of applause!

I freely admit that there was no skill involved in seeing the pangolin (or even the tiger), but, again, it’s just a matter of time. The more time you can spend with the animals, the more likely you are to spot a rare species. Yes, luck is involved, but you do have some control over it.

Hail Marys

Another kind of ‘lucky’ shot is the ‘Hail Mary’—the kind that only works after a LOT of attempts. I went to Brooks Falls, Alaska, a few years ago to get a shot of a bear catching a salmon. It wanted to create a kind of hommage to Thomas D Mangelsen’s famous Catch of the Day.

I had a very specific composition in mind. I needed the bear’s mouth to be open and the salmon to be in mid-air, leaping up the waterfall. I spent a whole week trying to get shots like that, but I only managed two!

Does that make this a ‘lucky shot’? Well, there was a lot of hard work involved, so I’d argue that it was the exact opposite! I had to spend around eight hours a day for a week standing on the bleachers with my camera and tripod, just waiting for the right moment.

It was stressful and, quite frankly, pretty boring sometimes. I also had to concentrate almost the whole time—which was a real test of my patience! I never knew when a salmon might choose to jump out of the water or whether the bear would try and catch it.

Sometimes, there were no salmon, and sometimes, there were no bears. The whole thing was very frustrating—and it didn’t help that I had to deal with a few hindrances.

The first was the weather. The Alaskan ‘summer’ was cold and wet, and there was no shelter. The sun very rarely came out, and it was always a struggle to keep warm and dry.

Another issue was the crowds. Yes, it was nice to chat to people sometimes, but that wasn’t what I was there for! There were quite a few occasions when I thought nothing was happening but ended up missing a shot because I was too busy talking to my neighbour.

There were also so many people that they had to ration our time on the bleachers by using a queuing system. I was only allowed to be there for an hour at a time, and then I had to go to the back of the line. On one occasion, I ended up waiting for two or three hours when the guy in charge forgot I was there…!

The final difficulty was caused by my equipment. Apart from my iPhone 6 Plus, the only camera I had was an old Nikon D800, which had a maximum burst rate of only 4 fps! And that was a real problem.

If I composed my shot, looked through the viewfinder and waited for a salmon to enter the frame, my reactions were just about good enough to press the shutter in time—especially when I learned to look at the water rather than the bear.

However, the slow frame rate of the camera meant that I could only guarantee one or maybe two photos of the salmon in mid-air—even with luck on my side!

These days, I own two Sony ⍺1 camera bodies that can each shoot at 30 fps, and Sony has recently released the ⍺9 III, which can manage 120 fps with pre-capture! Needless to say, life would’ve been a lot easier at Brooks Falls if I’d had more modern equipment…

I did at least have a bit of luck with the title. The image won a photo contest, and it was covered in The Sun. Typically, they had to include a pun in the headline, so that’s why it ended up being called Bear Gills!

Mistakes

The final category in my list is the kind of shot that follows a mistake. You’ve screwed up somehow, but you’re ‘lucky’ in the sense that you’re not punished for it.

My best example is this shot of a cheetah chasing a Thomson’s gazelle. It was the first kill I’d ever seen in Africa, so it was a seminal moment in my career. I was with Paul Goldstein at Kicheche Bush Camp, and he told me what I had to do and all the settings I needed.

However, when the chase finally got going, it was all over in just a few seconds! I was in a panic, and I screwed up in just about every possible way. I lost focus on the cheetah and out of a burst of 20-30 shots, only one showed both predator and prey.

And even that needed plenty of work in post. I had to crop in tightly and remove another gazelle that was in the way, and I had all kinds of problems trying to make the sharp bits sharp and the blurred bits blurred!

In the end, I was lucky everything worked out, but at least I knew (roughly!) what I was supposed to be doing. Again, in the words of Louis Pasteur, ‘chance favours the prepared mind’. I wouldn’t have had a hope of taking a decent shot if I hadn’t been using a fast shutter speed (1/1600 of a second), say, or the right focus mode (3D tracking with AF-C).

Verdict

So would I rather be lucky than good? Well, I’d rather be both! Yes, luck plays an important part in taking great photos, but you have to back that up with the right equipment, technique and artistic vision.

You also need to visit the right places for the type of photos you want and try to stay as long as possible. The demands on your time and budget mean it’s not always easy, but great photography demands more than just luck!

As Shakespeare once wrote, ‘The readiness is all…’

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