Interviewed by the Olympus Magazine July 2013
As some of you know, I now use the Olympus OMD EM-5 for the vast majority of my work, be it my people portraiture or my animal and wildlife photography. The importance of carrying as little weight as possible should never be underestimated and I know from personal experience how devastating occupational injuries such as RSI and arthritis can be. Such conditions can be career limiting or even career ending. But thanks to recent developments in miniaturised camera systems and lenses, we can now enjoy a very similar level of performance to that which was previously the province of large and heavy DSLRs.
I was contacted by the publishers of the Olympus Magazine three weeks ago, who unbeknown to me had been reading about my experiences with occupational injuries and who were interested in hearing how I use my Micro 4/3 equipment. For the record, I’m not sponsored by Olympus or Panasonic and I buy my photography equipment at retail price just like everybody else. Since acquiring the OMD and a variety of lenses I’ve freely shared my experiences on my website and I do so in an entirely unbiased manner. It takes up a lot of my time, energy and overhead. I don’t have to do it, but I know it’s of interest to quite a few of my readers who might be suffering from old injuries as I do. So please, no more accusatory e-mails about being ‘bought’ by Olympus!
Pet and animal photography can be challenging at times – anybody who’s tried it will know that. In fact that’s the very reason why pet owners call in an expert. Our subjects might move around (often very quickly or erratically) and they’re not always good at responding to our instructions. We often have to work intuitively and with considerable patience, and quite often the images we envisage at the beginning of the shoot may be very different to those we’ve obtained by the end of it. But without exception animal photography can be fun and highly rewarding, animals are fascinating subjects and there’s an almost never-ending variety of species and breeds to explore. Animal sanctuaries and wildlife reserves are ideal places to enjoy and practice your nature shots and if you live in Surrey or Sussex then you’ll be fairly close to the British Wildlife Centre at Lingfield, and the Wetlands Centre at Arundel.
This month I’ve been talking to Olympus UK about how I use the OMD to photograph pets and wildlife. The magazine is now available to read online without subscription so if you’d like to see the article it’s the Olympus Magazine July 2013 issue. The interview starts on page 12, see the whole thing by clicking on the up or down arrows at the bottom of each page. Here is a sample from the eight page interview:
