Tom Way, wildlife photographer, came to share some of his wonderful images of British wildlife and the stories behind them with us. Tom spends 8 months of each year in Africa and admitted that he misses the seasons but has come to realise that he is not a cold weather photographer.
Tom funds his own trips abroad as taking commissions would mean taking images to fulfil someone else’s vision rather than his own. Capturing the images he envisages takes patience and time, weeks even months to achieve, you have to get to know the animals and their habits first and then be lucky with the light and weather as well. After eight months in Africa he might take five images he considers to be good and which he can sell to earn an income. His images are not altered in any way as he enters high profile competitions like the Wildlife Photographer of the Year and edited images are disqualified.
So what does Tom look for in a photo?
- Beautiful light, particularly the golden hours at the start and end of the day. He showed us some gorgeous images of deer silhouetted against early morning mist backlit by early morning sunshine and at sunset. What the images don’t show is how long he had to wait for days with the combination of the right weather and the deer being in the right place.
- Colour. When Tom started his career 15 years ago he realised that colour sold images and he told us how he scattered autumn leaves at the edge of a pond and hid peanuts under them to persuade a woodpecker to sit where he wanted it too.
- Character and personality, getting the essence of an animals nature in his images is very important to him. He told us how it has taken him weeks and even months to get photos of Kingfishers. Even shooting at 20 frames per second catching them at the right moment at the right position in the image can be challenging. He is also conscious of the emotional response images can create and is very selective with the images he shares.
- Be at eye level with your subject. Tom’s photo of a water vole involved him sitting in chest high waders in water for four days before the vole finally sat in the pipe. He was so focussed on looking through his camera to take the image that he forgot the first rule of wearing waders. Don’t bend forwards! To make it even worse, he took this image in winter and cold water flooded into his waders. He was so cold by the time he’d finished taking photos of the vole that it took the help of two burly men to help him back to dry land.
After many ‘oohs’ and ‘ahh’ at beautiful images of animals from Blue Tits to Red Squirrels Tom ended with a photo of a Puffin coming into land. This is the only one of his earliest images he shows during his talks but it really shows what we tend to think of as the comical nature of the Puffin and it’s personality. We hope that Tom will come and speak to us about his African adventures at some point in the future.
If you want to see more of Tom’s work visit his website www.tomway.co.uk.
Screengrab of Tom Way’s website, reproduced with his permission.