Into the Shadows
Photos and Text by: Jared Lloyd
An hour after sunset and the mosquitoes are so thick they can be measured in metric tons. It’s dark. It’s hot. And I am unwillingly giving blood to hordes of tiny vampires. Welcome to the South.
I hear a man shout out from the trail above me at the edge of the lake.
“Excuse me sir, have you been drinking?”
I glance over my shoulder to make out his silhouette against the blackness of the tree line behind him.
“Why?” I shout back.
“Because your laying in the water with a f@#$ing alligator!”
“It’s OK,” I replied. “I’m a professional.”
In retrospect, this was probably an odd scene to stumble upon. It was dark, and here I am laying in the water behind a camera with a 10-foot alligator some 20 feet away. There were other alligators in the vicinity of course, off to both stage right and left. A small spillway was nearby and these hold overs from the age of dinosaurs were congregated at its base in mass. Why? I have no idea. Were they waiting for an evening thunderstorm to flood food over the little damn? A whitetail deer to wander down to take a drink? Or maybe someone stupid enough to climb into the water with them after dark?
I remember laying there in the shallows eye to eye with this alligator thinking about the headlines from the various fatal attacks that I had spent the day back in the hotel reading. “Couple Fatally Attacked While Skinny Dipping at Night.” So much for a romantic evening. “Alligator Kills Burglar Trying to Escape from Police.” I actually laughed out loud when I heard that one.
I don’t consider myself to be a risk taker. It’s more like risk management really. For starters, alligators are relatively docile. Don’t get me wrong here, people end up in the bellies of these guys from time to time. But, I’m in shallow water – about a foot deep. The gator is 20 feet away in water about the same depth. There is no way to ambush me. No way for another one to sneak up on me. I am not swimming at night. I am not skinny dipping beyond the “beware of alligators” sign. I am certainly not petting, touching, kissing, caressing, riding, or wrestling the alligator. This is calculated. I’m cautious. The risk is low. The rewards are high.
I like gators at night. This is when they really come into their own as a predator. Let’s be honest: it’s also when they look the creepiest.
Deep down, all of us are a little afraid of the dark. This is the time of predators. When we light fires, lock doors, and plug in night lights. So, as a visual artist who is always looking to massage such psychological nuances of how we perceive the world around us, photographing gators at night is all about playing on such perceptions and, dare I say, innate fears. Art is an extension of psychology. So, when I am photographing wildlife, finding ways to work with these ideas is what allows me, I hope, to capture the essence of my subjects.
Disclaimer: I am not a documentary photographer. I want more than just another well lit, technically perfect, “dime-a-dozen” photograph of an alligator, owl, or poison dart frog. I want to transcend the species barrier and bridge the world of man and beast, connect you with my subjects, and capture your imagination. Do I always succeed at this? No. Of course not. But it is the driving force, or methodology if you will, behind my photography. I want to capture the story of my subject. I am a biographer. And most importantly, I am an artist.
So, when it comes to photographing wildlife, I start with sizing up my subject in regard to their ecology. This is the big picture stuff. Solitary or in groups? What sort of habitat best exemplifies them – not just where can I find one to photograph? Diurnal, nocturnal, or crepuscular (daytime, nighttime, or dawn and dusk)? Predator or prey? Stuff like that.
From here, the questions become a bit more esoteric. Does this species invoke fear? Are they powerful? What is our emotional response to seeing them? Is there mythology around them? These are the types of questions that lead me to laying in the water with an alligator at night with an off camera flash held over my head to capture a bit of that red eye shine.
Darkness, or shadows in general, offers up a powerfully creative tool for telling the story of particular species. But more than just its creative properties, it can also reveal the world in a more realistic fashion. If alligators are primarily a nocturnal species, why do we always photograph them in the daytime? If owls are specialized aerial predators of the night, why do we only ever see photographs of them in well-lit daytime scenarios? If I have to crawl around in some of the darkest and wettest corners of the neotropical rainforests in search of poison dart frogs, why would I want to then stick them on colorful flowers in a garden and evenly light up the scene? If a wood duck is a species of dark flooded forests, then do I really want to photograph them in full sun against blue water?
Working with the night, or a significant amount of shadow, tends bring us into the artistic realm of “chiaroscuro.” Don’t let this word scare you. It’s simply the combination of the Italian chiaro, for “bright,” and oscuro, meaning “dark.”
In the classical definition of this artistic concept, shadow is contrasted against highlights to create various illusions of three dimensions in a painting. This could be something as simple as the impression of a singular light source or creating depth and form - as it was often used in the Renaissance era.
Or, chiaroscuro can be used to set the mood and evoke emotion in the composition as we saw throughout the Baroque period. In other words, it’s the strategic use of extreme contrast in visual art – which for the world of photography, may be the better definition.
Capturing images in extreme contrast is simple enough. Spot meter off the highlights and set your exposure manually. Compose and shoot. When photographing wildlife in the dark however, this can be a bit more complicated. When shooting in the deep shadows across the floor of the rainforest, or when photographing at night or even dusk, autofocus often ceases to function and flash can become a necessity.
Much like the creative use of shadows in our compositions, the use of flash also offers up a whole other pallet of artistic possibilities. With a set of small speed lights, we can emulate light that we would expect to find in a given scenario, such as a shaft of light filtering through the canopy of the rainforest, or the illumination created by a full moon for instance. On the other hand, it can be used to create eye shine in a subject much like you see here in the glow of the alligators’ eyes.
At the heart of darkness, or at least as it applies to photography, is the simple act of storytelling. Yes, it is “artistic.” But more importantly, it captures the imagination. A distinct lack of light in wildlife photography can reveal to the world another side of life on this planet. A side that is obscured and hidden within the shadows. Often overlooked. Rarely seen. With care and technique, darkness can shed light upon the biography of life, capturing the essence of a species, and give us a glimpse, if only for a moment, into another world.
In our overworked, over stressed, and over civilized lives, we have become alienated from the natural world around us. The simple fact that we even define it as the “natural” world speaks to this fact. There has long been this separation of course. Slipping back through the pages of history to a time when loin cloths and spears were all the rage in fashion, there was, even then, a palpable otherness to us as a species.
Most nature-based communities saw themselves as both a part of the world as well as separated from it in a sort of cultural anxiety that probably stretches back to the dawn of becoming self-aware. It was here that shamans worked their magic, plying the murky waters that began to exist in our minds as the gulf between us and Nature grew. For these shamans, it was their role in society to bridge this gap and reconnect us with the natural world – albeit on a metaphysical level.
In today’s world, artists have assumed the role of the shamans from days long ago. Through our art, we are able to once again bridge the gap between us and the natural world. We are able to connect. To inspire. To once again reveal the magic of life on this planet. And to embrace the dark side in our photography offers us one more creative tool in the art of visual storytelling that can transcend such self-imposed boundaries between us and the planet we call home.
The blackness of night further engulfs me as I lay in the water. Wanting to hang on to the deep blues of twilight, I crank down the Kelvin white balance on my camera. With color now corrected, this adjustment does not come without unwanted side effects. The color of the light I am bouncing off of the alligator has now changed accordingly. To compensate, I slip an orange gel over my flash to warm up the light and add a bit more punch to the red eye shine bouncing back at me.
Other gators have begun to move in closer. These are curious creatures by nature and I’m beginning to feel a bit outnumbered here as it becomes more difficult to see. Slowly pulling myself out of the water, a thought hits me like a ton of bricks. My headlamp. I left it sitting on the dashboard of my vehicle which is parked nearly a mile away on the other side of a narrow path through the forest. With no moon to help guide my way, and after a short bout of cursing to myself, I fumble my way up to the trail through the woods. Three steps in, I take a spider web to the face. So much for risk management. This is going to be a long night.
