In 2013, I moved to South Africa and spent a whole year photographing wildlife in South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana. For the last six years, my big interest has been photographing primates, and I’ve travelled to many different countries in Asia and Africa to take portraits of our closest relatives.
1. Tell us about your background and journey.
When I was in the beginning of my twenties, I was a sound technician and not at all interested in nature and wildlife. But then I took a year off to backpack around South America and along the way, quite by coincidence, got a job as a guide in the Pantanal of Brazil, the best place in South America to see wildlife.
I ended up living in the Pantanal for two years, getting involved in research and conservation work, and this is when I got my passion for wildlife and decided that I wanted to work with wildlife. So, I became a wildlife biologist/zoologist and spent several years doing mammal research in unexplored areas of the Amazon and the Pantanal.
However, I reached a point where I felt ready to begin a whole new chapter of my life and decided to leave research and instead work full time with public engagement and wildlife communication. At this time, I also became serious about my wildlife photography and began travelling all over the world to photograph wildlife.
In 2013, I moved to South Africa and spent a whole year photographing wildlife in South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana. For the last six years, my big interest has been photographing primates, and I’ve travelled to many different countries in Asia and Africa to take portraits of our closest relatives.
2. How did you decide to make your passion for wildlife photography your career?
Becoming a wildlife photographer wasn’t something I decided one day I wanted to do. It sorts of happened along the way. But after my years of mammal research and fieldwork, for me photography was a new and exciting way of practicing, artistically expressing and sharing my passion for wild animals. And the more serious I got with my wildlife photography, the more exciting and inspirational it got.
3. How has your life changed from being a zoologist to a wildlife photographer.
I loved doing wildlife research as well. However, when you do the type of fieldwork that I did, you define a question that you want to answer and then follow very strict scientific methods to gather data and do everything you can to leave emotions out of it to avoid bias.
My photography on the other hand is all about emotions, searching for the soul of the animals, capturing the magical moments, and creating images that will hopefully touch other people. That makes it a much more creative process which is something I really enjoy.
4. What inspires you about wildlife photography?
Being a wildlife photographer allows me two combine my two main passions, wildlife and travelling to exotic places. And, what is equally important: Being a wildlife photographer allows me to share my fascination with wildlife with a broad audience, spread awareness about little-known animals and, not least, shine a light on the threats that many animal species face today.
5. What is the level of commitment and time required in wildlife photography?
My answer would be: It is with wildlife photography like with many other crafts, say if you want to be an athlete or a musician. If you want to be really good, you have to practice a lot and develop your skills for many years. There are no shortcuts.
With wildlife photography, you obviously need to know your equipment and techniques, but you also need to have a deep understanding of the animals you photograph and be able to figure out how to get to photograph them in the wild the way you would like to.
If you photograph people, you can tell them where to stand and how to pose. Not so with wild animals.
6. What has been your biggest challenge that you faced while taking wildlife photos and how did you overcome that?
I can’t think of a ”biggest challenge” that I overcame per se. But there have of course been some animals that took more dedication to photograph than others, or even some that I didn’t get any photographs of at all. When I lived in southern Africa for a year back in 2013, I really wanted to photograph the black-maned lion of the Kalahari.
It took three trips to the Kalahari and probably more than 15,000 km of driving before I finally got the “eye contact” portrait that I was looking for. On my trips to Greenland for polar bears, the Himalayas for snow leopards and Southern India for black panthers, I got to see the animals, but didn’t get close enough to get good photos. That’s just the way it goes with wild animals, and I still enjoyed those adventures immensely.
The most challenging primate to photograph, out of the ten species that I have worked with, was the mandrill, and it took me a couple of years to “crack the nut” and figure out how to get close enough to it in the wild to be able to take its portraits.
7. Tell us about your project Eye Contact.
My big interest in wildlife photography the last eight years has been taking portraits of wild mammals. To me it’s the ultimate way of getting close to them and really seeing them. Not just as representatives of a species, but as individuals.
When you can look an animal in the eye and read its facial expressions, you clearly see that it has feelings, a mind and a personality. That’s what I try to capture and convey with my portraits. I have called my project “Eye Contact”, which both reflects that the eyes play a crucial role in my portraits and that I try to create a feeling of contact or connection to the wild beings through my images.
Over the last six years, I’ve taken around 40,000 portraits of ten different primate species in Africa and Asia, from steaming rainforests to snow-covered mountains. I’m particularly interested in primates because out of all animals these highly intelligent beings are the ones that by far have the richest repertoire of facial expressions, and many of these are quite similar to what we are used to seeing in other humans.
8. What are the important skills one should have to be a successful wildlife photographer?
Many skills are needed to be a successful wildlife photographer. Obviously, you need to be able to get good wildlife photographs in the first place. This includes technical skills, knowing the animals you photograph, having an eye for good motives (probably the skill that takes longest to develop), knowing how to plan photographic trips, and photo-editing skills. But secondly, you also need to be able to figure out how to reach a big audience with your photographs and how to make a living on it.
Many wildlife photographers do this through a combination of various venues, including a strong SOME presence, participating in photo competitions, publishing books, making exhibitions, selling prints, giving tutorials, guiding wildlife photo tours, and getting sponsorships.
9. What are some tips you would like to share with amateur photographers?
When it comes to taking wildlife portraits, my most important advice is this: Get down low!! Shooting down at an animal rarely leads to good portraits. By getting down in eye level with the animal you photograph you get a much better eye-to-eye perspective plus the added benefit of a deep background.
Think about the background when you take portraits; try and position yourself so you get a uniform background that makes your ”model” stand out and with colours/textures that complement the animal you photograph. Pay attention to the ever-changing facial expressions, the light in the eyes, and the postures of the animal you photograph.
And keep on working with it. I often take several hundred images of the same individual or situation. That improves your chances of capturing the special moments and expressions. If you want sharp portraits, use a tripod, preferably with a gimbal head.
The big challenge to many wildlife photographers, amateurs and professionals alike, is the daunting prize of good camera gear. Wildlife photographers typically use big expensive tele lenses (e.g., 300-600 mm). My best advice is to buy second-hand gear.
You can easily save 50% or more, especially if you buy the second- or third-newest models, and you can still get awesome quality. In particular when it comes to prime lenses.
10. What is your long-term plan/future plans?
To me it’s all about the interesting species I want to photograph. That’s where I find my inspiration. I’m always on the lookout for new opportunities and I have a long list of animals that I would like to take portraits of in the coming years.
This includes lemurs in Madagascar and various primates in South-East Asia. And then I’ll just see where the wild and my photographic journey takes me.
11. Which is your favorite book and why?
Out of books I have read relatively recently I would say Alan Root’s autobiography “Ivory, Apes & amp; Peacocks: Animals, Adventure and Discovery in the Wild Places of Africa”. He revolutionized wildlife documentaries in Africa and had the most amazing and inspirational life.
And the book is packed with anecdotes of adventures and wildlife encounters that both make you shake your head and laugh out loud. Plus, he had such a great understanding of and respect for the wild, so there is a lot to learn along the way.
Mogens Trolle is a Danish zoologist and mammal researcher turned wildlife photographer. He specializes in primate portraits and won the Animal Portraits category of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition in 2020. He has worked with and photographed wildlife for more than 25 years and on all seven continents and has authored six books on wildlife.
- Instagram: Mogens Trolle
- Interviewed By Pearlina Marie Rein
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