Meet The Pro: Janine Krayer

In episode two of the New Pangolin podcast, host Toby Jermyn welcomes professional wildlife photographer Janine Krayer.

Here is the link to the images chosen by Janine for the episode:
https://pangolin.smugmug.com/SmugMug-Website/Website-Pages/Meet-the-Pro-Janine-Krayer

They discuss Janine's journey from finance in Germany to Botswana's Chobe region, her role as a Pangolin Photo Host, and the challenges and rewards of wildlife photography. 

Janine shares four of her favourite images, recounting the stories behind each, including photographing a puma in Patagonia and capturing a magical moment with elephants and giraffes during COVID. 

She also discusses advancements in photography technology and reflects on a profoundly inspiring image taken by another photographer. The episode offers insights into the art and passion behind wildlife photography, blended with personal anecdotes and professional experiences.

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Chapters

• 2:21 1st Image: Pumas in Patagonia
• 6:35 2nd Image: Elephants in the Chobe
• 17:59 3rd Image: Leopard Cub
• 24:50 4th Image: Giraffes in silhouette
• 32:00 Inspirational Image: Elephants through a leaf by Hannes Lochner

Transcript

JANINE KRAYER MAIN

Speaker: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to episode two of the New Pangolin podcast. I'm your host, Toby Jermyn. Thank you very much for joining me.

In each episode, I've invited a professional wildlife photographer to imagine themselves in a remote location. And along with their camera gear and supplies, they're allowed to bring five carefully selected photographs to hang on the wall of their humble dwelling. Four of these must be their own images, and the final one must be one they admire from another photographer.

If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see the images as we talk. But for audio listeners on other platforms, there's a link in the description to a gallery. We hope you enjoy it on today's show. 

Speaker 2: And we just sat with a gin and tonic around a water hall. Not expecting much, to be honest, just enjoying life.

That big bull arrived and the colors in the sky were so beautiful, and suddenly all these giraffe started appearing out of nowhere. And it was, I couldn't have [00:01:00] choreographed better for the Lion King on Broadway. 

Speaker: My guest today will certainly be a familiar face for those who regularly watch our YouTube channel, but for those who are new here, it's my friend and colleague, Janine Krayer.

Janine was born in Frankfurt, Germany and has been a Pangolin Photo Host for the last 12 years. Janine arrived in the Chobe in 2013 when she was dispatched by the German development bank to help market the Kaza region to tourists. But while she was here, she inadvertently fell in love with the region as well as my business partner Guts.

And so fast forward to today, and here we are on a podcast talking about wildlife photography, and wow, what a journey it's been. Welcome to the show, Janine. How are you today? 

Speaker 2: Hey to, thanks for inviting me on the show. It's really exciting. 

Speaker: So you are the first Pangolin photo host that is going to be on the podcast.

How are you feeling? 

Speaker 2: Never done anything like this before, but I'm excited to be here. Excited to share some of our stories together. 

Speaker: I think [00:02:00] normally you are the one who's creating all these amazing videos, aren't you? You've got a script to work with as well, and we've done relatively little preparation for this, so we're gonna hopefully have a free flowing conversation about some of your work and some of your life, what it's like to be a wildlife photographer in Botswana.

So, uh, yeah, should we get started? 

Speaker 2: It'd be lovely. 

Speaker: So Janine, I asked you to choose five images, four by yourself and one by another photographer. How easy was that to do? 

Speaker 2: It's not that easy because after 12 years of wildlife photography, i've been fortunate enough to encounter so many incredible wildlife moments, and I don't have a good memory for names or faces, but when I see pictures, all the emotions flood back to me.

So I have a lot of emotions linked to these images. So trying to pick those that mean the most to me wasn't that easy. 

Speaker: That's exactly the premise. It wasn't supposed to be. You know the award-winning the best, the most technically [00:03:00] proficient images. The idea is that you come back from a long day out in the field, back to your humble dwelling and you know, you're sitting there with your cup of coffee and you wanna be able to look at these images which stir, stir some emotion.

So, uh, tell you what, let's start with the first image. This is an image you took in South America. It's a puma. Tell me a little bit about this. It's a 

Speaker 2: puma that's coming straight towards me. Through some bushes as I'm sitting on the ground about 20, 25 meters in front of her. It was only taken last year and it was one of my big dreams to visit Patagonia.

I'm a big fan of the mountains, Botswana's as flat as a pancake, and it's something I miss. The dramatic landscape, the blue of the Glacier Lakes, the colors, the. It's really dramatic. And to have a large cat in that landscape and to be able to find it, not just find it, but track it on foot and be immersed in that landscape was spine chilling.

It was [00:04:00] beautiful. 

Speaker: There are very few places in the world where you're gonna be able to go and track a big cat on foot. You're never gonna do that with Tigers in India. Certainly not doing it in in Botswana. No. That must add a whole new dimension to the experience, doesn't it? 

Speaker 2: It taught me again that you really have to listen to your guide and your tracker with, uh, African experience.

It felt. Slightly outta place, especially when that cat starts coming straight towards you. And I know they normally don't target, you normally are, but they certainly target prey that's larger and heavier than what I am. So yeah, you have to put your full trust in the guide no matter what region in the world you are visiting.

That's why it's so important to have a naturalist or guide on your side. 

Speaker: And, and you mentioned earlier that um, obviously it's the mountains. This is quite a close shot. What was your thinking with all of those landscapes and mountains behind why this shot and not something with a bit more of the background or the surroundings in it?

Speaker 2: Well, in that [00:05:00] moment there, there was two reasons she was facing us directly. I really like the framing of that round. Bush on the one side in the shallow depth of field of the grasses in the foreground, and when they come straight at you, you really wanna put an emphasis on these eyes. But I also didn't wanna include the sky above.

I really wanted the mountain face, which was far way behind her, but to be the full backdrop. I didn't want another color change towards the top of the frame. So I went in a bit tighter, and I've found that these cats, like they're supposed to, most animals are supposed to camouflage beautifully in the landscape.

When you shoot them wide, if they are not standing on top of a ridge, standing out, sometimes they get lost in that stunning landscape and it's actually quite difficult to pick them out in a photograph. 

Speaker: Beautiful image. First up, APU from Patagonia, as I mentioned in in the intro, you're born in, uh, Frankfurt, Germany, and uh, you didn't study photography there.

What did you study in Germany? [00:06:00] 

Speaker 2: I have a finance and economics backdrop. I've been quite good with numbers and like many people thought finance is a good way to go. 

Speaker: Would you consider yourself as a photographer? I mean, we always talk about this people, you know, left brain, right brain. Are you more scientific, mathematical, or a bit more artistic?

What side would you put yourself in? 

Speaker 2: If you follow my images, you might have noted I'm a bit more on the creative side actually. While I do like numbers, I want my images to have an aesthetic appeal and to have some mystique to them in many cases because I think somebody needs to be caught to look twice in order to be captured by an image.

Um, some people are more for the documentary style photography. I like to have an artistic edge to it. 

Speaker: I can't even remember if that's left brain or right brain. But anyway, it's a brain. It's a, it's a brain. It's a brain. Maybe yours is sitting neatly in between because I mean, that's the thing we always say that, you know, people arrive and a lot of people [00:07:00] get the mathematical, the shutter speed, the aperture, and they get that side of things and they can take a lovely, sharp image.

But they're never really telling a story. 

Speaker 2: It's a storytelling, but it's also the atmosphere you create. And I think, yeah, the atmosphere is part of the storytelling. 

Speaker: That's the main part of your job, isn't it? To, to tell people. Explain to people that they have to tell the story. Otherwise, the image is, is static.

Speaker 2: I try and really emphasize it with my guests. There's times to watch, I call it eye candy, and there's times to shoot. And the watching for the photographic process is just as important because you need to learn about the animal, understand its essence, its behavior before you can make the choice what, what you even wanna capture about it.

How can you tell something about the animal if you know nothing about it? 

Speaker: Uh, we often have people joining us who. You know, it is a, maybe a husband and wife, and one of them is the photographer and the other one isn't. But actually, we tend to give them a camera and turn them into photographers. And how do you find that [00:08:00] when, when you have somebody who is just, no, it's fine.

I'll, I'll just watch, and then you give them a camera. What does that feel like? 

Speaker 2: I'm quite forceful with them to at least give it a go. I'm a bit annoying about it. They can throw the camera back at me, but, mm. Many times because they are used to watching, they're actually really good at it. I don't wanna, stereotypes are often true, but photography traditionally has been more a male dominated hobby.

And it is often the wife, and again, it's stereotypes, but the females often have the more creative edge. And it's lovely to see somebody within the first two, three shots. They might not get the settings right, but you can see they see. When you see that edge coming through, it is really excited because now you can take the people from just down there and, and guide them through the journey, and it's very, very rewarding.

Speaker: Brilliant. Okie dokie. 

Speaker 2: Well, 

Speaker: shall we move on to the next image? I. Love it. Janine, the second image you've [00:09:00] chosen is a, well, it's, it's choy, it's your home. Tell us about this image of, uh, it's a elephant and it's baby. 

Speaker 2: It's all the things I love. Just like you said, it's my home. That landscape for anybody who's been in Choy will identify it instantaneously.

And Toby is all about elephants. It's quintessential elephant country, and because it's. Got a lot of water and it got a lot of water all year round. It has a lot of breeding herds in watching the breeding herds and specifically the mothers engage with their young teachers. You so much about elephant behavior and their emotional intelligence.

I cannot go past a baby elephant and not pick up my camera. It doesn't matter how bad the shot is. I must have photographed 10 million of them. It's my absolute favorite animal in the world. And. I think one of the most difficult animals to photograph at the very same time. They don't necessarily make for great pictures.

They make for great stories. Why 

Speaker: do you think. [00:10:00] Elephants are difficult to photograph. 

Speaker 2: Any animal that's that size is difficult to not just put lumpy into the frame. Very straightforward. Big gray canvas with literally not much on it. And because they are, especially in cherry, often very dark after they swim, they're almost like a black hole.

They just. Suck your light away and drive your ISOs straight up. So a lot of elephant shots are shot on quite high ISOs, and they're just not naturally as aesthetically pleasing as, let's say, a leopard for instance. 

Speaker: Hmm. 

Speaker 2: They, these big things, 

Speaker: like you say, it's a very large subject and we are very lucky in choy that, you know, the elephants are very relaxed.

Yeah. And so we can sometimes be photographing them from, you know, a matter of, of, of meters away. I have seen you, you know, trying to stop people from photographing the whole thing and then trying to photograph. Bits of elephants 

Speaker 2: that is, um, for two reasons. Number one, when they're close, but not close enough for a wide angle, the long lenses [00:11:00] often can't fit the whole thing in and people panic.

But because they're just big and gray, it's really lovely to look at their actual details. They have phenomenally long eyelashes and these open orange eyes. That if you manage to get a glimpse at them, have an enormous amount of intelligence behind them. And, um, they have actually a lot of hair on their lips and their trunk, and there's so many lovely details on them that you will never see unless you zoom all the way in.

Speaker: And it's, and it's the texture as well, because you've chosen to. Edit this image in black and white. What was the thinking behind that? 

Speaker 2: It was a very high contrast image. Um, so this mom and baby pair to swam through the chobi, they came from Sudu to island, which is a place they go grazing in the dry season.

So babies can swim from a very, very young age, which is really cool. So they're very dark versus the very bright river and the bright sky. And then you have a monochrome animal to start off with. So black and white suited it. In order to [00:12:00] bring out the wrinkles and Yeah, detail. And I, 

Speaker: and I love the way that, I mean, I don't know, I haven't seen the, the frames before or the frames after, but it's the gentle touching of the mum's tail on the head, and I think that's what really makes this image, it's showing that connection.

That's 

Speaker 2: what I mean, if you watch them. It's not putting human emotions on them. They are so emotional and so careful and so gentle, and so very, very caring with their young, and I always say when the little one is just by mom's heel or just by mom's tail, you don't even need to fit mom in. You just need that size relation.

So you see how small they are 

Speaker: and how, how old would you say this, this, this calf is 

Speaker 2: He knew how to use his trunk. They learned that with about six month upwards. He was definitely under a year because he's small enough to like fit easily under mom's belly to drink milk. So between six and 12 months roughly, 

Speaker: there is nothing cuter than watching a really young elephant.

I. Not being able to use its [00:13:00] trunk and face planting in the river to drink the sweetie say, if your heart doesn't melt, you are, you're not, you're not, you're not a real human being. It doesn't work. 

Speaker 2: It's beautiful. That's what I say. I'm like, how can people actively that have the chance to, to see something like that, say No.

How can you not want to see that? 

Speaker: It's a beautiful place to work. I mean, uh, Chobe is home to, I dunno what the latest count is, but it's certainly over a hundred thousand elephants. And you can get to a point where you're going, right? Okay, let's move the elephants out the way We need to photograph something else here.

There's just elephants, too many elephants everywhere. Although maybe you disagree that there is such a thing as too many elephants. 

Speaker 2: My mom asked me when I first started here, obviously my parents were not excited about me moving halfway around the world. She says, won't you get tired of looking at elephants?

I said, I will never ever. Get tired of looking at elephants. That's, that's the whole joy of, of my 

Speaker: job. And that also brings us onto, you know, well, what an extraordinary path you've chosen there you are studying finance in [00:14:00] Germany and thinking, well, I'll go to Africa. This will be an interesting experience.

And you are, you're the first, the original Pangolin photo host ignoring guts. I, you know, guts is my business part of it. The first Pangolin photo host. How daunting was it? If I remember correctly, gut threw you right in at the deep end and said, mm-hmm I need help. You gotta go and take some people out. I think you were just getting into photography.

How was that? 

Speaker 2: Let's say I was young and stupid. It wasn't daunting. Um, sometimes your life path just falls into place. Um, my father always said, don't worry about what you studied, Janine, your life wall. Life will find its way and it certainly has for me. So when God's asked me, I wasn't hired, I just needed to help out.

And I had been out with him nearly a hundred times. I've seen how he does it. And um, I have loved photography before I came. I did it in school, didn't internship in school, noticed you can't earn any money with it. What do they say? If you wanna become a [00:15:00] millionaire, you need to start off as a billionaire.

Speaker 3: Yeah, 

Speaker 2: so I, I left that side, but I came with a camera and I absolutely loved combining the creative pod with the wildlife that I loved so much. So when I was asked, I didn't think twice about it. The people were nice. It was easy enough to make them excited about what they see, so it, it worked really nicely.

Speaker: Now here we are, you know, leading trips all around the world. Who would've, who would've thunk it back in the day? No, we could One boat, one photo boat test. My true. A few cameras, one Jerry Can of fuel. We used to go and fill up the fuel ever before, every trip. What a journey. It's been a No, it's different.

I'm so glad you've been there through the whole thing. And, uh, yes, I can, uh, attest to the fact that unfortunately for everybody else, guts is an irritatingly talented photographer who kind of makes it look. Effortless and there were certainly, uh, big boots to fill when he sent you off on your own. 

Speaker 2: It certainly were.

Gatz was known within [00:16:00] Pangolin and people were expecting him. He is incredible with people. Um, I, he's even better with photography and a lot of people expected to be hosted by guts and were somewhat disappointed when I would show up. That has changed only really since the YouTube channel. The YouTube channel has helped incredibly because people know my face.

They, they know what to expect and. Trust me ahead of time. And I think it has helped all of us in that sense. 

Speaker: And I think also all the work you are doing as well, where we are working with a several Botswana citizens. Yeah. And, and they've been working with us for many years and now they are up to a level where they're, they're hosting their own groups and credit needs to go to you for the hours and hours of mentoring that you put in.

To take people who've never really done wildlife photography before to a level where they're able to host international clients and you know, [00:17:00] go through what you went through. 

Speaker 2: And they have the same problem with people not recognizing them. So. It is our job to put them out there too. But if I, if I learned it coming from finance, why can't they?

Speaker: And on that note, Janine's actually this year produced with them a beginner's wildlife photography course at the Pangolin Photo Academy. So if you want to touch up on some gaps in your knowledge, then you can go and do that. All the courses are free. And that course is produced by Janine, but presented by.

Walter and Youngman, who are the next generation of Pangolin photo hosts. So yeah, go check that out. I'll leave a link in the description. It's a very, very cool course we've had. It's only been out for a couple of weeks and over a thousand people have already done the course. 

Speaker 2: That's really impressive. 

Speaker: So now before we move on to the the next image, we're gonna take a quick break and, uh, when we're back, we're going to move on to Janine's next image.

Welcome back to the Pangolin podcast. Today with me Toby, an Janine Kreer. We are now [00:18:00] moving forward onto image number three. Now I have a confession to make. Janine. I was scrolling very quickly through these images and I saw this and I went, in my mind went tree squirrel. You know, we see a tree squirrel, and then especially if you have a back lit tree squirrel, then you often have this ball of a shape of an animal and then the long tail hanging down and I'm so used to seeing how is back 

Speaker 3: lit.

Tree squirrels have you seen in your life? 

Speaker: I've, I'm sorry. I look at a lot of images and this, okay, so this tell, okay. Tell everybody what's actually happening in this photograph. 

Speaker 2: Okay. It's, it's definitely not a backlit tree. Squirrel is a young, about five month old leopard cup that climbed into the tree just in time for sunset, and was posing in front of the orange setting sun with the sunlight coming through the leaves being dispersed at sparkly.

Speaker: Okay. Oh no, I see it now. Oh, that's not a tree squirrel, is it? No, that's a Okay, good. That's, I'm grateful. You see baby leopard took me a while and, 

Speaker 2: uh, tell 

Speaker: me where, where was this photograph taken? 

Speaker 2: [00:19:00] So that photograph was taken in the Avago delta. Mm-hmm. And it must be one of my favorite places in this whole entire world.

I always say, if I can have a house, which you cannot, by the way, if you, if I could have a house in the Avago Delta and I could have a house somewhere in the mountains in Switzerland, that would be the happiest girl. It's a magical place, and I think one of the most beautiful environments to shoot wildlife in.

We had a bit of, uh, two quieter days. And that baby gave us about five minutes, and I'm not sure my guest understood how incredible the sighting actually was to have him sit there against the sunset. It was technically quite challenging. It's a bit of a HDR shot, but to me it was a dream come true. I. 

Speaker: For those of us who are, you know, befuddled by several things to do with a more technical photograph, just explain to me about what you mentioned there.

With the HDR, 

Speaker 2: we are shooting straight into the lives, and when you do that, you often tend to get a black animal. That could be a lovely silhouette, but in this case, he [00:20:00] was halfway covered by the trunk behind, so he wouldn't stand out. It would be black on black in in the leopard cupboard. Pretty much vanish and become a tree squirrel, for instance.

Um, 

Speaker 3: oh yeah. That you understand, 

Speaker 2: you need to shoot it bright enough that the detail of the lipid still comes out without burning the background entirely. I. That's when you have to become a little bit more technical. You have to watch your histogram to make sure you don't burn everything. I think I burned some of the areas in the back happily because it looks like sparkles coming through.

And if some of them are white, I don't mind, but the priority was. The Lippard cup was an entirely shady black, 

Speaker: but it's, it is one shot. It's not, it's not a composite. 

Speaker 2: Correct. Yeah, and that's a good point. You're making, a lot of HDR shots are bracketed shots where you have different exposures that you lay over each other, but with wildlife that's very difficult because wildlife moves.

So even if you fire three successive shots quite quickly, you [00:21:00] are not guaranteed that, that the animal hasn't moved from Its. Position. So with modern cameras, they have such a wide dynamic range. You can, you can do a lot more in the shadows as well as in the brights. It's really incredible the details you can get away with.

Speaker: It's interesting what you say there about the HDR capabilities, the dynamic range as well. 'cause obviously since we started Pangolin, we could never have run Pangolin if we were on film cameras. Can you imagine everybody sort of sending us their photographs after getting them developed at Snappy snaps and asking them what we thought of them with digital photography.

That was the big game changer and allowed us to, to run the business that we have now. What effect has the quantum leap that has been in development to, to mirrorless. Had on the way that you can teach photography as well. 

Speaker 2: It's a huge effect. Things have changed. Like you say, form doesn't give you that instantaneous feedback.

By the time you develop your image, you don't quite [00:22:00] understand or remember I. What settings you used. So DSLR allowed us to have that instantaneous feedback, but mirrorless now takes that a step further because not just do we understand what settings each photograph is taken with, but we see. The exposure compensation changed in the viewfinder, which is often a big thing that baffles beginner photographers is the exposure compensation.

So you see your image getting brightened, getting darker, and you have the AI algorithms to help you focus. However, it also makes people lazy. A lot of people say, I just roll the wheel until it looks great. But in order to really become faster in wildlife photography, you should understand what you're doing before you do it.

And the same holds with the algorithms for eye detection. A lot of people claim. It's the best thing in the world. And I don't say [00:23:00] that it hasn't revolutionized photography. It's phenomenal, but it's not infallible. And especially when it comes to larger and slower mammals, it's sometimes just better to place your own focus and understand that you have targeted it correctly.

It's not on the nose, it's not on the ear. It's right where it needs to be. And people are too lazy to even attempt to get better at focusing at this stage because a camera does it all. So it has a pro in a con. 

Speaker: My animal eye track struggles with hippos. It's got no idea where, where the eye of a hippo is.

It goes nostril, ear, ear, nostril, nostril, eye, back to nostril. So, I dunno, maybe that's, maybe that's just also me, maybe just not this competent. 

Speaker 2: It has gotten a lot better. I mean, it's amazing to watch the algorithm evolve, um, in part slightly scary. 

Speaker: And do you think that with mirrorless, that, I mean, it sounds a bit facetious, but is it becoming too easy?

Is it, it's, it would theoretically then become more difficult to take a [00:24:00] truly great shot if everybody is getting better through technology. 

Speaker 2: No, I don't think so, because to be a good photographer, you still need the eye so much is dependent on new composition and where you position yourself with regards to where the light falls in and.

Despite all the assistance, people often miss the right moment because they don't read the animal rights. 

Speaker: There's only so much AI can do. Is that what you're saying? 

Speaker 2: It helps with, with your me memory collections. Mm-hmm. Everybody can collect memory, so do some documentation about their holiday and their trip, but to become a good photographer, those are crutches, but they're not gonna take the work away.

Speaker: Okay. Shall we move on to your fourth image before we move on to that, that you've chosen by another photographer? Tell us about this one please. 

Speaker 2: [00:25:00] It's elephant balls standing close to a set of waterfall against the blue arrow of the sky. After the sunset, the sky has the most incredible colors, and in the backdrop you see small little giraffe silhouettes surrounding him even between his legs.

It's an amazing shot 

Speaker: and it filled me with joy because I know exactly when this was taken. This was taken during Covid, so this would've been late 2020. What were you doing out photographing during Covid when the rest of the world was in lockdown? Janine, would you like to share? How tough this was for you during covid.

Speaker 2: Matter of fact, lockdown was way stricter in Botswana than many other countries. The first three months were hard. There was no leaving your home. At all. It was, it was troublesome to go to the grocery store, not no exercise, no dog walking, but after that you were allowed to move within your province. And you [00:26:00] know, it's quite difficult to judge the boundaries of your province if you're only offroading.

So we might have 

Speaker: ended the up. Did you get lost, Jolene? Did you get lost and leave your province by accident? 

Speaker 2: That was totally by accident, but essentially what we did is Sabine and haw packed the car, gets an eye packed our car, and with interruptions, with brakes. We camped just over 10 weeks within Botswana and we had permission of a lot of the private concessions to drive through them because they were.

Struggling with unauthorized people there, and they wanted eyes on the ground. So we had the most beautiful time of exploring Botswana without seeing any other guests, without seeing any other tourists, without bookings. We could camp where we wanted to. We could stay as long as we wanted to or leave. And it was like experiencing Africa in 1,920 with [00:27:00] a brand new car with air conditioning in a fridge.

It was absolutely phenomenal. 

Speaker: I mean, oh yeah. When life throws you lemons, what do you do? Well, you go on, you go on a 10 week road trip through Botswana, obviously is what you do. And there is a film about this called Into the Kalahari. Yes, it's on our YouTube channel. It's a really cool video. It's lots of fun, lots of humor.

Speaker 2: I think it was one of our first YouTube videos, and it was to encourage people to travel again, show them that other destinations still exist, they haven't banished throughout Covid. And for me personally, it is one of the best times I've ever had in my life. Being out there with my best friends and with guts and exploring we've, we literally habituated line cups that have never seen tourists before.

By just being able to stand there for three, four days and watching them without leaving, because we had no itinerary. We didn't need to tick lists, we didn't need [00:28:00] to show anybody anything. We could do whatever we wanted to do. 

Speaker: And I remember the moment that this photograph was taking I, I think that there was a microphone on SHA and he was describing what was happening.

And then suddenly all these giraffes just started appearing. Talk us through the moment 

Speaker 2: we had the most magical trip. Everything happening, and we just sat with a gin and tonic around a water hall, not expecting much, to be honest, just enjoying life. That big ball arrived and the colors in the sky were so beautiful, and suddenly all these giraffes started appearing out nowhere, and it was, I couldn't have choreographed bit for the Lion King on Broadway.

I couldn't have dreamt it up. I couldn't have, it was goosebumps, pure, and everybody who I care for. And who would love this was there to experience it together with me. And it was very difficult photography in the sense that we barely had light lift. I don't know. If you can see, but I shut it, I think, on an 80th of a second, [00:29:00] on a long zoom lens, not a mirrorless.

So there was no InBody stabilization or any of these sort of things. But you know what, if all of these photos wouldn't have turned out, it would've been just as beautiful as an experience. 

Speaker: But you nailed it. It's certainly unique. I mean, you said earlier you find it difficult to photograph elephants, and yes, you photograph millions of them as well.

But this, this one must sit up there in, you know. The top five. 

Speaker 2: It is, and it's weird because I'm not a huge fan of OIDs. They don't need a lot of creative thinking. They, they just appear, which is wonderful, and they make any sunrise or sunset. Beautiful. But. And normally they don't require a lot of hard work.

But when I get a good sighting like that, like a life altering sighting, every now and then it happens. I tend to not look at my images immediately because I don't want the emotions of the sighting to be dampered by the disappointment of not being. Able to capture the shot. I don't want it to be about photography, [00:30:00] even though I attempted to photograph it.

So if I look at it a week or two weeks later, my emotions are taken out of it a bit and I don't become so terribly frustrated or sad. And the moment stays special for that moment. 

Speaker: But you did get the image to remind you after? I did, but then that's an important thing as well. We often find people, they take a photograph, they go, oh look, I got it.

And then immediately they're looking back through their images. And they're looking at it, get sad, so sad and sad, and they're outta the moment. You know, it's, I think we call it chimping, don't we? They're like a chimp just staring down. Its a little object. We're like, no, and nothing else, nasa. Something else might happen.

Something else might happen. 

Speaker 2: They miss the next moment or the entire excitement. They felt a second before evaporates and it replaced with disappointment, which is really sad actually. 

Speaker: So this was just before Covid. I think we had started talking about developing the YouTube channel just before Covid.

Yeah. I think we made some videos in November, 2019 and Covid gave us the hiatus [00:31:00] to actually start focusing on developing the YouTube channel. I mean, it's been absolutely extraordinary. We literally, today I got a notification that we've just hit 10 million views. What, which 10 million views of, I mean, it's, it's mental.

So how's it changed for you? Because you get recognized, don't you? 

Speaker 2: I do actually. Um, mostly in nature places where you would encounter photographers. Most people are very appreciative, which is obviously beautiful. It's beautiful to get to see them and, and know that they take something away from your videos.

But we never anticipated, uh, feedback like that ever. 

Speaker: So thank you to everybody who is here, who is already a subscriber and a follower who has contributed in their way to our 10 million views. That's just. Mad. Um, thank you guys and, uh, long may it continue. We've got lots of new video ideas, which we shall put into production, and we're gonna figure out a way so that Janine gets [00:32:00] more time to indulge in her creative process.

We are getting to the tail end of our interview with Janine. So before we go to the image that she's chosen by another photographer, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back we'll reveal which image she's chosen. Welcome back to the last section of the Plum Podcast with me, Toby German and my guest today, Janine Cryer.

Now, at this stage, I asked Janine to choose an image taken by another photographer that maybe she wished she'd taken that inspires her, her image. Today it's one of those images I, I see a lot of wildlife imagery. And apart from issues surrounding tree squirrels and baby leopards, I can pretty much always tell you know what it is, probably guess where it was taken and things like that.

But this is an image that made me stop dead in my tracks. Do you wanna describe this image? 

Speaker 2: So the image is taken by Hans lna. He's a good friend of [00:33:00] mine and a huge inspiration to me, and it is an image of, I think I can see three small elephants at the bottom of a frame, but they are shot through a leaf that has been eaten by either a caterpillar, maybe a grasshopper, who knows some sort of insect, has perforated the leaf, so it looks like a Swiss cheese.

And yes, framed these elephants through. The holes of the vegetation. And on top of that, it gives you a very nightly feeling because it is created on a very cold temperature. It's kind of blue tin to it, so it feels almost nightly and cool. 

Speaker: It's extraordinary. And like you say, if you're gonna photograph an elephant, you've gotta come up with a way to make it original.

And I don't think it gets more original like this. I'm also a, a huge fan of Hannah's work. He's pretty legendary and to top it all, he's a terribly nice chap and jolly good fun to be on safari with. So why did you choose this, this image in particular? 

Speaker 2: [00:34:00] Well, you pretty much summed it up. It is so different.

Have you ever seen an elephant shot like that? And that's what I love hunters for. He always thinks out of the box. He finds different angles that make you think, and when I was starting off in my wildlife photography journey, he said to me, Janine, you mustn't just go out there and take pictures. That's not how wildlife photography works.

You need to create an image in your mind, sort of like an artist word that is about to paint an image, and then you find the ecosystem, the environment, the time of the day. That most likely makes that shot happen. And then you work on that shot until you get it. And if it takes you 20 years to get that shot.

And that's that. And he has got many shots that he took years and years until he captured it to get it the way he wanted it. And I, I know some of his ideas to me, [00:35:00] they're mad. I was like, when will you ever see that? He says, no, I've seen it before, and I will capture it. That's how he approaches wildlife photography is, is fascinating to me 

Speaker: and it's time as well.

I mean, S will go and live in the bush for months waiting to get those shots. One of the things I remember him telling me as well is one of the questions we always get BA is when's the best time to come and photograph? And especially in Botswana is it's all year, but there's one time of year that he particularly loves and that is what we call green season, where it's a bit more rainy because.

He loves clouds, he loves the dramatic buildup of a storm. But what, what would you, what would you say to that? I mean, do you, do you have a favorite time of year to photograph as well? 

Speaker 2: Well, I definitely prefer the green season over the dry season, yes, you see animals more easily in the dry season. Um, you also see more animals in the dry season, but number one, the clouds, blue skies are.[00:36:00] 

They remind me like they came straight out of a bubble gum machine. They, they're horrible. So skies are incredibly important. I love green contrast. Um, you see cats so much better. Well, these orangey yellow animals, they pop. And for me, most importantly, it's the time of the year when the animals are healthy and happy.

So while you might not see as much, when you do see animal interactions. They're more energetic, they're more playful, they're more happy because they have the food and the calories, um, in order to be playful and you see the joy in them. And for me, that is important. 

Speaker: Most of the time when I go on safari now it's February because it's, yeah, it's beautiful.

And it's like you say, lots of baby animals running around, flocking around Happy. You know all that beautiful verdant, green backgrounds. Yeah, big fans. I spoke to HNIs because obviously I said we were going to use his image. And the good news is HNIs has agreed to appear in the [00:37:00] podcast as well, so he will appear in a few weeks time.

So if you haven't subscribed yet, please make sure he subscribed. And if you have any comments about this one. If you have any suggestions as to who we should invite on the podcast, please put it in the comments down below. Janine, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. It leaves me with the final question I like to ask all the guests.

Going back to the premise of your humble dwelling, if you were to able to decide where your humble dwelling was going to be, where you could photograph for the rest of your life, where would that be? 

Speaker 2: Well, if it is photography related, I think I gave it away earlier. I would put myself into a little tent into DACA manger Delta, and I would listen to the Grand Ho Bowls, give me a concert in the morning, and the Crested Franklins waking up and listening to where the Lions might be active that early morning.

Speaker 3: And 

Speaker 2: I'd go out and find new stories every day. 

Speaker: [00:38:00] Brilliant. Yes. I don't think you could have chosen a better place. And, uh, finally, just before we go, uh, where can people follow you and follow your work? Apart from the YouTube channel, obviously, but where else can people follow you? 

Speaker 2: I'm mostly represented on Instagram and Facebook.

My handle is Janine Wildlife Photography. Social media isn't my strong suit, but I try. I try my utmost best. 

Speaker: Janine, you have been a wonderful guest on the podcast, so thank you very much for joining me. 

Speaker 2: Thanks, Toby. It was a lot of fun. I really appreciated. 

Speaker: Well, there we go, the second Pangolin podcast in the Can.

We hope you've enjoyed it. Before you go, don't forget to sign up to the Pangolin Photo Safari's newsletter. You can do that by heading over to pangolin photo.com. Or you can scan the QR code on your screen, which is going to appear here. If you've enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe to the YouTube channel or wherever you get your podcast so you don't miss the next one.

And while you're there. Give us a [00:39:00] thumbs up, leave a comment, write a review. Uh, your feedback does mean a lot to us, and we are gonna keep developing the format until we get it perfect. Personally, I look forward to seeing you all on a Pangolin photo safari soon, and all that's left for me to do now is to say that Pangolin podcast was hosted by me, Toby German, and produced and edited by Bella Falk.

Thank you.