Meet The Pro: Jan Wegener

You asked for it!!! Join host Toby Jermyn in episode 12 of the Pangolin Podcast, where he chats with acclaimed wildlife photographer Jan Wegener. 

Here is a link to a gallery of Jan's images: https://pangolin.smugmug.com/SmugMug-Website/Website-Pages/Meet-the-Pro-Jan-Wegener

Hailing from Germany and now based in Queensland, Australia, Jan shares his journey into bird photography, his innovative techniques, and the stories behind some of his most captivating images. From photographing Golden Finches in Western Australia to capturing the vibrant Crested Pigeon in flight, Jan delves into the artistry and technical prowess needed to achieve extraordinary wildlife photographs. 

He also reveals his admiration for classic bird paintings and discusses how these have influenced his photographic style. Don't miss this insightful episode packed with tips and personal anecdotes that will inspire both aspiring and seasoned photographers alike.

Connect with Jan Wegener
Website: https://www.janwegener.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jan_wegener
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aviscapes/

Jan's Masterclasses: https://www.janwegener.com/courses

Jan's Birds in Flight video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66vWk-nGgpA

Learn more about William T Cooper
Website: https://www.williamtcooper.com.au/
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpMoJSQ1asw

The Pangolin Podcast was produced and edited by Bella Falk: https://www.passportandpixels.com

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Chapters

• 2:46 1st Image: The Blue Tit
• 9:37 2nd Image: Gouldian Finches
• 15:02 3rd Image: Capturing the Crested Pigeon in Flight
• 23:55 4th Image: Naretha Blue Bonnets
• 30:23 Inspirational Painting: Victoria's Riflebird by William T Cooper

Transcript

Toby: Hello and welcome to episode 12 of the 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, they're allowed to bring five photographs to hang on the wall of their humble dwelling.

Four of these must be their own, and the final image is one they admire by 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 is a link to a gallery in the description.

On today's show.

Jan: The first day we got there, we're driving around, not seeing anything, didn't hear anything. I'm like, 'There's no birds here at all.' And suddenly, like two birds fly right into this tree next to us, which is the ugliest tree you can imagine.

Just dead twigs everywhere that are right in the centre of it. You can't even focus on it. They're so hidden away, I'm like, 'Oh, it's hopefully not how this is going to go.'

Toby: My guest today is an acclaimed wildlife photographer, originally from Germany, but now based in Queensland, Australia. As a child, he became fascinated with parrots and artistic bird paintings, and has dedicated his
career to capturing nature's most vibrant avian moments and educating
aspiring photographers worldwide.

With numerous international awards and a growing, well-established YouTube channel, his work continues to inspire conservationists and bird lovers alike, and he has been the most requested guest named by you in the comments.

So I am delighted to be able to accommodate you all and welcome to the show, Jan Wegener.

Jan: Hey, it's great to be here, and that was quite a speech. I should put that on my website, on the about page. That was very nice. Thanks for the nice words.

Toby: No problem. I am available for short videos if you need me to do it in person as well, so welcome to the show.

Jan, as I said, you're in Australia at the moment, so if I caught you a little bit late in the day? What time is it over there with you now?

Jan: It's about 7:00 PM now. So it's still all right. But it's very difficult to work with
other people in the US or Europe can be even harder because it's always either
really late here or really early for someone else or the other way around.

So it's definitely not the easiest way to live here in Australia. But at the same time, there's obviously lots of interesting things around here.

So I don't regret moving here.

Toby: You grew up in Germany, didn't you? And then when did you move to Australia?

Jan: Almost 15 years ago now. It's kind of crazy to say that, 'cause it kind of makes me feel old. I grew up in Berlin. I lived there for, like, 25 years and then did university, did a few other things, lived in Canada for a while,
lived in the US for a while, and then somehow ended up in Australia.

Toby: Well, there we go.

Okay. Let's start with your first image. Please, can you please tell us about this image?

Jan: Yes, it's a picture of a Blue Tit on a kind of cutoff stick with a nice outer focus background, and not giving me the best pose, but at the time when I took it, I was very proud of it. And there's a few reasons for that.

For years, when I was, maybe between 15 and 18 or something. When I really wanted to get into bird and wildlife photography, was saving up for big lenses, doing actually landscaping, just an apprenticeship at that time.

And I always looked at back then everyone just posted their pictures on internet forums way before Instagram, and I always was aspiring to take these photos that had this super nice sort of clean, outer-focus backgrounds, and it was just something I could not achieve. I think back then I had like a 20D and like 100-400 mm lens, and I just never was able to get that look in my photos.

And I remember then I saved up for one or two years, and then I was able to buy my first  EF f/4 500 L IS prime lens. And then I also set up this pretty horrible stick in my backyard, you know, in winter, put a bit of bird seed out, and this bird actually landed on there, and when I looked through the lens, it had this crazy, out-of-focus background.

And that's really what sort of started my journey into the more serious kind of photography. And like I said, looking back, it's not a very exciting photo, but it's the first moment in photography where I felt like I achieved something that I didn't know how to do previously.

Toby: I think everybody can relate to that. Everybody has those moments. Whether you, the first time you hit a golf ball properly or the first time you do anything properly, you go, 'This is it. I can do this.'

And this was photographed in, this is not an Australian bird, is it? This was in Germany?

Jan: Yeah. In Berlin, in Germany, in my backyard. So very simple.

Basically just, I'm sitting in the living room, 'cause it was pretty cold, and I'll just stuck the lens out. And then just a little bowl with some birdseed, you know, like pretty standard setup. And I just put a couple sticks around it and then obviously had a distance sort of background, probably 20, 15-20 metres sort of behind the bird.

And then it was like, wow, this actually works. This is how you do it.

Toby: That's the most important thing, isn't it? And I mean, in essence, you're using your house as a hide, and anyone I speak to who's designing a hide or thinking.

It's always about choose the background first. Because there's not very
much you could do afterwards. Once you've built your hide and you've done everything. If you were going to set up a perch in your garden, what are the distances?

What are the things you are trying to think about when you want to get these nice buttery smooth backgrounds?

Jan: It definitely depends on the lens, 'cause how smooth the background is. You can get a background like this also with a zoom lens, but then the bird would have to be much closer to you, and the background would have to be even further away.

Now, in my backyard here in Australia, I have a pretty cool setup, and they're sort of just a hillside and some trees behind it. So you can basically get a smooth background with almost any lens. But, generally speaking, you would want to be between five to eight meters, depending on your lens, from your subject.

And then if you want to really smooth, creamy background like this, you probably want to have it as far away as possible. Or sometimes what I've even done in the past, I lived for a while in a tiny little townhouse with a small backyard, or even sometimes painted a cloth with different spray paint and used that as a background when there was really no other way around it.

But ideally, you just have a background that's sort of that 10 to 15 metres behind your bird. And then with most lenses, and if you shoot relatively wide open, you should be able to get a pretty nice looking background, and it doesn't really have to be that smooth anyways.

These days, I might even feel like a little bit more texture, a little bit more flow in the background might be even better. But that's sort of the general rule of thumb.

Toby: I love the fact that you have taken it to heart with the mission that we gave you to choose these images, because I love it when people select something that really reminds them of why they got into this.

And your photographic journey. Let's dive straight into that. I believe that one of your previous roles was you did a lot of photography for real estate, did you not? Was that in Australia, or was that in Germany and the other places as well.

Jan: No, that was in Australia. I'd done bird photography and sort of more serious photography for a long time, but always on the side. And I never really found a good way for me to making serious or livable money with that.

And then I was finishing uni here in Australia. I studied finance, and I looked at finance job. I'm like, geez, that sounds so boring and horrible. And then I saw this job ad for real estate photographer said you get the car, camera, this and that, and you just photograph houses. I'm like, well, that sounds pretty cool.

Obviously, I had no idea what to do. I had never photographed a house professionally before. So. I drove through the city and just tried to photograph pretty sort of public buildings in twilight and stuff to get a few photos together.

And then of course I didn't get that job, but then I found this one company that were always looking for people, and they were willing to train them up for a week or two. And so I got into that, and I think over the years I probably photographed between 4,000 and 5,000 houses around Melbourne.

Toby: And Melbourne's very pretty as well. I like Melbourne. It's got fantastic architecture, so of all the cities to do it in, that's probably the best one, isn't it?

Jan: Definitely. It was great houses. It was definitely a journey as well. I still remember to this day on my very first shoot, I'm in this house, I'm sweating. I'm scared. You have an hour to photograph the whole house, then you have to run outside before it's too dark to do the twilight with all the lights on.

I'm running around, turning on all the light switches, there's this weird button next to the bed. I'm like, 'Oh, that's probably another light switch.' I press it, panic button, you know, no one in the house, no real estate agent there. I was just there by myself. The alarm going off and it was a horrible experience.

And afterwards I thought, I could never do this again, ever. But I did. And yeah, definitely a fun story now, but not so fun back then.

Toby: That's the worst burglar in the world who breaks in, turns all the lights on, and then sets off the panic button. And do you take any of those skills
that you developed over those 4, 5,000 houses into your career now?

Jan: Hmm. I think not necessarily as much on the photography side of things, but definitely on the editing side of things. Because in that job, you were just the photographer, and there was a whole team of 10 or 12 editors, that all they did was just edit the pictures all day.

I picked up a lot of those skills that I also teach in my master classes, where it's a technique that normally isn't used for wildlife, but it's very applicable for wildlife.

So it definitely helped me a lot in that regard. Just understanding the editing process more. And the deep dive into that side of things.

Toby: That's a real insight into it. And I must say there are a disproportionate number of people that I've invited onto this podcast who have some sort of background in finance as well. If there's any young aspiring photographers out there, the secret is go and study finance, and then realise that you don't want to do finances.

It will be a great motivator for you to go out into wildlife photography.

Okay. Let's move straight on to your second image, shall we? Tell us what's going on in this extraordinary image.

Jan: It is a photo of five male Gouldian Finches, probably one of the most spectacular bird in Australia with crazy colours – red, black, purple, blue.

Sitting on a really nice perch. This photo I took in 2018, when I was really in that phase where I just wanted to have a stunning subject, ideally, multiple subjects, a very interesting perch, and then kind of just have to background almost as an afterthought or just as a nice colour.

It's not necessarily something that I strive for anymore, but it's definitely something I was very happy with. And it was just one of those shots. We travelled very far away into Western Australia to a small town called Wyndham.

And there's, during the dry season, big flocks of these amazing Gouldian Finches coming into tiny water puddles. And if you are lucky, there might be a 100, 200, 300, 500, a 1000 of these finches coming in the morning.

And so we went there, brought a couple nice perches, set them up. And in this very lucky moment, there was five of these Gouldian Finches perfectly sitting on this little, what I think it's a root of a tree and gave me that photo.

Toby: It's absolutely stunning, and when you look at it, first of all, you think it looks more like a painting. The next thing is, I love the symmetry. But the symmetry is slightly off because, I mean, I don't know these birds at all. But are they, is it male and female?

Jan: No, they're all males, so they actually have come in different head colours.

So there's redheaded males, blackheaded males, and very rarely some that is a bit more orangy yellow, and the females are sort of like this, but much paler. And you're right, it's like the one stray bird kind of looking out of the frame on the other side. But at the same time, it just felt like it all kind of worked. They're all just sitting there kind of thinking they look pretty cool, and they did.

Toby: I love it. I mean, it's something we always look at as well when you're looking at symmetry in an image, we always suggest, no, it needs to be odd numbers because if you've got odd numbers of a species, it leads to a focal point right in the middle of the image, in essence.

Was that what you were aiming for? Were you hoping? Did you end up with four birds, one bird, three birds, and you're sitting there waiting, going, wish there was five. All I need is five.

Jan: This was definitely one photo I didn't expect. I set it up that way, but I never thought I would get five males all sitting on there. And actually, them looking in different directions. I think it also makes the viewer look in sort of different direction and let's your eyes kind of wander around, and I think the other thing I discovered is that I'm really drawn to those brighter backgrounds, and I think that's what people always say my pictures look like paintings.

'Cause oftentimes the nature of photography, you end up with fairly dark backgrounds, especially when you have to sort of underexpose your subjects. Where it's here, I purposely set up the branch in the shade basically, and then have the background that's already lit up by the sun a little bit to give me that kind of much brighter effect that, in my opinion, that makes the subject pop a lot more.

Toby: Exactly right, because it does look like it's a sort of canvas or something like that, a slightly modelled canvas but people looking at this, I mean, you took this one seven years ago. If you posted this again now, I guarantee you get the comments everyone's going to go that's AI. That's not real.

That couldn't have happened. It's like literally hand over documentation to show that it was taken in 2018. 

That's the problem, isn't it? When things look a bit too perfect, I worry that people start to doubt things these days.

Jan: Definitely. But even back then, people doubted things, and I think people have always messed with their photos or done things to their photos. It just sort of amplified with the AI now because it's so much easier. You go on Facebook, you see five horrible AI renders of some bird, someone trying to pass off as a photo.

So I think people are a lot more aware of it, but I think at the same time, it has kind of always happened, and yes, it's one of those things, I think, especially as you say, if things look very perfect, and obviously, a bit of editing goes into that as well, to just bring it all together like that, then there's always that sort of question – can this happen?

And if you see the scene, you think, yes, that can happen because there's just simply so many birds. You just have to get lucky basically, to the same or the right five birds sit there, because if there's a young one in between and a female, it doesn't have the same effect because one's just green, and one's washed out.

Then it's a nice photo, but not quite the photo of these really spectacular males. So that's the beauty of it. 

Toby: There are so many permutations of where it could have gone wrong. And what was the background? Is that just a sandy background?

Jan: So basically, I'm sitting in a creek bed. It's probably two or three metres steep. So I climb down to the bottom. There's a little bit of water in the middle, and then it's just a wall on the other side.

I actually feel like I want to re-edit this photo and see if I can maybe get a little bit more background in, or maybe more of a sort of gradient in the background or something. But it's still one image that I like, regardless of how I feel about that style. Like right now, today.

Toby: That's the beauty of it is because as you evolve as a photographer, you can go back and look at these images and re-edit in a certain way, depending on how your style has evolved.

Okay.

Excellent. Now, before we move on to the third image, we're going to take a little break now and when we come back, we're going to ask Jan to share more of his amazing images.

Welcome back to part two of the Pangolin Podcast with me, Toby Jermyn and my guest today, Jan Wegener. Well, it wouldn't be a podcast featuring your images if we didn't have a bird in flight.

So here we go.

Image three.

Tell me more about this image, please.

Jan: So that's a photo of a Crested Pigeon in my backyard. And this is actually quite a common bird, and normally, you don't really see their amazing colours, but in this full flight show, with the back in pose and the tail fan, you can really see the amazing iridescent colours in the wings. So it's quite an iconic Aussie bird, also with that crest on top.

And that was a flight shot that I tried to get for a long period of time, and the only way I ever got it was once I got my hands on the Sony a9 III with the 120 frames per second, and suddenly, birds in flight wasn't so hard anymore.

Toby: No, I can imagine. I love it.

The background is amazing because the different colours of the foliage have framed the bird perfectly. I love the little, is it, must be a little red flower or something.

Jan: I think it's an African tulip tree. It has big red flowers. They're quite common around here. Not native, though.

Toby: Oh, there we go. So an invasive species in the garden, which is going in there. But when the wings are folded up. I've never seen this Pigeon, maybe I've never noticed as well. Are these colours visible when the bird has got its wings in? Or is that only visible when it takes off?

Jan: Just like a strip. Imagine it like a duck, basically. You might see a little bit of green, but you don't get the full green, all the feathers, unless it's flying.

Toby: It's really stunning, and I think it was Steve Perry when I was talking to him, and he said it's very important to make, take extraordinary photographs of ordinary subjects.

And this is fundamentally, it's an ordinary Pigeon, but often these make for some spectacular photographs. And was this pre-capture? Do you have pre-capture on 120 frames per second? Talk me through the methodology of capturing this photograph.

Jan: So on the Sony cameras, this is actually quite well implemented. You can just choose a time of pre-capture, and I notice for myself, my delay in reaction usually seems to be between 0.2 and 0.3 seconds. So if I set to pre-capture to 0.3 seconds, I get about six to eight extra photos basically before I hit the shutter button.

And that usually gives me enough time to then get any bird taking off, because usually I still get the shot where it just jumps off the perch. And then I also get the full series of images. But this was one of those occasions where the bird was basically sitting on one of the top perches that I put there, and you're just on the bird, you're focusing on it.

And then eventually it takes off, and if you're quick enough and panned with it, then you might get a shot like that. But even with a camera like that, I probably took 10, 20,000 photos to get one that where everything seemed really nice.

Toby: And is there a lot of planning that goes into these sorts of shots as well? 

I mean, you have to understand the behaviour of the bird, where the bird is most likely going to take off in a certain direction. Are you constructing something which is going to increase your odds of success?

Jan: I actually made a YouTube video about taking this photo, so I don't know if you want to link that below or something, 'cause some people might get a better idea of how that all went down.

But basically, I set up this setup in my backyard with a decent background. You can see how it's nicely framed by some closer trees, and there's a more distant hill in the background. So for flight shots, that lends itself to just getting an interesting background. And then I just positioned a few perches in certain ways where the birds will usually land on them first or use them to take off.

And in that way, you can maybe anticipate what they're doing, but oftentimes, they just fly away from you. You don't get a shot.

There's no real way to really direct them to always fly like parallel to the camera or something. 

Toby: So that's the beauty of having this set up at home, is that even if you're not photographing, just the ability to sit and observe. But also down to your local park, I suppose you can go and find a favourite spot, find somewhere out ofthe way and just observe, because that's half the battle is understanding what the birds are going to do.
 
So you can anticipate. I suppose.

Jan: Definitely with flight shots, it's a lot about planning and things like the wind. So it's really about knowing the wind. Knowing what the birds are doing, and for instance, with, as you say, with my backyard, I kind of always look down, see what's happening. There's a camera always next to me. If something exciting is happening, I grab it, run out the garage, and I can kind of hide behind the house
and might get a bit of the action.

Toby: Turn your house into a hide, and obviously, this is where, you know, you're sitting in your YouTube studio at the moment.

Where did your journey on YouTube start? Was that a recent thing, or was it a while ago?

Jan: Maybe four or five years ago. I know I was living somewhere else, and I never really thought much about YouTube. I didn't think I would be that great in front of the camera or have that much to say, but then I sort of got pushed into it, and then
it just became like a really good thing.

Toby: And it's created basically a business for you as well, because you do a lot of online courses and a lot of training as well. You tell us a bit about those.

Jan: I think for me, what I really enjoyed about YouTube is that I felt like of all the social media platforms, it's the one where people are probably the most engaged or they really want to learn something. And it just feels a lot more connected to your viewers.

That's definitely one aspect that I really liked. And for me personally, I just found that image editing is the one niche where most people struggle. We're overwhelmed by the amount of images we're taking. We don't really know where to start, what sliders to pull, and don't really have a good workflow.

And I always say it really doesn't matter if you like what my images look like or like a completely different style. But what's important is that you learn the tools and techniques that allow you to get your RAW file to that final image that you see in your head, whichever way that may look like.

And that's also why I created my master classes for Lightroom and Photoshop, where just show people a simple way to just edit their photos and get to a great result pretty fast.

Toby: And it is predominantly Lightroom and Photoshop that you teach on. Have you come across any other tools that you use in your workflow as well?

Jan: There's definitely a few other programmes that I've used. I used a lot of DxO PureRAW, for instance, to denoise my images, but I find myself these days leaning more to just doing that in Photoshop and Lightroom, just because it has become so easy. You don't create a DNG file anymore. There's a slider; one click done, pretty much, and then there's one tool that I find very helpful. It's the DXO Nik collection. It's like a whole bunch of filters. I don't use most of them, but
there's three in particular that I find quite good.

One is called detail extractor. One's called Pro Contrast, and one is called White Neutralizer. And at the end, once you're done with all your image editing, running a couple of those on the images can really make a big difference because often, for instance, I find that the images has a little bit of a colour cast, and that white neutralizer, for instance, helps me to just get really nice, clean and crisp colours.

Toby: Well, there we go. You heard it here first. So we will leave links in the
description down below to all of your socials and your links to your masterclasses as well.

Do you find that sometimes you are, I mean, I know I've watched your content, and it's very giving, and you will explain everything. I know some people try to hold things back. I know some photographers feel that they're losing their intellectual property.

They are their unique selling proposition. What's your take on that?

Jan: I think you can't lose by sharing. I was definitely on the other side of that spectrum, where I felt like I had to hold back; I can't share. I actually remember way back in the day, I know I was going out with another photographer, and it was basically a race home, like who could get to the computer first to quickly post the best photo we took, side by side, to just beat the other one to it and over the
years, I just decided I want to have fun.

I want to help people, and I just want to enjoy myself in the field and on YouTube or wherever I am. And so for me, that has been a fantastic journey, and it has really helped me to make content that really resonates with people, hopefully.

Well, I think so.

Toby: And I think that's why you are one of the most requested guests we've had. Your name is always popping up. But tell you what I would like to do is, we need to get you to come to Botswana, and you need to come and photograph with us.

Jan: Definitely, I mean, I've never been to Africa, and this sounds like a very good opportunity. And I'm definitely excited to see some of those animals. Obviously, I've heard a lot about them. Seeing a lot of them in a zoo, but I've never seen them with my own eyes.

And I wonder, you are from the UK, right? Did it ever feel strange to you to see an elephant in the wild? Did it even feel like it's not real? I remember when I came to Australia first time, I saw these Cockatoos flying around that are only seen in tiny aviaries. I'm like, what is this? This just doesn't seem right. 

Toby: I think you're absolutely right. I can still remember seeing my first impala on my first game drive on safari. I mean, this is, it's a small antelope. They are actually, when you look at them and they're quite pretty, but it's not the most astonishing thing you'll see on safari. But I looked at it and went, this is the stuff that David Attenborough has been telling me about all my life.

And here it is. It's here. And I love it whenever I go out, and I'm with a client on their first safari, because it's just, it's a sensory overload when you see things up close. You know, there's, there's no cage, there's no bar, there's no window between you and it. It's a very special thing, and it's something that everybody should do.

But yes, thank you for asking. That's just taken me down memory lane. That has, that's lovely. Thank you. Okay.

We are going to make it work, but before we can get you to Botswana, we need to move on to your fourth image, please. Can you describe what's going on in this image, please?

Jan: This is one of my most recent photos of a group of very rare Naretha Bluebonnet Parrots out there in the Nullarbor Desert, somewhere in the middle, between South Australia and Western Australia, and it was about an 8,000-kilometre road trip to get this image. So I'm definitely used to travelling a lot.
 
And it's just a group of three males and one female sitting in a really interesting tree because the desert is so close to the ocean, there's always wind and rain coming through. So a lot of the trees just bend into shape by the wind, basically.

And this tree in particular stood out to me, and so I was super stoked when a group of birds actually showed up, and they landed in those trees, mainly because they wanted to eat in all the weeds and stuff like at the bottom of the tree. So they land in the tree, and they quickly walk their way down to the bottom to feed on the ground.

Toby: It's a lovely reminder of not necessarily always zooming in. I suppose when you were thinking about composing this image, you know, without the bird flying in on the left-hand side, maybe the temptation would've been to zoom into the birds on the right, facing each other, because they've got a lovely background as well. Do you struggle sometimes to remember to pull back? I mean, you call this an avianscape, don't you? Which is a landscape with birds.

Jan: Well, I actually say it the other way around 'cause what I try to achieve is to still make it a bird photo that also shows part of the landscape as opposed to having a landscape with a little bird in it. And funnily enough, right this photo was still taken at 840 millimetres with a 600 L IS & 1.4x TC wide open at f/5.6.

And it worked because in this case, the background is probably maybe five, six kilometres behind this tree. It's like showing enough detail that you see what the habitat is like without really distracting. And it's one of those photos as well, I feel like you can look at it for a very long time and always discover new things.

Toby: It's a beautiful image. Again, it looks like a painting. I think because of the colours. They're sort of slightly muted, but amazingly textured. And then suddenly you have this brightly coloured parrot coming through. It's a really, really cool image. So you mentioned that this was, what, 8,000 kilometres round trip?

Did you go specifically to photograph this bird, or was it the region you're interested in? What drew you to undertake this journey?

Jan: It was pretty much this bird, and it wasn't easy to find. It's just a few spots in the desert where, with a bit of luck, you can see them. But we basically drove from Sydney all the way into Western Australia. And the first day we got there, we're driving around, not seeing anything, and didn't hear anything.

I'm like, 'There are no birds here at all.' Next morning, we get up, we don't hear much, and suddenly, like two birds, fly right into this tree next to us, which is the ugliest tree you can imagine. Just dead twigs everywhere, they are right in the centre of it. You can't even focus on them. They're so hidden away, I'm like, oh, it's hopefully not how this is going to go. 'Cause sometimes it's even better to not see them than see them. And then not being able to take any photo, you're like, oh, now they were like five meters away from me, and I just got the worst photo ever.

So then we kept going, and we're like, oh, now that we've seen them, we should probably hang out another day or two here. And so we did that, but it got really, really windy. But then we found this sort of like ditch where it seems like a lot of the birds were hiding out. And so we walked around, and then we found a whole group of them sort of flying in and out of a lower area where they were more protected from the wind. And right around that area was also where that tree was.

And I saw the tree and thought it'd be cool to see something, but this is not something you can really plan. You obviously have to hope that the birds actually go to the tree like that. And I also got a lot of close-up shots, but what I really want to achieve these days is to have something that sort of represents the whole trip, maybe in one photo. And this one in particular really did that for me. It's the bird I wanted to photograph. They're doing interesting things. But it also shows a sort of desert and landscape with that tree that was just so deformed by the wind.

Toby: That's a real mission, isn't it, to go off to go and hopefully find one. And this being a desert, obviously, you know, Australia in itself is fairly sparsely populated. Are the birds skittish? Or do they not care about you as a photographer? You mentioned that you were photographing from quite far away.

Jan: For a parrot like this, they were actually quite accommodating. But in saying that, most of the photos I actually took were at 1200 millimetres. Because that's still what you kind of have to do with a small bird, and still trying not to get too close. 'Cause you also don't know if you flush this one bird, usually they'll flush a couple of kilometres away. So this is like your one chance. So you don't want to push too hard and then just lose everything.

But there are also parrots, like they see you, and they just take off. So it's always a bit of luck. And I think it's also obviously preparation to find the right spot. Like, I don't just jump into the car and then drive into the desert, and there are the birds. Obviously, a lot of research goes into trying to find the best spot possible where your odds are the highest of seeing them and also photographing them.

Toby: And I assume you have a tripod, so it's not the kind of thing where you can go and adjust your position very quickly.

Jan: Funnily enough, on this trip, I only shot handheld, first of all, because it was so windy. It was just kind of crazy. And with these birds in particular, they were always jumping up and down and from the tree and from the left to the right. So it was actually vital to be able to change my height and my position a lot.

So, normally you are right, I shoot on a big tripod, and these days I usually use a FlexShooter Pro Head, which is kind of like a mix of a gimbal head and a ball head all in one. The one which is much smaller, which I like to take with me on trips like that.

But, in particular, even with like 600 mil and like 1.4x, 2x times extender, it was actually easier to handhold, but it was, everything was just blowing away, and it was so bad that sometimes I even took the lens hood off because then less wind gets caught in the lens, and it was a little bit more stable.

Toby: There we go. Sort of an overdeveloped left arm holding this up the whole time. Hoping that something is going to happen.

Okay. We are gonna take our last break, and when we come back, Jan is going to reveal the image that was taken by somebody else. See you in a minute.

Welcome back to the final part of the Pangolin Podcast with my guest today, Jan Wegener, all the way from Australia via Germany. Now this is the part of the show where we ask our guest photographer to share with us an image taken by somebody else. But we've broken traditions slightly,

Jan, haven't we? Jan, tell us about this image and why you chose it.

Jan: Well, we talked so much about painting, so I thought, why not actually bring an actual painting into the show? Because I often feel like it's quite nice to derive your inspiration from another source. It could be another photographer. It could be another genre of photography. But personally, I was always drawn to bird paintings from a particular artist.

This guy's called William T.  Cooper, and he's one of the most famous bird artists in the world. And some of his paintings that I was drawn to in particular just show one or two birds interacting, and you always get that hint of background showing as well. Kind of what I tried to achieve with that last photo that we looked at.

And one I brought here in particular is of two Victoria's Riflebirds displaying in the rainforest. And it just has a nice overall look and feel to it. 

Toby: It's very beautiful, and immediately when I saw this. You put it in amongst your photo, I had to do a double-take and realise that it was a painting. A lot of your photographs do have that artistic, traditional, artistic tendency as well.

And would you say this is where you are gravitating to because of the inspiration you draw from images like this?

Jan: Definitely. But it's taken me many years to kind of get to the point, 'cause it's easier with painting, 'cause you can just paint whatever you want in the background. With photography, you actually have to find a good tree, you have to get the birds onto the tree, and you have a background that kind of shows the habitat without being overpowering.

Just like in this painting, there's just a hint of the rainforest without the rainforest being really the standout, and I found that very hard to achieve photographically because you have to be in the right spot at the right time to actually be able to achieve that.

So in the past, I think I tried to create that style more with just the bird and the perch and the kind of non-existent background. Whereas now I'm more drawn to this kind of creative paintings where you just see a bit of everything, but it's also the hardest to achieve in the field because so many things have to kind of all fall into place to be able to pull something off.

Toby: That's as amazing as his paintings. And how old are these paintings? Is he still alive?

Jan: Unfortunately, he died in 2015. It was always someone I wished I had met in real life, but it was never meant to happen. And I think he started painting probably in the 60s, 70s, like he's been doing it for a long time and became one of the most famous artists. He worked closely with, like, David Attenborough as well. And I feel like now, with just how I see the world and what I want to create, I'm able to sort of sometimes copy a similar style, even though it's definitely not an easy task in a photo.

Toby: Do you know, he wasn't photographing. This is purely from memory and observing because, unlike an image, you can't just say, okay, hold that there whilst I quickly paint this or something going on. Was this what was his methodology?

Do you know?

Jan: There's actually an interesting 20-minute YouTube video. I think it's on his website as well, where he shows the whole process. And I find it quite amazing because the whole process was almost very similar to how I would approach this kind of scene to take a photo. He literally goes into the forest and just watches this bird and then makes all these little sketches of the birds, like what they look like, the proportions. Like he never seemed to have drawn of photos.

It was always his own eyes making sketches and then being able to actually make that bigger on a painting.

Toby: So, incredible skill. And I know for a fact that you almost got this, didn't you? Let's have a quick look at the image that you got, which is, let's call it an homage, shall we? An homage to the painting?

It's really good, but it's the wrong way round, Jan. So these are, sorry, Riflebirds, you say?

Jan: Yeah. This is actually the right way around. 'Cause in his painting, it's a young male displaying to an old male, whereas here it's a male displaying to a female. But this was one of my attempts, pure luck again, you have to find a perch where these birds display like they're birds of paradise, and they usually have five or six trees where they fly throughout the day to just display.

And whenever there's a female, they kind of go nuts, rip up their wings and just put on a show. And here in particular, I felt like that was one occasion as well, was able to find a nice branch. Unfortunately, it wasn't the bird's favourite branch, so I was there for many days, and I only really got one scene out of it. But again, this is another one of those photos where I feel like it just kind of really transports the whole feeling of what I felt like in the field when I wanted to photograph it.

Like a nice tree in the rainforest with the bird, doing something crazy. 

Toby: Obviously inspired by those paintings. Had you seen the painting first,
then went out and thought, well, I might have a chance to recreate this. You're going to an area where there are Riflebirds, and you're thinking to yourself wouldn't it be amazing if I could? Is that why you went out on this particular photo expedition?

Jan: That would be a good story, but that's not how it happened. Basically, I was looking for photos for this show, and I looked through his work and I saw this Riflebird painting. I'm like, geez, that looks basically exactly like the photo that I took. But obviously I had seen that before. So part of the inspiration comes from that, I think. But it's not like I have those paintings on my phone, and I'll just be like, oh, I'm copying this today.

It's more just the inspiration and then, trying to find a scene that could become a photo like that.

Toby: Are you an artistic person? Can you paint? Can you draw?

Jan: In my head, I can, but then when I tell my hand to draw, it looks nothing like a bird at all. I actually would love to be able to draw birds. I think I would feel almost more creative freedom 'cause I don't have to wait for the bird to do something. I can just make it do something with the paintbrush.

But that's definitely not going to happen. 

Toby: I'm with you on that one. I don't have the artistic brain, but that's the beauty of photography, isn't it? You can create these amazing images if you understand it, even if you don't have the physical dexterity and skill to be able to reproduce it with your hands. We get a lot of people contacting us, wanting to photograph images that we've displayed on our website or social media as well.

Do you get those sorts of requests?

Jan: Definitely, it's a common one, as well, especially in Australia. It's like, I would love to do a workshop with you, and I want to see Gouldian Finch, a Pink Cockatoo and something else. And there's probably like 40,000 kilometres of travel between all these birds just because one's on the east coast, one's in the north, one's in the
south, like it's definitely not easy to recreate a lot of images you've taken.

You take so many images over the years, and sometimes it's unique moments, like I don't think I could ever recreate this image again. But I think that's also exciting about photography. I don't think we should really try to necessarily copy something. That's what I always see in a lot of competitions as well, right?

It's like one year you have a winner, like a crocodile underwater, and then the next year there's like five more crocodiles underwater.

I'm like, it's nice to get inspiration. But then I also think it's nice to put your own twist on it. Of course, copying is a good way to learn, but then I think the ultimate goal should be to get your own version of what has inspired you originally.

Toby: And that's the beauty of it is, you know, getting the tools as well from educators such as yourself, here are the tools, this is how I've employed them. Go and employ them yourselves. Jan, we have nearly reached the end of the Pangolin Podcast, but I get to ask the big question at the end, which is you are allowed to place your humble dwelling anywhere in the world, but you're going to be there in perpetuity, photographing. So where are we going to be putting your humble dwelling?

Jan: That's a tough one. I would've definitely said Australia for most of my life. Recently, I've been also been drawn a little bit to Africa or South America. Especially Macaws have fascinated me my whole life as well. So, from a photographic standpoint, South America would be interesting.

But then, at the same time, what I find really interesting about Australia is that it is so vast. There's so many subjects that have not been photographed a lot, which is not the case to that degree in a lot of other countries. So I'd probably say I stay in Australia, but I would be tempted by other countries as well.

Toby: Well, there we go. Stick with what you know. But like you say, people forget how vast Australia is and the different ecosystems. Is there anywhere in particular place in Australia that we could narrow it down to from an entire continent? Is there one particular area which has always resonated with you?

Jan: Well, probably where I live now is pretty sweet. Like it's always nice and warm.

Toby: There you go.

Jan: The sun usually shines. You can go to the beach or swim every morning, and there's usually some interesting birds hanging around as well. So I'm pretty happy where I am.

Toby: There we go. Your humble dwelling is going in the garden. That makes life very convenient for yourself. I love it.

Jan, on that note, thank you so much for joining me. It's been an absolute pleasure, and I look forward to seeing you in Botswana soon.

Jan: Thanks for having me. It was great. 

Toby: Thank you for joining me on episode 12 of the Pangolin Podcast.
We hope you enjoyed it. As always, we'd love to hear your comments and feedback, so please leave them down below. If you don't want to miss the
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Finally, don't forget to sign up to the Pangolin Photo Safaris Friday Focus Newsletter. You can do that by heading over to pangolinphoto.com, or you can scan the QR code on your screen now. I very much look forward to seeing you
on a Pangolin Photo Safari soon, and all that's left for me to do is say that the
Pangolin Podcast was hosted by me, Toby Jermyn, and produced and edited by Bella Falk.

Thank you.