This isn’t a terribly good photo. Technically, it’s dreadful. Alas, that’s what happens when one is slammed down to f2.8 for 1/15th of a second at ISO3200 with a very left sided histogram. There’s just not much light to work with. Nevertheless, it remains one of my emotional favorites from our 2016 trip to Africa. This is James at Il Ngwesi. He’s regaling our group with his lion story. There’s no chance that I could ever do his story justice, so you won’t see it reprinted here. If you want to hear it, you’ll need to travel to Il Ngwesi in Kenya and hear it for yourself. Trust me when I say that would be worth your time and money, though.
Part of the reason that I can’t relate it here and why it would be worth the expensive trip to a distant land is that while the story itself is incredible, there’s so much more going on that could never be captured, even if I had the most capable low light video camera available at my discretion. There’s the smells of the fire that cooked our simply delicious meal. There’s the sounds of East Africa in the background. There’s the inflections in James’ voice and the body language that no two dimensional recording format could ever do justice to. It was simply one of those moments when you had to *be* there.
Missing those moments is one of those worries I have as a photographer. In this case, I have a lot of mixed feelings about the picture I got. It took a lot of work and a lot of wasted shots to come up with this one sub-par image to record the event. I do like the fact that I have some semblance of the memorable moment recorded. As time moves further and further away from this trip, having this image will help me remember all of the other factors that I mentioned above.
But at what cost? When I look at the time stamps from the files in this series, I spent over 5 minutes fiddling with the camera trying to find the balance point between aperture, shutter speed and ISO that would allow me to catch enough photons in a short enough time frame to stop motion and show a clear image of what was going on. Had I just set the camera aside, would I have enjoyed the story even that much more? If I had, would I be able to jog my memory as effectively as it was when I pulled up the image to post on the blog?
I’m not sure there is a correct answer to this conundrum that might be unique to photographers. Maybe I need to go back to Il Ngwesi and have James tell the story again — this time without the worries of trying to record a moment in nearly non-existent light. Then I’ll be able to make a proper comparison. And I’d get another trip to East Africa, too!