Part 25

C. G. Schillings, phot.

FLASHLIGHT PHOTOGRAPHS OF HYENAS (HYÆNA SCHILLINGSI, Mtsch.) AND JACKALS.]

What had happened? It was the old story, so familiar to all experienced travellers, and showing how easily one may be drawn into a fight, yet how easily trouble may be avoided if one takes the right line. My Askari, normally a very steady and reliable man who had been in the service of the Government, had been startled by the sudden apparition right in front of him of a great band of Masai warriors armed with spears. They had raised their spears, no doubt instinctively, at the sight of the rifle-bearing soldier. He, for his part, and his two unarmed comrades, jumped simultaneously to the conclusion that these were the same Masai who had previously attacked us. He decided at once to fire. In an instant the Masai vanished in every direction.

It was not a laughing matter. There had been recent fights in the neighbourhood of my camp between Masai warriors and the inhabitants of the Uferi district--the remains of men who had been killed in these frays bore witness to the truth of what my guides had told me about them. And it was not long since certain European cattle-dealers, at a spot some two days’ journey farther on, had been murdered by the Masai. These facts, taken in connection with the night-attack, made us realise the need of caution.

On reaching the scene of the incident, I ascertained that a great band of Masai, accompanied by their wives, had been seen on the previous evening in the neighbourhood of the stream, and that they had encamped for the night in a mouldering old kraal in the thorn-thicket, and it was while slumbering peacefully in this that they were disturbed by my Askari. Scattered all over the place were goods and chattels of various descriptions which they had left behind them in their hasty flight, and which I now had carefully collected together. From their nature I concluded that the Masai were making for some place at a considerable distance, and that there was, therefore, no danger of unpleasant consequences. I returned to my camp to reassure my people, and at once got some of my Masai friends, who had been with me for a long time, to go after the fugitives and bring them back. That was the only way to effect an understanding--any other messengers would have failed in the mission.

Towards midday my Masai returned to camp with some thirty of the spear-armed warriors and a number of their women-folk. I gave them back their belongings, together with a present by way of amende for their fright. This they accepted with equanimity after the manner of all natives. Then they took their departure, the incident being thus happily terminated without bloodshed.

Curiously enough, Orgeich had had a somewhat similar encounter with Masai a short time before. He had been for a turn in the neighbourhood of the camp, and was coming back in the dark along a rhinoceros-track. When he had got to within a quarter of an hour’s walk of the camp, there was a sudden clatter right in front of him, and in the uncertain moonlight he descried a band of armed Masai. Remembering the recent night-encounter he instantly raised his rifle to fire. But the veteran soldier had self-control enough to resist the impulse, and in this case also there were no ill consequences. But, as he still continues to declare, it was a near thing.

Such incidents, it will be recognised, can very easily lead to serious results.

Later I was to have an unpleasant experience in regard to natives. A band of nomadic hunters, perhaps those who had encamped where I found the zebra-skins, had “gone for” two of my cameras. They had taken away all those parts of them that could be of any use to them, and left them of course quite useless to me. It is noteworthy that they did not smash them to pieces, as Europeans might have done. They had merely detached the metal portions and others which they could turn to some account. This loss was, however, very annoying to me, and I found it necessary to establish two relays of men on guard to look after the sole remaining apparatus throughout the day.

C. G. Schillings, phot.

A BAOBAB (ADANSONIA DIGITATA). THESE TREES ARE OFTEN BELIEVED BY THE NATIVES TO BE INHABITED BY GHOSTS. THEY USED TO COME INTO THE STORIES TOLD BY MY FOLLOWERS.]

XVI

Photography by Day and by Night

There is an old German recipe for the catching of a lion: you put the Sahara through a sieve--and behold the King of Beasts!

The photographing of lions is not to be managed so easily. I am always being asked how I took my photographs. I shall try to give an answer in the following pages.

Before With Flashlight and Rifle was published, the only successful photographs taken by night that were known to me were some few excellent pictures of certain species of American deer, secured by an enthusiastic sportsman (a legal official in the service of the Government of the United States) after years of untiring effort. After any number of fruitless attempts, this gentleman contrived to photograph these animals grazing by night near the banks of a river down which he drifted in a boat. He set up a row of cameras in the bow of his craft, and when it passed close to the deer standing in the water, he let his flashlight flame out, and in this way produced in the course of ten years or so--a number of very interesting photographic studies, which made his name well known in his own country and which won him a gold medal at a Paris Exhibition, where his work aroused much attention. I was familiar also with the “telephoto” pictures which Lord Delamere brought home from East Africa. Those of Mr. Edward North Buxton were published first in 1902, so far as I know. I myself, I should explain, do not profess to be a complete master of the photographer’s art. Indeed, I rather rejoice in my ignorance of many of the inner secrets of the craft known only to experts, because I believe it has helped me to get a certain character into my pictures which would perhaps have eluded one whose mind was taken up with all the difficulties involved in the task.

At first sight the photographing of animals may seem a simple enough matter, but if we look at the photographs taken in zoological gardens or in menageries or game reservations, or photographs taken during the winter at spots to which the animals have had to come for food, or at the various touched-up photographs one sees, we shall find that there are very few of any real worth from the standpoint of the naturalist. Whoever would take photographs of value should take care that they be in no way altered or touched up. Touched-up photographs are never to be trusted.

The story of my progress in the art of animal photography is soon told.

In 1896 and 1897 I was not adequately equipped, and I took only a few photographs, all by daylight.

After going through a careful course of instruction in Kiesling’s Photographic Institution, I did not succeed in entirely satisfying myself with the daylight photographs I took on my second expedition of 1899-1900. It was impossible at that time to photograph objects at great distances, the telephoto lens not yet carrying far enough. My efforts to photograph the animals by night proved entirely fruitless, for one reason because the flashlight apparatus would not work. It was exasperating to find that my heavy and expensive “accumulators”--procured after consultation with technical experts--refused to act, and I remember vividly how I flung them out into the middle of a river! I achieved but one single success at this period with a self-acting apparatus, namely the photograph of two vultures contending over carrion, here reproduced; one of them has been feeding, and the other is just about to assert its right to part of the meal. The attitudes of the two birds are very interesting, and one feels that it would have been very difficult for a painter to have put them on record. But all my other attempts failed, as I have said, from technical causes, and I had to content myself for the most part with photographing the animals I hunted, though I did succeed in getting pictures of a waterbuck and a giraffe at which I had not shot. My photographs won so much approval from experts on my return home that I was encouraged to go further in this direction.

But what difficulties I had to overcome! So far back as the year 1863 a German explorer, Professor Fritsch, now a member of the Privy Council, had set about the task of photographing wild animals in South Africa. Those were the days of wet collodion plates, and it is really wonderful how Professor Fritsch managed to cope with all the difficulties he had to face so far from all possibility of assistance. He succeeded in the course of his expedition in photographing an African wild animal upon a dry plate for the first time on record. By his kindness I am enabled to reproduce this historical picture here--it is a thing of real value. It is the photograph of an eland, at that time an animal often met with in Cape Colony, where game of all kinds has now been almost completely exterminated. Professor Fritsch’s account of his experiences should be heard for one to form any notion of the wealth of animal life that then adorned the South African velt. His photographs are especially interesting as the first of their kind. It was not until nearly forty years later that the English sportsmen already mentioned and I myself embarked systematically upon similar enterprises.

On my third expedition in 1902 I tried to photograph with two telephoto cameras which had been placed at my disposal by the Goerz Optical Institute. Without attempting to explain the complicated mechanism of these apparatus--the idea of which came first to English travellers--I may say that they are beset with difficulties. They require a long exposure, and are best suited, therefore, for stationary objects. If you wish to photograph animals in motion, you must learn to expose your negative long enough to secure a clear impression, yet not so long as to make the moving animals come out quite blurred. I am strongly of opinion that it is not of much advantage to make out a table of calculations as to the time of exposure. Experience alone can enable you to judge what exposure to allow. When you have got your shutter to the correct speed and chosen the correct diaphragm for your lens, you must get into the way of using the camera as quickly and deftly as your rifle.

C. G. Schillings, phot.

AUTOMATICALLY TAKEN PHOTOGRAPH OF TWO VULTURES ENGAGING IN A CONTEST OVER CARRION.]

THE FIRST DRY-PLATE PHOTOGRAPH, PROBABLY, EVER TAKEN IN THE AFRICAN DESERT. THE WORK OF ONE OF THE OLDEST OF AFRICAN EXPLORERS, PROFESSOR FRITSCH, IT REPRESENTS AN ELAND WHICH HE HAD KILLED--A SPECIES THEN FREQUENTLY MET WITH IN CAPE COLONY.]

In this way, just as in shooting, you will learn to allow for the movements of the object you are aiming at--you will let your camera move accordingly. This needs a lot of practice. At the period when I was using the Goerz apparatus, a large number of similar cameras of all sizes were returned to the manufactory by practical photographers as unuseable. This shows how difficult it is to form any opinion as to the possibilities of the telephoto lens without going in for thorough and repeated experiments.

It is only on rare occasions that you are able to use a stand-camera for photographing objects at a distance. In most cases you must shoulder your photographic gun, and it may be easily imagined what dexterity is required for its proper management. In following up the moving object with your lens you inevitably make the background something of a blur. You are apt at the same time to under-expose. The change of diaphragm and the modification of the speed of the shutter involve many failures. The telephoto lens has this advantage, however, that you can generally get good results with it at a hundred paces. In the case of birds on the wing, either rising or flying past you, you have to get into the way of reckoning the distance--a difficult matter. Of course you must always have the sun more or less behind you. The conditions of the atmosphere in the tropics--the shimmering waves of light that rise up out of the scorched soil, for instance--make it peculiarly hard to calculate the time of exposure, and many photographs turn out failures which you have felt quite sure of having taken properly. This is specially disappointing in the case of animals that you may never have another opportunity of photographing. In such cases I make a practice of giving as many exposures as possible, in the hope of one or other of them turning out right.

C. G. Schillings, phot.