#photography #wildlife #ethics

Are Commercial Photography Hides Acceptable?

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This is a highly contentious topic within the wildlife photography space, and as such I just wanted to preface this post by saying that these are my opinions and thoughts on this topic based on my open perspective. This means that I’m considering my goals, opinions and personality when addressing this topic. There might not be a right or wrong answer and I’m always willing to learn and adapt, but as of now, this is how I feel. I should also be clear that I’ve been to a photography hide as defined below twice over 5 years ago and been on a boat trip when bait was used (more on that later).

To start with I’m going to be working on facts, then I’ll add in my opinions.

FACTS

Commercial Photography Hides

Lets get started by noting down what we mean by a commercial photography hide. I’ve done some research and here is the best definition I can come up with:

A Commercial Photography Hide is a purpose built wildlife hide that photographers must pay someone else to use. The money generated from the hide forms a source of income for the hide owner.

In defining this, a few questions came to me:

• What if I wanted to create a hide on land that I owned for my own personal use?
• What if the hide raises funds to support conservation of the species’ in question?
• What if the hide is free to use?
• Does a boat/jeep class as a hide?

I think these are all genuine questions and I’m not sure how to answer them just yet. Lets come back to this.

The Ways We Photograph Wildlife

At this point in my thought process, I needed to define what they acceptable ways to photograph wildlife are, so here is my list:

• Wild: Exploring a habitat known to contain wildlife.
• Wild Baited: Using bait in a habitat known to contain wildlife.
• Wild Nature Reserve: Exploring a habitat created for wildlife such as a nature reserve.
• Commercial Photography Hide: See definition above.
• Chance: Stumbling across wildlife by chance.

There are some clarifications to mention regarding the above:

• Habitat can be wild, the woods, or man made, the city. The key here is that the land isnt managed for the wildlife, it is a habitat that occurs for reasons other than wildlife.
  • E.g., Farmland, Tree Plantations, City Suburbs, Lakes, Seas and Oceans.
• Nature reserves are opposed to the above in that they are habitats created or conserved for wildlife specifically.
  • E.g., RSPB, Wildlife Trust and other nature reserves
• Chance is a subcategory in that it can happen anywhere as long as you’re not specifically looking for wildlife. Taking your camera with you just incase does not mean that you’re specifically looking.
  • E.g., walking to the shop and you see a buzzard.

So based on the above, there are 5 main ways to photograph wildlife, each with different parametres which define the type of photography.

Ethics

Ethics is a concept that finds its way into many areas of modern civilisation. Whether you’re carrying out research, making a family decision or photographing wildlife, ethics need be considered. Ethics is defined as:

“moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity.”

So essentially, is what I am doing the right thing to do. Does it harm anyone/anything, past, present or future, living or not. When talking about wildlife photography, we are talking about taking photographs ethically. This means we don’t harm the wildlife we photograph in any time dimension. So killing a bird harms the animal in the now. Disturbing it’s nest harms the species in the future, as does destroying it’s habitat. The Wildlife Photographer of the Year have a great article about Ethical Wildlife Photography here, but in summary:

• Don’t harm the wildlife in anyway. This includes future harm such as sharing the location of a rare plant so that collectors know where to find it.
• Don’t change the habitat in anyway. This means don’t leave anything other than footprints, and don’t take anything other than photos. – Cliche, but relevant.

Keep this in mind.

Applying Photography Ethics to the Ways we Photograph Wildlife

So we have these ethical concepts, lets apply them to the ways we can photograph wildlife I listed above:

Wild: Exploring a habitat known to contain wildlife

In theory you could harm wildlife and habitat in this category but through good practice you can also do no harm at all.

Wild Baited: Using bait in a habitat known to contain wildlife

In this case, it could be argued that using bait to lure animals can:

• Reduce the ability of the animal to source its own food
• Spread disease
• Introduce unnatural conflicts between animals
• Develop tameness towards humans

We can also argue that we’re leaving bait in the environment that may alter the mico-ecosystem, but this is only a minor point when compared to the above.

Wild Nature Reserve: Exploring a habitat created for wildlife such as a nature reserve

Much like Wild, photographers could cause harm to the wildlife and the environment, but it’s also possible to photograph ethically. Also, in this case, the reserve management will have measures in place to further protect wildlife such as viewing platforms and fenced off areas.

Commercial photography hides in Poland. We had to enter under the cover of night and couldn’t leave until darkness had returned in order to minimise disturbing the wildlife.

Commercial Photography Hide

The controversial one. If bait is used, then all of those points apply. If not we could argue that that it’s no different to nature reserves if managed ethically.

Chance: Stumbling across wildlife by chance

Same as wild.

OPINIONS

From here on out, you’re getting my opinions, correct or not.

Nuances

There are some nuances that I need to set out first. Its this kind of thing which introduces the controversy.

Garden Birds

Many of us feed garden birds with bird feeders. This is often the go to argument to defence commercial hides. Here is how I look at it, garden birds across the UK are struggling due to habitat loss, predation from cats, and impacts with vehicles. Feeding birds in the garden helps replace some of the food sources they are losing due to habitat loss and gives them the best change of rearing healthy young. The conservation aspect of this outweighs the drawbacks. Also, we don’t feed the birds for profit, so we won’t stop feeding them when business drys up.

Struggling Species

There are a handful of species in the UK that are really struggling such as Red Squirrels. With such limited habitat they are often fed by authorities. I’m of the opinion that supplementing their diet is crucial to their success, much like garden birds. Red kites are another example, feeding stations in Scotland and Wales have helped bring this bird back from their human induced extinction. We must continue this until the birds have established populations the sustain them selves away from the feeding stations. For this reason I think they are exempt from the baiting condition.

Commercial Photography Hides

So, to sum this up, and it’s taken a while…I started this article months ago. During this time I’ve attended a commercial photography hide in Poland to photograph White-tailed Eagles. Along the way I’ve picked up some experiences which I think add to this argument, but that have also helped me decide where I sit.

I’ve refined the points of consideration down to two key aspects:

Ethics

In short, as long as the hide is operated and managed in an ethical way, as defined above, then I don’t see any issues with commercial hides.

Authenticity

This is something that presented itself to me during my experience of going to Poland. One of the biggest issues with commercial hide photography is that it creates a lot of toxic issues surrounding the sharing of images and experiences. I think this is where the real issue is with commercial hides.

Commercial hides raise the bar so high that it is impossible to meet that standard of image without paying to go to a hide. This increases the risk of animal exploitation as more and more people create hides to make money from people trying to meet this standard. This can also negatively impact the creativity and perceived ability of amateur photographers who might not be privileged enough to be able to afford hides or spend countless hours perusing them in the wild.

Commercial hides have bred a culture of elitist wildlife photography in the UK which is ultimately, fake. I see hundreds of wildlife photos every week which I know are taken from a commercial hide, with questionable ethics, yet there is not a single hint in the captions as to the images origins. These people are happily passing of an image taken from a commercial hide, potentially with perches and bait, as taken in the wild. In some of the worst cases I’ve seen fake stories written about images that are simply not true.

My Stance

I’ve been to commercial hides, I know what they are like and I now think I understand what my position is on them. Whether it is acceptable or not depends on these two rules being abided by:

• The hide is ethical. There are no risks posed to the wildlife, past, present or future.
• The photographer shares the nature of the image taken.

The first rule was always part of my philosophy when it comes to wildlife photography, but the second is something I’ve recently adopted after my trip to Poland and my experiences during and since. Below is an example of how I’m transparent about the nature of how an image was taken, meaning viewers are clear on the circumstances in which I took the photograph, so not to inflate the bar too high.

If you made it this far, well done. This was a bit of a rant, a bit of self exploration and a bit of an open discussion into a topic I feel is important for other wildlife photographer to be aware of.

Niall,

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Created by Niall Bell (niall@niallbell.com)