Meet the Pro: Wildlife Photographer Lance van de Vyver

Host Toby Jermyn welcomes wildlife photographer and photographic guide Lance van de Vyver, a New Zealand-born zoology graduate who moved to South Africa in 2012 and now runs specialist photographic safaris and co-hosts the Safari Shots podcast.

Lance discusses trips to Tanzania and Botswana’s Makgadikgadi and possible travel to India. He shares a career-launching black-and-white image of a pangolin being handled by a lioness, explaining the brief sighting and that the pangolin later died from heat and prolonged stress, prompting discussion about stricter guidelines and the Pangolin Guardians program.

He also describes a portrait of a captive-born pangolin pup later released, a flash-at-sunset leopard technique and ethics, a black-and-white giant anteater (“broomstick”) in Brazil, and a stitched telephoto lion portrait. His admired image is Thomas Vijayan’s camera-trap photograph of an Amur leopard. Lance struggles to choose a single ‘humble dwelling’ location, considering several safari regions.

Here is a link to a gallery of Lance's images: https://pangolin.smugmug.com/SmugMug-Website/Pangolin-Podcast/Lance-van-de-Vyver/Meet-the-Pro-Lance-van-de-Vyver

Connect with Lance
https://www.lancevandevyver.com/

https://www.instagram.com/lancevandevyver
https://www.youtube.com/c/lancevandevyver

GUEST IMAGE - Thomas Vijayan
https://www.thomasvijayan.com/
https://www.instagram.com/thomasvijayan/

00:00 Welcome
00:58 Meet Lance
04:03 1st Image (1A) - Scaly Protection
13:16 1st Image (1B) – Fragile Future
16:10 2nd Image – Leopard Flash
22:54 3rd Image - Broomstick
27:08 4th Image – Queen of Mana
34:36 5th Image - Guest Image Amur Leopard
37:55 Where to Photograph Forever
39:38 Podcast Farewell and Credits

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

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Transcript

[TOBY JERMYN]: Hello and welcome to another brand new episode 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. Now, 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's a link in the description to a gallery on today's show.

My guest today is a wildlife photographer and photographic guide known for combining strong natural history knowledge with award-winning imagery from across Africa. He was born and raised in New Zealand where he studied zoology and then photography before moving to South Africa in 2012 to pursue his dream of guiding and photographing wildlife full-time. Today he runs specialist photographic safaris around the world as well as co-hosting the Safari Shots podcast with our previous guest Villiers Steyn, sharing insights into the life of a working wildlife photographer. Welcome to the show, Lance van de Vyver.

[TOBY JERMYN]: Hello Lance, how are you?

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: Very well, thanks. And yourself?

[TOBY JERMYN]: I'm very good indeed. So where do we find you today? Obviously you're not out in the bush guiding or hosting clients. You are at home, are you? Whereabouts is that?

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: Yes, I'm finally home this week for a little while. So, I am unfortunately or fortunately one of the many Hoedspruit crowd. So, I am in Hoedspruit this week. We actually had a photographic gathering two nights ago where we met at least 10 of the other photographers. So, yeah, I am hiding out in the Lowveld.

[TOBY JERMYN]: If the government ever comes and does a census in Hoedspruit, they're going to see a very weird anomaly, aren't they? For the profession of wildlife photographer, it's quite bizarre. If anybody wants to go and find a wildlife photographer to hang out with, Hoedspruit's a good bet.

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: Yeah. Go to the supermarket and wait. That's where we normally see each other as well.

[TOBY JERMYN]: Yeah, precisely. So, you've just come back from a trip. You're just off on a trip. Where have you just been?

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: Yes. So, we've just come back from two trips. We were in Tanzania at the beginning of the year in January. We did the Ndutu calving season and then up to Serengeti, and then we've just had a nice big yellow season workshop in Mashatu where we were trying to photograph animals in the devil's thorns. We were super lucky because we had obviously one of the worst floods in recorded history in the Lowveld. So all the devil's thorns came out in January. Our trip was in February. So the flowers were actually done. But when we got there it rained again and we actually got a second flush. So yeah, very very cool trip. Not always an easy one because those flowers are not guaranteed, but we did get lucky this year. And then next week, if we can fly, we're off to India. At the time of recording we are sitting here at the beginning of the 5th of March, and there's a lot of interesting stuff going on in the world. So when this comes out, Lance may or may not have been to India — we're not sure.

[TOBY JERMYN]: So, Lance, obviously the premise of the show was we've asked you to choose some images from your gallery. You sent us a lot of images. Were you struggling a little bit?

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: I was — this was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do because I wanted to send you images that people perhaps hadn't seen before, but then the brief was kind of, you know, images that you could talk about and where there was a story behind them. And then I just looked at 32,000 images over and over again and I just sent you 20 and said good luck.

[TOBY JERMYN]: Well, that's it. So, we've kind of played a little part in choosing these images as well. There are one or two that I almost insisted we include, and you'll find out why. Well, tell you what, let's go on to the first image and it'll be very obvious as to why collectively we decided this should be included. Okay, tell us about this first image, please.

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: This is a black and white image of a Pangolin which has been captured by a lion. It was actually captured by a pride of lions, but in this specific image, there's just one hint of a lioness on her. It's a close-up of the scratches on top of the Pangolin scales, which are clasped by the powerful claws of a lion. And the Pangolin is in its defensive ball, which is the only thing keeping it alive at this moment. And this is probably the image that essentially launched my career. I left New Zealand to come to South Africa to become a full-time photographic guide and wildlife photographer. I was still working as a field guide in Tswalu in the Kalahari, which is a fantastic place photographically. You don't get a lot of photos out of there, but when you do, they're just incredibly special. And then the interesting part is this is a sighting that we weren't going to go to. I had one client with me on safari. We were on a mission looking for cheetahs. We were about an hour and a half's drive away from where this sighting got called in. And all they said on the radio was, "It's in a bush. You can't see it. It's in a bush." So, we didn't go. And then an hour went by. An hour and a half went by. We'd actually found the cheetahs, watched them doing their thing, and then we had left. We're on our way back to the lodge, and we had to go past this specific area. And then this sighting was still running. So, we actually just popped in. We were there, I reckon, for two and a half minutes. Some of the other guys had been there for two and a half hours and seen nothing. When I pulled in, I said, "Where is it?" Because we couldn't see anything. And then the guide kind of pointed towards a bush and I was like, "Well, that's helpful." I drove up and I parked on the only gap there was. It was a little clearing where there was a little termite mound and then surrounded by bush. And we just sat there for 30 odd seconds. And then this young sub-adult lion rolled this Pangolin into the gap. Me and my guest took genuinely 10 shots maximum before it was rolled back out of the gap and that was it. We were kind of like, "Okay, cool. Cheers." And we left. But it's one of the few images I've taken in my career where I just wanted to go home and look at this image. I knew I had something special. So yeah, this was entered into Wildlife Photographer of the Year, I think 2016, and I was one of the runners-up in the black and white category.

[TOBY JERMYN]: It's an amazing photograph and you know I've asked your permission previously to use it for Pangolin Africa, explaining to people that this is one of the most extraordinary characteristics of a Pangolin — its imperviousness to big cats. I can explain that to people but they just don't get it. So I've got two questions for you. Firstly, when you said it changed your career, what was the immediate effect? You're suddenly a runner-up in this really prestigious competition — people started reaching out to you. How does it work?

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: No. So the goal when I left New Zealand was to become a photographic guide, but I didn't really know how to do that. So I essentially had a five-year plan. I wanted to guide for five years, get a bunch of clients and a portfolio together and then reach out to some big photographic companies. Essentially, the only thing this photo really did for me was give me the confidence that now I could start looking for a photographic guide job. And I did. I reached out to a bunch of the big guys. Most of them weren't looking for guides at the time. And then eventually Villiers Steyn, one of the previous guests on the podcast, he actually reached out to me and said, "Listen, the company I'm working for at the moment is looking for a guide. I've seen your portfolio." He sent me this picture and said, "Are you interested?" And from there, I've been a photographic guide ever since.

[TOBY JERMYN]: Talking about the impact of the photograph itself, what's immediately obvious here is it's a very low angle, but you were in a vehicle. So, how does that work? Were you a reasonable distance away? Did you have the camera on a monopod or something like that? How did it work to get this low angle?

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: Yeah. So, this image actually almost got me in trouble because one of the rules at Tswalu was you're not allowed to get out with lions. Any other predator there, you were allowed to get out. You could lie on the floor. You had photographic freedom. Not with lions. And then this story that Wildlife Photographer of the Year published was that Lance climbed out and lay on the ground, which was not actually true. This was again dumb luck. So that termite mound that I mentioned — this is actually shooting about 30 degrees down the termite mound from my normal seated position. It's just that the lioness is kind of sitting up holding the Pangolin. So it looks like I'm shooting at the floor. I'm actually shooting the termite mound. And then this is a crop but only the top. I've entered this into another competition and they said, "Why would you not shoot this vertical and get the lion's face in there?" To which my reply was, "This isn't a lion photograph. This is a story about a Pangolin." So I've actually cropped ever so slightly off the top. I've basically just turned it from a 3x2 to a 16x9. Otherwise, it's a full-frame image on a full-frame sensor with a 500mm f/4 lens. We were quite close.

[TOBY JERMYN]: That is extraordinary, isn't it? And I think how fortuitous that that termite mound happened to be there as well. So how long ago was this then?

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: This is a long time ago. Yeah, this was taken on the 7th of January 2016, apparently. The day after my birthday.

[TOBY JERMYN]: There we go. What an auspicious day that must have been. Personally, I love the way that this is cropped because you're absolutely right. It's not a lion photograph. It's a Pangolin photograph. So, I suppose the question that we're all asking ourselves is what happened to the Pangolin.

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: Yeah. So, sadly, this Pangolin didn't actually make it. The guys went out on game drive again in the afternoon. This again was January in the Kalahari, 45 plus degrees, and these guys were still playing with it. It was still alive at the time, but it was about 14 hours later. So, Pangolins are terrible at regulating their body temperature because they don't have fur. They've got these scales. So, the scales are perfect for protection, but they're really bad at overheating. So, a combination of heat stress plus the stress of being played with for 14 plus hours. Sadly, the animal didn't make it in the end. What people don't realise is when a Pangolin is curled into a ball like this, it's a very stressed animal. It is expending huge amounts of energy to maintain this. Imagine trying to clench your fist, multiplied by ten, for 14 hours. That's fundamentally what it's doing. So, not only is the Pangolin expending lots of energy that it doesn't have to waste, but it's also releasing lots of stress hormones as well. This is precisely why we launched the Pangolin Guardians programme to educate guides and people that you should not be going and approaching a Pangolin that is curled up in a defensive posture. It's doing that because it's scared and it's stressed. And if you do that, you run the risk of actually causing physical harm. The problem is Pangolins don't vocalise. They don't make a yelp or a sound or a cry to say that they're stressed. They're very quiet animals. So yeah, if you see a Pangolin, if you're lucky enough to see a Pangolin in the wild, stay 10 metres away. In fact, tell you what, do the Pangolin Guardians course. If you haven't done the Pangolin Guardians course yet on Pangolin Africa, do the course because there's some really sensible guidelines so that you can enjoy the sighting and the Pangolin can remain unstressed. There we go. Lecture over for the day.

[TOBY JERMYN]: Yeah, it's honestly one of my biggest pet peeves as a guide. I don't think there's enough regulation around Pangolin sightings. You go to a place like the Sabi Sands — if there's a leopard cub in a den, awesome, it's regulated. There's no vehicles for the first six weeks. After that, they get one vehicle for ten minutes a day and so on and so on. And then you have these amazing sightings of these leopards. Then you get the rarest animal on the planet that literally dies of stress and there seems to be no rules and regulations. I personally don't think it's an animal that should be called in on the radio, and you should not get out of your vehicle. It's one of those sightings — if you are lucky enough to get it, fantastic. If you stay in your vehicle 20 to 30 metres away, you'll see the most amazing behaviour: walking on their back feet, digging, eating — all the things that you'll never see if you climb out and go and take a selfie and it curls into a ball, as you say.

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: Well said. You and I will have more conversations about this and make sure between us we shall physically or virtually knock on as many doors as we need to. Absolutely.

[TOBY JERMYN]: Normally, we ask for four images, but we're going 1B now. And we have another image which, at the time of recording, is one that you've entered into Wildlife Photographer of the Year and is currently up for the People's Choice, I believe. So tell us about this photograph and tell us the story behind it.

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: This image was taken very differently to the rest of my wildlife images in the fact that it's not in the wild. It's an image of a Pangolin baby photographed on top of a cat's bed. It's a week-old's face and then its giant claws, which are very impressive given how young it is. It's very muted colours. It was taken with a large video light and a softbox over it because I wanted nice soft light on the Pangolin, but I wanted it very dark as well. And this was the first Pangolin that we know of in South Africa that was born in captivity. The mother came in as a poaching incident — she was confiscated from poachers and she gave birth in rehab. But sadly, she had zero milk production and she didn't make it. So, this little one was hand-raised and bottle-fed from day one, and then a couple of years went by and it's actually now been released into the wild and living its full, happy Pangolin life.

[TOBY JERMYN]: It's lovely. I mean, we won't be able to divulge where this was taken. It's a Pangolin rescue centre that we support as well. I think it's a real juxtaposition between the strength and resilience of the previous Pangolin photograph — which can resist the attack of a lion — to just how delicate these little babies are when they're born. I mean, they are so soft; the scales aren't really formed yet. It must have been an extraordinary moment to be given access to go and photograph there and obviously use it as part of an awareness campaign as well.

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: Yeah. So, I mean, that's essentially the whole idea of this photo — I want people firstly to stop and say, "What on earth is that?" Because not many people in the world know what a Pangolin is. And if they do, they know what an adult Pangolin looks like. They don't really know what a baby Pangolin looks like. So, if you're scrolling past and you're used to seeing a leopard shot, a lion shot, a whatever, and all of a sudden here's this — it literally looks like a pine cone with claws. I want people to stop, because if you can stop someone and get them to look at your image, then they can read the story.

[TOBY JERMYN]: Well, as I said, by the time this podcast comes out, we will know whether or not you've won the People's Choice. So, let me be the first person to congratulate you for winning the People's Choice. And if it doesn't happen, then we'll just say you were robbed. The people just don't know. That's it. Brilliant. Okay. Well, there we go. That's image 1B, which we are allowing in because, being the Pangolin podcast, we're completely biased towards Pangolin images. So any future guests wanting to come on — if you want some extra images, make sure one of them is a Pangolin. Okay, let's move on to the second image that you chose for the podcast.

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: Yeah. So, this is a much warmer image — no pun intended. For those who can't see it, it's a very yellow and orange picture of a leopard in a tree at sunset where I've used a flash. It's one of my favourite techniques. It's sadly a technique that you don't get to use very often. I think I owned this flash for about six months before I got to take an image like this. You have to be in the right place at the right time with the right guide who understands what you're talking about, but the results can be spectacular.

[TOBY JERMYN]: Well, let's touch on the technique then because it's a question we get asked all the time by people coming on safari. It's like, first of all, can I do night drives? And there are some places you can, some places you can't. Should I bring a flash or should I rely on the spotlight that the guides are holding? You say you had a flash and you're using it. What are the dos and don'ts in your mind about flash photography with wildlife?

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: That's a good question. You say, should I bring a flash? This was a guest's first game drive of his first safari in his life. And he actually sent me an email asking what he should bring. Do you own a flash? He didn't. I told him to go and buy one. And then this was his first sighting. So yes, be prepared. But yeah, with flash it's difficult because obviously you're doing two exposures. You're doing one exposure for the background with your camera settings and then you're doing one exposure for the subject with your flash. I think the rules for flash photography are that you still have to be ethical to the animal. I've seen horrible videos of, you know, six or ten photographers all in one vehicle, ten frames per second, full flash blasting animals, and the animals are doing this or they're walking with their eyes shut. And that's not ethical. It's not great. And also, those images don't look fantastic. The time where flash works really well is when you have sky. If you don't have sky, there's no point using one. And then we stick to the spotlights. So, one of the most important things in my opinion is having a high ISO. Most people think, well, why would you want a high ISO when you're making light? And one of the reasons — not only to make it much easier for your camera but also to make it a lot nicer for the animal — is that a quarter-power little flash like this is a lot better than a full-power studio light to the face. My kind of way I think about it is if you walked up to a bodybuilder you didn't know and you flashed him in the face, is he going to punch you in the face or not? And if he's not, it's probably okay. And if he's going to deck you, you're probably doing something not so smart.

[TOBY JERMYN]: I love that analogy. There we go. So, next time you think you're doing something dubious, imagine getting punched in the face by the subject. That's your benchmark. And where was this photograph taken?

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: This was taken at Inyati in the Sabi Sands. We pulled out of the lodge one night. We watched these two leopard cubs — this is a sub-adult, she's about a year old — playing in horrendously long grass. The grass was about four feet tall. And I was thinking, "Oh, if this is going to be the way this guy's first safari goes, we might be in trouble." And then we stayed there long enough that this happened. And it was fantastic.

[TOBY JERMYN]: So, you're sitting there with your client on their first ever safari. They see a leopard and they go, "Well, this is easy, isn't it?" What are your suggestions? Obviously, this is quite a technical photograph because you've only got a short window of opportunity before it starts getting really dark. Talk us through what you're explaining to your client and how you help them to get this sort of shot.

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: So, normally my first step in an image like this is to get a nice high ISO and shoot wide open. The reason for that is you're going to need a lot less power on your flash at high ISO, and you're also going to need a lot less light coming through the lens if you're wide open. And then you're basically counteracting all the light that's now flooding in with your shutter speed. So, you should have high-speed sync if it's too bright. This image was shot at 1/1600th of a second. We're underexposed by a stop and a third to two stops depending on the situation. And the reason for that is if the scene is too bright, you get less colour. So you want to be underexposed — the subject is going to be completely black, but you're going to get that lovely orange glow. So basically, you're trying to take the nicest silhouette photo you can make as your first step. Then you know your camera settings are kind of in the right place. Then you turn your flash on and hope TTL does a great job first time. TTL basically stands for through-the-lens metering. It basically means your camera is going to try and match the exposure for you rather than you doing it manually. I normally start off with the first flash in TTL in case the animal decides to leave. And then at least hopefully your camera figured it out and you were close. If the animal doesn't react, or if the camera did a terrible job and the animal didn't react, then I'll go to manual flash and I'll dial it in — because flash is not easy, as you'll know. The distance makes a difference. Your ISO makes a difference. The aperture makes a difference. So, this was shot with a 70-200mm and then a Godox flash, which is an off-camera flash. I like the off-camera flash as well because you don't get the red-eye reflection. And then on top of my flash, I have a Fresnel lens, which is basically a magnifier, and it channels the light towards the subject instead of just throwing it all out into the darkness.

[TOBY JERMYN]: And you mentioned earlier that you use flash predominantly in the twilight hours. I think a lot of people think that they bring flash as a light source, and that can be not great for nocturnal species. So would you say that your rule is: sun goes down, flash goes away?

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: Yeah. So basically the only time I use flash is if there's colour in the sky, and the shots are then more about the sky than the subject. An animal at night in the black — those photos are horrible for one, but it's also not really ethical. When an animal's walking in pitch black, its eyes are accustomed to the dark and now you're doing this big full-power burst of light — you're eventually going to blind them. You're going to distract them. They're going to want to get away from you. I almost never use it at sunrise either. Sunrise seems to go really nicely and disappear quickly. At sunset, you get a longer, nicer orange glow that you can work with.

[TOBY JERMYN]: Brilliant. And I'm sure that your client on his first safari, with his first sighting, was absolutely delighted. Okay, we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we're going to talk about Lance's third image. We'll see you in a minute.

Welcome back to part two of the Pangolin podcast with my guest today, Lance van de Vyver, where we are up to his third image. So, without further ado, Lance, tell us what we're seeing.

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: It's basically a black image with a couple of smears of white, and it's named Broomstick. It is of a giant anteater that we photographed in Brazil. It's a nice low-angle image. This was the first anteater I ever photographed. I had seen one before — it had slipped through a fence and disappeared before anyone knew what was going on. But this is the first one I ever photographed. We walked into a place where we could get into a nice open area. This thing had no idea we were there. It eventually actually walked three metres past us and none of us could take photos because it was too close. And yeah, I've called this image Broomstick because when we were out there, the guide said, "Oh, an anteater." And then he's pointing, and then some guest in the back went, "What is it behind that broomstick-looking thing?" Because when you see these for the first time, it's just this four-foot fluffball of a tail and then somewhere on the other end there's a head. Extraordinary animal. And yeah, I love this picture.

[TOBY JERMYN]: Did you have it in mind that it was going to be black and white? I mean, obviously this is South America, it's during the day, and you're there actually to photograph jaguars in the Pantanal. So talk us through the environment there and how you thought about putting this image together.

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: Yeah. So this was on our Jaguar safari, like you say, but we actually do a day at the beginning and a day at the end looking for giant anteaters in a place called Piuval. It's a working ranch with open fields and little patches of forest. We do game drives there. And we found this one, I would say 20 minutes before sunset. But this image was taken after sunset. So it was relatively dark. And I hadn't really thought about black and white until the editing process. Some images I can see in advance — I love black and white so I can see, well, this is going to make a really nice black and white. To be honest, a part of me was just focused on getting this thing in my camera. And you were telling me before, you haven't been to South America — these things don't have faces your camera can lock onto. Eye-tracking doesn't exist. So you have to go back to the manual, old-school type of photography where you tell your camera, "No, no, not that twig, this twig." Because as I say, they don't look like an animal. So I'm sure that early-day explorers travelling around from Europe and then going back and trying to explain this one: "No, mate. What did you see?" I saw a broomstick with a face. I saw a walking broomstick with a face. Of course you did, mate. There we go.

[TOBY JERMYN]: It's extraordinary. And what I really like about this is that often the images I've seen of anteaters are always walking across the frame — very rarely walking towards you. And then you can see the tail going to the side as well. Does the tail brush from side to side as they're walking? Or was this just coming around the corner and the tail's catching up?

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: It does a little bit, but not like a big swish like a broomstick — more like a cat. There's a little bit of a flow but not really. It's almost Pangolin-like in the fact that the tail is kind of a big counterbalance. That's why it's so long, and all that hair adds weight so that when these guys are digging, they don't have to kneel down to do it. So, they're just digging with their front feet. But unlike a Pangolin, these animals are built like gorillas. Their forearms are as wide as my thighs. And then what I like about converting this to black and white is you see that amazing patterning, that amazing white colouration which helps them blend in so well — but taking away all the colour of the image and making it black and white, you see these lovely triangles on their shoulders and the big white forearms. For when a jaguar comes, they say, "Yeah, yeah, bring it on." And they do actually take on jaguars. There's a video recently of a jaguar jumping on one of these and then running away because this thing just took its enormous claws and stuck them into its head. Wow.

[TOBY JERMYN]: Oh, I had no idea. And these are the same jaguars who are leaping out of trees and taking out caymans and all sorts of things as well. So, do not mess with the anteaters of South America. That's the main thing. Brilliant. Okay, let's move on to your fourth image. Please, will you tell us what's going on in this photograph and how you took it?

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: This is a technique that I absolutely love and I'm not sure that many people know about it. It's basically a blue image with a lovely golden lion lying down. She's at eye level and she's resting her head on her paws like your house cat would, looking at you when it wants its lunch. This is shot with a Canon R3 and RF 100-300mm f/2.8 with a two times teleconverter on. So I'm at 600mm, but this is about 12 images — this is a stitch. So I am a sucker for background blur. I have spent far too much money on far too many lenses because I love background blur. And one of the best ways to achieve that is to shoot with a really long lens. So I could have taken this with a 70-200mm. I could have zoomed out and taken this probably at 100mm on the lens, but then all those trees in the background come into focus, all the foreground comes into focus, and you lose the image — because this image is about just her head and the gaze, but it's shot wide and you're getting her whole body in. So, you cannot do that without a stitch. I do this technique a lot. We teach it a lot on safaris. My first lens for my first three and a half years of guiding — I only had a 500mm f/4 and one camera body. And I was guiding in the Sabi Sands for a good portion of that too. So, a lot of the time the leopards were just way too close. The lions were just way too close. And I actually saw a video of a wedding photographer who was shooting with an 85mm f/1.2 lens from about three feet away from the bride and shooting a whole scene around her and then stitching it together. So, that's kind of where I got the idea to do this, and I've been doing it since 2012.

[TOBY JERMYN]: So, you're moving through this as a vertical shot — you're in portrait format rather than landscape — and shooting left to right or right to left. What's your preference?

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: I don't really turn to portrait because I'll take enough that it doesn't matter. This is not one row of images across. This is like four high and six long or whatever it ends up being. I'm not sure exactly how many shots it is, but it's between, let's say, 12 and 20. So the first shot I always take is the head, because if she gets up and walks away, at least I've got a nice portrait. The next shot is always the space where I want the animal to sort of be looking into the frame. And then from there, I'll shoot a row across, then up a row across, and then down a row across. And then I basically just do big circles.

[TOBY JERMYN]: So this is interesting — you're looking at this as a sort of tapestry of the entire image and then stitching it together like a large jigsaw.

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: Yeah. And that's the thing — when I first started doing this, you had to do it in Photoshop and it would take you 20 minutes before you knew if it was going to work. These days in Lightroom, you just select them all, hit Ctrl+M, and within ten seconds not only do you know if it's going to work — it's done. It's so easy to do now that it's almost criminal not to.

[TOBY JERMYN]: Oh, well, there we go. Personally, I like — as you mentioned at the beginning — blue is my favourite colour. I am a caeruleaphile, which is apparently the word for somebody who really enjoys the colour blue. So, there's your word for the day. How did you get the low angle? Were you far enough away that it worked? I don't think you'd be able to do this technique with a monopod, would you?

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: So, I have and I do and I can, but then you need to be able to lock your monopod head. But I have done this on monopods. This one was handheld. This one was just good parking. We drove in — here are all of her little cubs playing on the left. So, we parked down a bank and we're all shooting her little cubs. And I'm like, "Guys, guys, look at her pose. Look at her." Nobody took this shot. I was so sad that I couldn't convince anyone to take the shot with me. But yeah, so it was basically just good parking. We always try and get the vehicle as low as possible if we can. And then yeah, I just took it from my normal seated position.

[TOBY JERMYN]: So apart from the stitching and the editing, how much other editing did you have to do to this photograph to get it to where it is now?

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: So there's a little bit. The reason there are those lovely blue hues and warm tones is because she's literally lying on this little patch of land where the sun rose between two trees and just touched her. She was in exactly the right place. So, the coolness comes from the white balance in the background. And then it took a little bit of masking her just to warm her up because I did shoot it quite cool to get that lovely blue.

[TOBY JERMYN]: Okay. Now, tell us about your journey. You moved from New Zealand in 2012. So, what was the big decision-making process there? Did you come to Africa a lot as a kid? Because your dad is South African, isn't he?

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: Yes, that's essentially it. My father was born and raised here. He moved out to New Zealand in 1985, I believe. So my elder sister was actually born in South Africa and then they moved to New Zealand, and I was born and raised in New Zealand, but we used to come a lot to see family. And I've been a David Attenborough wildlife kid since the age of two. So every time we came to Africa I made sure we went to Kruger, and I had my same wildlife heroes that most people had. I watched every Attenborough series there ever was since I was a child. I was very lucky being in New Zealand, getting to meet Steve Irwin on trips to Australia. We used to go to his zoo before it was Disneyland. And I would say without probably those two people, I wouldn't really be here. I enrolled in a zoology degree — that's when I got my first camera. We were actually doing an entomology class. So, we were supposed to be drawing insects that we were looking at down a microscope. And I will find the laziest and easiest way to do anything. So I went and bought a camera. I bought a little camera with a macro lens and that's how I got into photography. So when I finished that degree, I started a photography degree, and then one of our assignments for the last semester was: what do you now want to do with your life? Within a month, I had basically written a plan. I was going to go to Africa. I was going to take people on safari and I was going to take photographers and teach them photography. And then yeah, by the time that degree had finished, I had actually already bought my plane tickets. I think I finished in November and in December I was on the plane.

[TOBY JERMYN]: David Attenborough has a lot to answer for. I would suggest he accounts for 90% of the population of Hoedspruit, certainly. Okay, we're going to move on to our final guest image, but before we do that, if you are enjoying the podcast and you enjoy what we're chatting about, please make sure you like and subscribe. I'm also going to leave links to Lance's content in the description down below so you can follow him as well. And finally, there's going to be a QR code — it's going to pop up on the screen — if you would like to sign up for our world-famous Friday Focus newsletter, which goes out every Friday as the name suggests. It's full of photo tips, gear advice, and safari travel advice. So, if you'd like to join our community, please scan the code and sign up. Right, we will be back after the break.

Welcome back to the final part of the Pangolin podcast with my guest today, Lance van de Vyver. It's at this point of the show where we have asked Lance to choose an image taken by another photographer that he admires — an image maybe he wishes he had taken himself, to hang on the wall of his humble dwelling. So, Lance, would you like to introduce this image? Please tell us who took it and tell us what's going on.

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: This is an image of an Amur leopard taken in Russia, I believe, or on the border with China — one of the two. Walking on top of a snow-covered peak, about to climb onto a rock, looking out over the most gorgeous valley with a bit of either sunrise or sunset in the sky, taken by Thomas Vijayan from India. And I take a lot of camera trap images myself and not a single one has come close to being anywhere near this good. I think Thomas is one of the best wildlife photographers in the world. If you go through his portfolio, every image is extraordinary. If you look at almost any rare species in the world, the best photo of that species is Thomas's. I just think he's wonderful.

[TOBY JERMYN]: It is an amazing image and it's one of those images that just makes you stop and think, because there are a lot of things in here which immediately, to those of us who see a lot of African wildlife, don't make any sense. You go, well, okay, it's a leopard, right? Well, hang on. Why is the leopard in the snow? And why is the leopard on top of a mountain? And why is it not a snow leopard?

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: Yeah. Exactly. That's the thing as well. I mean, I can't remember exactly, but I think there are around 150 Amur leopards left in the world. Don't quote me on that. And if you do, please attack me in the comments.

[TOBY JERMYN]: Yeah, attack Lance in the comments. Go for it. So, not only to get just a reference shot of one of the rarest cat species on the planet, but then to get an image like this where it looks like someone has painted it — it's crazy. Obviously, for those of you who are maybe a bit more observant, you can probably tell that this is a male. And I think Thomas is well known for not using flash. So, we're going to have to get him on the podcast, but it'd be interesting to know if he used some sort of flash in this image. What do you use? What's your take on it?

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: Yeah. So, all of my camera trap set-ups are flash-heavy. I normally use at least two flashes. Even in subjects where you're trying to get a background and trying to get natural ambient light, you almost always need a bit of fill because you don't know what time these animals are coming through. But like you said, he says he didn't use a flash and it doesn't look flashy. There are no shadows from flashes. There's no real flash catch light in the eyes. So yeah, maybe he just got incredibly lucky where all the ambient light in the background was matching the foreground. But then you look at his portfolio — it looks like he's got incredibly lucky a lot of the time. So I want whatever he's got. I'll buy some of that.

[TOBY JERMYN]: There we go. So Thomas, if you're watching this, we want you on the podcast. And I'm glad you're highlighting another incredibly rare species. It's a testament to the diligence of the photographer to be able to get these sorts of images. So, bravo to Thomas for this image. Okay, we've reached the end of our time, Lance. But before you go, we get to ask you one final question, which is: where is your humble dwelling going to be? We asked at the beginning — we're going to put you somewhere in perpetuity, photographing for the rest of your life, but you get to choose where that is. So, where is it?

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: So, you know how I sent you 20 images because I couldn't decide? I've thought about this a lot. At first I thought somewhere like Mara North — I've done long stints there and you get incredible images, especially of lions, all the time. Then I thought, but I might get bored of just lions. So maybe somewhere with rocks. I was thinking like Serengeti, because those rocks are incredible. But then I thought, if you go to Mashatu, you have the rocky area where nobody's really photographed them that much, and then you've got all the fantastic leopards. And then I don't know if I decided on Brazil, because you have the broomsticks and you have the jaguars, and if I'm going to be stuck there, I'll have my own boat and I can kind of do what I want. And yeah, so I'm not sure.

[TOBY JERMYN]: Wow. That is the most comprehensive and non-committal answer we've ever had on the podcast. So, thank you very much. You're the first and last person I'm going to let get away with this one, but that's fine — only because you had a Pangolin photograph at the beginning. So, there we go. If you include a Pangolin photograph, you can mess with the format as much as you like. Brilliant. Lance, it's been an absolute joy chatting to you. Thanks very much, and I look forward to catching up with you somewhere in the wilderness sometime soon. Thank you for being on the show.

[LANCE VAN DE VYVER]: Oh, thanks so much for having me. It's been great.

[TOBY JERMYN]: Thank you for joining me on another episode of the Pangolin Podcast. I hope you have enjoyed it. As always, I'd love to hear your comments and feedback, so please leave them below. If you're an audio listener, we'd love it if you could also give us a star rating or a quick review. And if you don't want to miss the next episode or any of our other wildlife photography videos, please make sure you subscribe to the channel. Finally, don't forget to sign up to the Pangolin Photo Safaris Friday Focus newsletter. You can do that by heading over to pangalinphoto.com or you can scan the QR code on your screen now. I look forward to seeing you on a Pangolin photo safari soon. And all that's left for me to say is that the Pangolin podcast was hosted by me, Toby Jermyn, and produced and edited by Bella Falk. Thank you.