Photographing Beauty in Ugly Places

Wildlife photography is usually associated with breathtaking natural beauty, the soothing silence of forest groves, or the fresh scent of meadow flowers. But today’s article is about something completely different. I want to show you that beautiful wildlife photos can be taken in a completely different environment – in the noise of an industrial zone, in a garbage dump… places where the only thing “breathtaking” is the smell of rotting garbage, but where beauty can still be found in the animal you came to photograph.

Animals perceive the surrounding landscape from a somewhat different perspective than we humans do. First of all, they couldn’t care less about the aesthetics of their environment. Most birds also lack a keen sense of smell, so the kind of stench that makes us nauseous doesn’t bother them in the slightest. As for noise, some birds can adapt to it. Certain species even shift the frequency of their songs to a range that simply drowns out the noise of a bustling city.

What matters to them much more is the availability of food, and that can sometimes be found in places of – to us – supreme repulsiveness. To this day, I can still smell the pungent stench of mud when I recall a shoot I did with my friend Tomáš Grim in southern Moravia. The settling pond at the local sugar factory is an excellent spot for birdwatching. Despite the industrial surroundings… and the smell.

When photographing water birds, you often need to get as close to the water level as possible. Even murky water can suddenly turn into a crystal mirror reflecting a blue sky (as we’ve discussed before here on Photography Life). As a bonus, the background gets pushed far behind the bird, making it stand out beautifully.

Tomáš and I arrived at the site a day in advance to set up an improvised hide. We carefully stepped on the crust of dried mud covering patches of deep sludge, trying to guess the outer limit we could reach before breaking through and sinking waist-deep into the foul muck.

I tried to place my feet delicately, like a jacana stepping on lily pads, but to distribute my 80kg, I would have needed feet the size of a car hood. Still, we navigated that minefield surprisingly clean and full of optimistic anticipation for a rich photographic harvest. We managed to set up the hide in a spot that kept us relatively dry and clean, yet close to the birds we hoped to photograph.

At dawn, just before sunrise, we slipped into the hide. We laid a layer of freshly cut reeds over the hardened mud to make it quite comfortable. It wasn’t long before the sun began pulling away the veil of night and brightening the dark water of the settling pond.

The first birds, like the Black-winged Stilt, began marching through the shallow water in front of us, foraging for food. The morning air was filled with birdsong and the stench of decay. A near-perfect idyll.

But barely had we taken our first photos when the ominous rumble of several diesel engines growled behind us. The excavators, which the evening before had only quietly marked the horizon, suddenly came to life. Worst of all, their buckets bit into the sludge behind us and began literally cutting off our route back to solid ground. After about ten minutes, we had to admit that if anyone was going to extract anything from this place, it wouldn’t be us.

Although that morning was mostly unsuccessful, it demonstrated to me that “ugly” locations can still work for wildlife photography. And a few weeks ago, I was able to put that theory into practice again on the outskirts of the Spanish city of Córdoba.

There, a modest puddle from of a recent flood lay between freeway ramps on one side and an industrial zone on the other. The landscape was already alive with the hustle of excavators and trucks constructing yet another warehouse or assembly hall. Massive power line towers and wires framed the horizon; storks had even built a nest atop one of them. The air was thick with the scent of rotten eggs. I didn’t investigate the source – I just quickly sat down by the water, set up my tripod, and threw a camouflage net over myself.

I sat there for more than forty-five minutes in that bleak environment, staring at an empty water surface cluttered with submerged vegetation. The day before, it had been teeming with life: ibises, storks, herons. But today? Nothing, not a feather in sight. I had to laugh at myself, having flown across Europe for this – to wallow in garbage and stare at a stinking, lifeless puddle straight out of a dystopian novel.

Then a Cattle Egret landed in the shallow water not far from me. Could it be that I wouldn’t walk away empty-handed after all? I didn’t move a muscle for fear of startling it. Even when you feel well camouflaged, it’s always smart to wait a while until the birds settle and accept you as a harmless part of the scenery. Still, whether it was my fault or the Egret simply changed its mind about breakfast, it suddenly leapt up and flew away.

I sat there for another half hour, and nothing happened. The light was starting to get pretty bad, and I was slowly getting ready to call it a day, when suddenly the first Glossy Ibis arrived. It also landed quite far away from me, but one bird is definitely better than no bird. Soon, more Ibises arrived. They also landed quite far from where I was, but I didn’t mind. I trusted that while foraging, they’d eventually come closer. And I was right.

In the end, I spent the whole morning in that industrial, thoroughly unappealing environment. It was there that the idea for this article about photographing in ugly places was born. A telephoto lens is a brilliant tool for selective seeing. It has two powerful weapons in its arsenal: a narrow field of view and a shallow depth of field. These allow you to highlight the beautiful and hide the unappealing.

Even a distracting element in the background can turn into an aesthetic feature of your photo. For example, a brightly colored car or a building facade reflected in the water can actually lend an otherwise dull scene a colorful touch.

It is in places like this that one realizes most how subjective a view of the world photography allows. Photography is by no means just a soulless imprint of reality, but your authorial interpretation of reality. Without manipulating the photograph in any way, just by choosing where to aim your lens and where to focus, you tell a story about how you see the world.