‘I photograph with zero compromise’
Photographer Greg du Toit goes to extreme lengths to get his shots,
WILDLIFE fine-arts photographer Greg du Toit, 38, spent a total of 270 hours over three months in a waterhole — with only his head and camera protruding from the water — to get the shot he wanted of a Kenyan lioness and cubs.
This image is one of the highlights of his career and will be on display at his first South Africa solo exhibition, which opens in Cape Town on Tuesday.
His seminal Authentic Africa exhibition features 47 limited-edition film and digital prints and notes from his journal.
In 2013, Du Toit’s Essence of Elephants portrait won the Natural History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year award — the “Oscar” of the genre. For this picture he used a slow shutter speed to capture an elephant herd wafting across the lens like blue phantasms.
In addition to Essence of Elephants, Du Toit will be displaying classics such as Last Breath, in which a leopard re-animates a dying impala as if manipulating a marionette.
None of the images is digitally altered; Du Toit creates each picture in the field.
His moving portfolio is the result of thousands of hours in the wilds over 15 years. The lioness shot was one of his earlier pictures and an excellent example of the lengths to which he goes for the perfect image. After hiding out next to the waterhole for about 13 months, he went into the water for another three months — and got “every waterborne parasite imaginable”.
“I photograph with zero compromise, until I have done my subject proud,” says Du Toit, who picked up his first camera in 2001 when he was a game ranger in Timbavati, Mpumalanga.
He now pays the bills selling fine-art prints and books, and leading safaris.
“Find what you’re passionate about, then go out and shoot that thing until you’ve nailed it,” he advises. “This is how you eventually build a body of work that takes on a life of its own.”
The exhibition will be at the Great Cellar, Alphen Estate, Constantia, until November 17