Wildlife Photography That Is Not Wild

[Kirislin]

I had no idea this went on, I must be naive.

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_14875823

[RottnBullies]

Oh dear, I stopped reading after this:

In "White Wilderness," the polar bear cub tumbling down a rock-strewn mountain was thrown over the side

[persephone]

Yep- I worked that out way back when, as a kid I watched the so called 'wild' footage- and you could tell by settings/animal body language, that a lot was artificial

very sad.

[Firestone]

Very sad

[PossumCorner]

It's pretty dreadful, and doesn't seem to change. Living Desert, Natures Half Acre were "old" not an excuse but sort of understandable, ethics weren't discussed let alone understood. But relatively recently whatizname, the Brit doco-maker (Attenborough, David Attenborough??) admitted, or exposed, that most modern wildlife documentaries are still not as wild as claimed. African wildlife in corrals, where big-cat kills are quite often set-up. As he said, how else could you do it, it would take lifetimes to get the shots otherwise. Believe the movie "The Bear" was one of the worst, went through more bear cubs than "Babe" went through piglets (that's not the Polar bear film, - Brown Bear).

Most zoo photography leaves me stone cold too: that is taking an animal into a horrible situation where they are in misery of confinement or developing weird 'behaviours' or indefensible breeding (lions and tigers for godz sake, then they give them some twee name, sickening).

Not all wildlife photographers are guilty of wrongdoing, the movie-makers are the worst, some of the top stills photographers are very ethical. But can anyone recall the prize winning shot of the leopard killing the baboon quite a few years ago? Set-up was a fairly tame 'pet' leopard set onto captured/released baboons til 'the shot' was achieved.

Amazing: google found it - link to that image - it caused a lot of controversy, and admission it was set up was published.

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/50465050

And falling horses in cowboy movies, hasn't that got a history!!