The Joy of Being a Wildlifer

My work involves paper. Supply chains, pricing, shipments, the invisible infrastructure that keeps businesses running. It is meaningful work and I am proud of it. But if you asked me what truly keeps the light on inside, the answer would have nothing to do with any of that.

It would be the jungle.

There is something about being in the middle of nature, genuinely in it, that no other experience quite replicates. The air is different. Time moves differently. The noise that accumulates from months of numbers and deadlines and decisions just quietly dissolves. And when there is no network signal, which in the best reserves there often is not, the disconnection is total. That is not an inconvenience. That is the whole point. It is where I go to rewind, to recover, and to find the version of myself that is ready for whatever comes next.

Photography found me during these trips, as it tends to find people who start paying close attention to what is in front of them. There is something deeply satisfying about trying to capture a moment that will not repeat itself. But I learned something uncomfortable along the way. At some point I realised I was no longer watching the tiger. I was hunting a frame. I was thinking about light and shutter speed and focal length when I should have simply been sitting with the fact that there was a tiger in front of me. That is a strange thing to lose and stranger still when you notice it.

So I changed my approach. Now I observe first. I let the moment land. Only when something inside me has settled, when I have actually received what the jungle is offering, do I reach for the camera. The photograph became secondary to the presence. That shift changed everything.

Cameras in the wild are complicated though. On one hand they have done extraordinary things for conservation, pulling people into a world they would never otherwise access, building empathy across distance. On the other hand, the pursuit of the perfect shot has disturbed habitats, stressed animals, and turned sacred spaces into content. The social media version of the wild and the actual wild are sometimes barely recognisable to each other. I try to stay on the right side of that line.

Because what the jungle actually gives you cannot be posted anywhere.

Watching an elephant roll dust across its back in the afternoon heat. A lone bull drifting through the trees with the unhurried certainty of something that has never doubted its place in the world. A tiger moving through tall grass with a patience that makes you feel slightly embarrassed about how you spend most of your time. These things do not just entertain you. They reorient you. They remind you of what is real and what you have constructed, and that those are not always the same thing.

Once, on a safari with a senior forest official, he turned to me and asked a question I was not prepared for. He wanted to know the difference between a Wildlife Photographer, a Conservationist, and a Wildlifer. Were they the same thing?

I sat with that for a long time.

A photographer chases the image. A conservationist works to protect what exists. Both are valuable and necessary. But a Wildlifer, at least as I understand it, simply belongs there. A Wildlifer is not visiting the jungle with an agenda. They are present without condition. If the sightings are extraordinary, they receive them fully. If nothing appears all morning, they sit under the shade of a tree and find that to be enough. They watch the light change. They let their mind wander back to childhood, to older versions of themselves that got buried somewhere along the way.

That is what the wild does for me. It gives me back things I did not realise I had set down.

That is the joy of being a Wildlifer.

 Cover image generated using AI for illustrative purposes.