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Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

I can relate to this.

I am in West Africa now, and have seen a number of wild Chimps and Gorillas, seriously far in the jungle. Rain, mud, fog, etc. play hell on the cameras, and I can only get to within a few hundred yards before I am told that's close enough and/or the animals leave.

The photos are worse than bad.

I just spent a week at a great conservation project where I was just a few yards away from many, many chimps for 30+ hours. (behind electric fence).

The photos are the best I have ever taken in my life. (not online yet, coming soon @theroadchoseme)

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I have also struggled with getting great shots until I learned how many tricks are commonly used like feeding animals, cooling down insects so they don't move or shooting in a confined areas. It makes me feel a little better that rarely get any good shots without using these tricks.

If all of this has to be done for taking photos of wild animals, how does BBC's Planet Earth do it? The footage they get is incredible.

They use giant movable chillers and lots of food.

I think they spend months there. I would also be surprised if they cheated a little. When you have spent millions on a production you need results if you ever want to do it again.

Every Planet Earth episode has a mini-"making of" at the end of it which usually shows how shots were acquired.

The article links to this piece, which dicusses how even the BBC can toe the line here. Apparently the "making-of" at the end isn't always the whole story and they say you must go to the internet to get all of the details.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/8963053/BB...

$$$$. They are willing to invest time and money to make something of high quality.

They use the very best equipment, often deployed throughout the area and controlled remotely so it can be hidden in a tree or whatever but controlled by radio from a nearby base.

Actually one of the amazing things about Planet Earth 1 and 2 is that they don't use the best cameras. The BBC is a super cheap institution, and so their cameras are often super bulky and limited compared to state of the art options. Watching Planet Earth Diaries is amazing because you can see the camera crew doing incredible work with old equipment.

The making-ofs are incredible and worth watching. For one piece of footage, the camera guy was in a bird hide for weeks on end, waiting. I can't imagine the boredom! In another, they used a hot air balloon. And from a technical perspective, the bit where they're shooting sharks in super slow mo is interesting. All of those are on the Planet Earth 1 DVD box set - I'm sure there are digital options around.

It still gets stuck in my head: My Bird of Paradise...

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