This is more a nature conservation than a photographic question and is best answered by asking the question why don’t some photographers use flash? The answers given are: It affects the animals, photographs don’t look natural, It’s too difficult, it’s unsound to disturb nature and it’s not the right thing to do. All have something, but there is not a conclusive answer.
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George Shiras, who began photographing in the 1890s, has been described by National Geographic as “the father of wildlife photography” for his early use of camera traps and flash photography.
Why Not Use Flash
The Effect on the Animal
This starts with those who talk of physical harm to the animal being photographed. But there is no evidence that photography flashes at normal range, frequency, and duration can have any lasting effect on the animal’s eyes or their eyesight.
The unexpected firing of a photographic flash gives anyone a shock and especially a wild animal, in the bush and in the dark. This shock can cause involuntary movements which could cause harm but so would a flash of lightning, which animals are often subjected to.
The more likely danger to the photographer is from a fellow photographer who lost their shot because the animal bolted when your flash fired while they were still busy focussing.
Frequent flashes could alter the animal’s behavior and stop it from returning to the spot, ruining it as a place to shoot.
If you are going to use a flash then be sure to use it well and as sparingly as possible and maximize the use of natural light.
Unnatural-Looking Photographs
Those who use flash claim that most top photographers use flash and claim most competition winners do. This isn’t clear as the awards books don’t seem to give shot metadata and on browsing Flicker few of the good photos indicate the use of flash.
There are cases where the use of flash gives unnatural photographs for instance very dark backgrounds that the flash doesn’t reach and harsh shadows behind the subject. These of course can be overcome by using good flash practice.
Flash is Too Complicated
The difficulty of using flash is often listed as a reason wildlife photographers don’t use flash, but this is really not even an excuse. Photographing moving subjects in poor light is a difficult technique as well but photographers manage this.
It’s not the Done Thing
Just like those hunters who think people should not use guns and those photographers who think we should not use post-processing many photographers think it’s kind of unfair and not ethical to use flash to record wildlife. As the British would say, it’s just not Cricket.
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When You Have to Use Flash
Day and Night camera traps of course need flash linked to the camera or the movement detector to capture pictures in the dark which is unavoidable if you are photographing nocturnal animals.
If you are photographing nocturnal animals on the move you also need to use flash although from a hide you could set up floodlights.
Using fill-in flash to compensate for harsh sunlight can usually be avoided by opening shadow in post-processing and shooting raw where the correction possible on the jpeg is not sufficient.