The fantastic photo opportunities that international travel provides are the stuff of dreams for many photographers, but Barbara du Pont, whose lens has focused on the fauna of five continents, says that arriving at an exotic locale is only the half of it.
“You have to have patience, too,” she says.
That is something that most amateur photographers lack.
Living in picturesque Vero Beach, we’ve all seen the routine: A tourist drives up to a scenic spot, sticks around long enough snap a couple pictures, and then jumps back into the car in search of the next Kodak moment.
That’s just not the way to get a memorable shot, says du Pont.
“You have to sit there and wait. You have to wait for the light,” she insists.
An owner-partner at Gallery 14 in downtown Vero, du Pont relies on her work to illustrate her point. One of the prints on display in the gallery is “Golden Boy,” the portrait of a leopard gilded by South Africa’s late afternoon sun.
She turns to it is as though to a colleague who will back up her words.
“We would have missed that,” she says, emphasizing the word “that.”
“We” means du Pont and her husband Hal. A member of the famous DuPont Chemical family, Hal du Pont is an avid recreational photographer. He is also the founder of du Pont/Krieghoff Gun Company here in Vero Beach.
Billed as the world’s largest dealer in German-made Krieghoff shotguns and rifles, the company has been selling its high-end wares to gentleman target shooters and big game hunters for over 60 years.
It is easy to see why a man who has made guns his business loves cameras, too: Both are precision machines made to do one job and do it well.
Hal du Pont got into cameras early, says his wife.
“His mother gave him a Brownie box camera when he was very young – he was teething on a Brownie, is the way he puts it,” says Barbara du Pont.
Born and raised in Westchester County, NY, Barbara du Pont moved to Port Charlotte, FL, in 1978 with her two young children. Trained as a registered nurse, she relocated to Vero in the late 1980s, where she worked as a paramedic for most of the following decade.
Du Pont began taking photographs shortly after she married Hal in 1997. To encourage her interest, he lent her his digital cameras; Barbara embraced the electronic medium.
“I figured it was something that we could do together,” says Barbara.
His passion soon became her own. At the dawn of the new century, the couple took their first South African photo safari.
“There’s a difference between taking snapshots and making photos,” says du Pont, adding that she gradually “evolved” into a photographer.
Her husband taught her a lot about the craft. From him she learned that the best shot is not necessarily the one that first catches the eye.
One such learning experience came when Hal turned to her after she had fired off the series of shots that would yield “Golden Boy.”
“My husband said, you’re taking a photograph, but always remember to turn around and look behind you, because there could be another photograph there.”
Not one to let the golden light of that magical moment fade away, Hal had turned around to photograph the sunset.
And while Barbara du Pont says she learned something about technique from other photographers (the couple are members of the Indian River Photo Club and past members of the Nevada Camera Club), she mainly learned about photography by doing it.
The difference between du Pont and thousands of other aspiring photographers is that her course of self-study was taken in some of the most beautiful places on earth. In Japan’s Jigokudani Yaen-koen National Park, the du Ponts hiked up a mountainside to photograph snow monkeys. Off the coast of Wales on isolated Skomer Island, they got down with puffins.
And near Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, they snapped at polar bears from the safety of a gargantuan conveyance called a tundra buggy. That trip lasted a week, with the du Ponts living, eating and sleeping aboard the vehicle with another 16 or so hardy adventurers.
Among the fascinating images du Pont brought back from that trip is “Winter Nap,” a picture of a white snow fox, curled on the frozen tundra in sleep.
The fox looks like the photographer was close enough to stroke its furry pelt. But that is an illusion, says du Pont.
“People aren’t allowed on the ground. On the tundra there are polar bears. The polar bears would love to eat you.”
The same do-not-leave-the-vehicle rule is true of the African photo safaris she had been on.
How then, was du Pont able to get the shot of the sleeping fox, or the one of the lion she calls “The Elder,” or any number of other wild animal close-ups?
“I had a long lens. The animals become acclimated to human presence,” she says.
Even, it seems, in the form of tundra buggies rolling by.
Nevertheless, du Pont’s subjects are remarkably unaffected by all the attention.
“Perfect Landing,” a picture of a bald eagle that she took in Homer, Alaska, presents the bird in full flare-out, with wings straining and talons outstretched. It doesn’t appear to be aware of anything but the branch at hand.
The image has had its share of praise. In addition to being awarded a top prize by the Florida Camera Club Council a few years ago, it was a runner-up in Parade Magazine’s “Celebrate America’s Beauty” photo contest. “Perfect Landing” was one of only 100 photos selected for notice from the 60,000 images the magazine received.
Of that shot, “Someone once told me I ‘just got lucky,’” she says, with a trace of irritation. “They didn’t know that I stood there for probably a week for five hours at a time in sub-zero weather, freezing cold.”
Amateurs take notice: “Luck” requires preparation, patience and persistence.
Lately du Pont’s photographs have been focusing on Florida, especially its bird life. She rattles off the names of birds that can hold their own in picturesque interest with any in the wide avian world.
“Spoonbills, snowy egrets, great whites, little blues, greenies.” Du Pont notes with delight that she finds some of her subjects as close as her backyard in Indian River Shores.
Wildlife has lately been sharing du Pont’s attention with her three young granddaughters, each of whom vies to be in their grandmother’s next prizewinning print. The photographer has even ventured into abstract compositions, winning a prize for a dizzying swirl of colors titled “Vortex” in the current “Through the Eye of the Camera” competitive exhibition at the Backus Gallery in Fort Pierce.
No matter what her subject matter, du Pont believes that the best part of what her husband calls the “family sport” is that no one can take your pictures for you.
“You have to think on your own,” she says.
