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Henna Metz
@hennametz
Nature photographer based in The Netherlands
Having a sense of adventure and a need for action runs in my family. We also moved around a lot when I was young, so I believe that taught me to embrace new places. When it comes to photography, I was always a very creative kid. I drew, painted, created my own plays and made up stories. I remember as a young child having a couple of disposable cameras, and if I remember well, it was for my seventh birthday that I got a little point and shoot camera. I absolutely loved it!
"From there on, I was able to hold on to that creative spark, playing a lot with different mediums."
In my teens, my photography experience was still limited to the point and shoot cameras, until we had to do a project for my art class at school to finish the year and which would determine our final marks. My art teacher of the time gave us complete freedom for this project; when I told her I wanted to do something with photography, she borrowed me one of the analogue SLR cameras the school had, gave me a quick tutorial on how it worked and sent me on my way. After I had filled a couple of rolls of film, she led me to the darkroom at school which I never knew existed, showed me how everything worked and then left me alone to experiment.
"That whole experience definitely sparked up my hunger to learn more about photography."
"I don't remember ever being told at home what were realistic career goals and what to pursue. However, I did get told that in school."
For starters, creative subjects weren’t even taking into account for your average grade. So all my strongest subjects – the things I was best at and most interested in – literally didn’t even matter in the first years. On top of that, we were straight up told that creative fields and careers were unrealistic, won’t make a living and better to be left as hobbies. So when it came to trying to decide what I wanted to do as I grew up, I had absolutely no idea. My mom suggested me to enroll in a photography school, but I noticed that there was a pattern of my favorite photographers being self-taught and I didn’t feel like I needed a bachelor’s degree to pursue photography as a career.
"At that point, I already knew that I wanted a career in photography. Still, although having an obvious interest in nature and wildlife, I believed the people that had told me that having that as a career wasn't realistic."
I got offered a job even before I would have to decide what I was going to study further and I accepted. Learning photography independently on my own time worked perfectly for me. When I first started thinking of photography as a future career path, I thought I would set up a wedding and portrait photography business. Simply because that’s what the professional photographers that I knew were doing. Then, I actually photographed a couple of weddings and very quickly figured out that it wasn’t something I would want to do. Same happened with portrait photoshoots and other genres that I experimented with early on.
"I just wasn't excited enough about the subject matters. However, animals and nature, especially wildlife, is what I'm incredibly passionate about."
As I was listening to photographers talking about all the extreme conditions, all the challenges they went through to get the images, and being face to face with animals society perceives as vicious and dangerous, I felt this spark. Weddings didn’t excite me, but picturing myself in those extreme and maybe even risky situations so I could share those stories and maybe do some positive for these animals? Not only did it excite me, but it felt right. After that, I started saying that I would rather jump into shark-infested waters without a cage with a camera than ever shoot another wedding. I haven’t photographed sharks underwater yet, but I have photographed an Orca underwater, and I have been mere meters away from Brown Bears. And I haven’t shot another wedding since.
"Believing the conventional ideas on what's realistic and what's not is probably the biggest obstacle for achieving ambitious dreams. So was it for me."
The decision to self-educate and do things my way probably helped me to get rid of that mindset the most. The more I dug up free and eventually paid resources, the more I came across people that were clearly having successful and fulfilling careers doing what they loved. I’ve also been incredibly lucky with having supporting family members that are also pursuing their passions rather than what would be a conventional or ‘safe’ career. These days I surround myself with people that are doing things that make them happy, no matter what field they are in, and don’t bother with the naysayers. Especially when pursuing something that exists as a career, there’s no reason anyone wouldn’t be able to make it work if they want it enough, believe in themselves and are willing to put in all the hard work.
"My excitement for wildlife and nature photography didn’t came as a surprise. I've always loved animals."
The first word I ever spoke was a Finnish word for horse, and I pretty much learned to walk with the help of our dog. Growing up roaming the Finnish forests and countryside, I also developed a deep love and respect for nature in general. I don’t have just one specific favourite animal, but I love large predators. They’re often unnecessarily feared or even hated despite their incredibly important role in healthy ecosystems. That is also why I love to photograph them so much, and I hope that I’ll be able to use my work for their benefit.
"For me, when shooting wildlife, the most important thing is not to bother them. To do so, I study their behaviour so that I have a fair idea on what will make them feel threatened and can read their body language enough to see the possible signs of stress or nervousness."
I’ve entered their home to photograph them because I love and respect them and their role in our ecosystems, so I feel it’s also my responsibility not to cause any distress to them, even by accident, just so that I can get the shot. This includes chasing after them trying to influence their movement or having such an aggressive shooting style that the animal gets uncomfortable and runs away. After that, what matters most to me is capturing beautiful moments that portray the animals as they are and enjoying the process. Especially the last one is crucial if you want to do this: It takes a lot of work just to research the best locations, I sacrifice a lot of sleep when I’m out in the field, I carry a lot of heavy equipment, I get wet, cold, and honestly quite uncomfortable. It’s not a glamorous process at all.
"And despite of the effort, there's never a guarantee that you find the animals you came for, or any at all."
"Last year I went to Sweden to visit a friend that works in wildlife management. So I was armed with a lot of good insight knowledge on where to find different animals."
I had exact coordinates to where wolf and lynx were regularly spotted. I knew an area where a rare white bull moose had been hanging around and even found a meadow where I could find plenty of tracks, droppings and could see the spots where a moose had been laying down resting. But it just happened also to be the wettest week of the summer, which means the animals tend to seek shelter as well. Despite theoretically being in the right places around the right time, things just didn’t coincide. My boots were filled with water more times than I can remember, I spent days being attacked by mosquitoes and moose flies, and returned home with only a couple of images. Nevertheless, I can still genuinely say that I loved every single moment. I like the fact that it can be so hard and challenging. It’s what makes the great encounters and capturing them so much more rewarding. So when my friend told me that she had caught me on one of her camera traps she sets out for her work, and then caught a whole family of lynx walking in the exact same spot couple weeks later, I just thought it was hilarious.
"A great example of how you can do everything right but there's still no way of controlling nature. And that's how I prefer it."
A great example as well is the story behind my last photos I was able to get from brown bears. I had strategically planned a flight to Finland to take advantage and be together with family for a few days. The morning after my arrival, we drove further up north to stay in a couple of cottages. I had photographed bears in this region before, so I knew where to go, but honestly, the odds were against me. It was already quite late for the bears to be still awake, so the possibility I’d find them would be very small. Since I was in the area anyhow, I wanted to take advantage of even the slightest opportunity. On the day that I had planned to go, the weather forecast was promising snow, which made me even more eager to go. I did get some resistance from my family and there was some discussion over the safety of heading out in these conditions. But I had made up my mind. To give them some peace of mind, I turned on sending my live location for them, jumped into the car and started the drive deeper into the wilderness.
"A couple of hours later, I settled on a hidden spot and started waiting to see if anything would come out."
If I wouldn’t get lucky with the bears, there were plenty of other species living in these woods. The snow had slowly started to fall on my way there, and despite the cold creeping into my bones, I felt optimistic. I had a good feeling. In the end, I didn’t even have to wait that long. I had just grabbed my thermos when I looked up and saw movement between the trees. There was definitely a brown bear there, and it was coming closer. I immediately forgot all about the cold and instead felt a big rush of excitement. I don’t know if the hunch that had driven me there despite the low probability was just plain stubbornness, but either way, it had paid off. When I had heard about the first snow, I had pictured an image of a forest in its autumn tones, snow slowly falling and a bear looking for the last berries before hibernation.
"And that image was forming in front of my eyes, while sitting there, hidden in the cold."
More bears kept appearing, coming and going for the next few hours, either just passing by or stopping to look for food and hanging around for a while. By the time it started getting dark, the forest had a white blanket of snow, and I managed to shoot a couple of frames of bears in a dark, snow-covered forest as well. And although the exposure is far from perfect, I absolutely love the mood the photos have. I stayed until it got too dark to photograph, packed up my things, waited until I couldn’t see any bears around and then headed back to my family with one of the widest smiles on my face. Not only had I gotten the shots I had visioned, but I had pushed myself further and captured something I felt was unique and special.
"I can't think of a trip that HASN'T taught me something or left me with something unforgettable."
A very special trip would be my multi day horseback adventures in Iceland and Mongolia; it made me fall in love with photographing from the saddle. It’s a whole different kind of challenge and allows me to bring myself right in the middle of the action that I’m shooting. This brings a nice contrast to the wildlife photography where I’m usually quietly photographing from the sidelines. It also allows me to document these adventures from a different point of view and capture moments that would otherwise be missed. A good example is when I was on a horse riding trip in Mongolia. It was about halfway through the tour, we had just gotten new horses from a Nomadic family and we were riding over the open Steppe.
"We decided to gallop a little, and with strong, fast, semi-wild horses that were full of energy, that turned into a bit of a race. For a moment there, I did not have control over the situation."
We were flying over the open landscape so fast that my camera – that I had strapped over my shoulder – wouldn’t stay at its usual easily accessible spot behind my back. Instead, it kept getting swung to the front and bruising my elbow as I kept trying to push it back out of the way. Eventually, the horses calmed down a little and as I focused on my surroundings again, this little kid came from what appeared from nowhere, riding his horse with no one else around. That isn’t weird for Mongolia at all, especially when it comes to the Nomadic people; the children are the ones that compete in the horse races. But for someone from Europe, it is unique to see.
"Because I had my camera on me, I could reach the camera and quickly capture a candid photo before passing us."
"It is fascinating to see how different nature and landscapes can be anywhere in the world."
I embrace the fact that I can spend time in places that are so different from each other and each country has its uniqueness. Whether I am in Finland, the Netherlands or anywhere else in the world, I think that following my curiosity is how I have developed myself the most—both personally and professionally. It’s what leads me to experiment, trying new things and finding out what works. Curiosity sparks my creativity. Curiosity about marine life and underwater photography is what lead me to freediving. Curiosity made me impulsively decide to bring a camera with me to the saddle for the first time doing a horse riding trip in Iceland.
"It's curiosity that triggered my passion for photographing nature and wildlife in the first place... And that's what I'll continue to do in the future as well - letting my curiosity lead me."
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