My first shooting with animals was in 1998 for the Moroccan television SNRT (TVM), I was working at that time in a weekly television show (26 ‘) “Al Biia wa NAS” (Ecology & people), a TV magazine dedicated to ecology, nature and animals. We visited several beautiful places across Morocco and it was my start with Wildlife shooting.
Our team traveled to Agadir (on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean), where there’s the Valley of the Birds, an animal park of 2.5 hectares in the center of the city, where rare birds from South America and Asia and mammals coexist, like the bighorn sheep and monkeys. But our report was about a large parrot called the “White cockatoo” (Cacatua alba), and that the park has just imported it from the Moluccas archipelago in Indonesia.
The park built at that time a very large cage for twenty “White cockatoos”, it was a new attraction for visitors and especially children, the shooting was not easy at all and besides, that’s why we decided to spend 3 days have a lot of images to make an informative report and also that tells the story of this parrot known by its longevity and generally from 50 to 60 years in captivity.
We shot at that time with the camera BETACAM SP (Sony Cambo 600), a piece of heavy equipment with a crew of 4 people, I was the journalist. I remember very well an interesting meeting in the park, he had a team of German scientists and I had discussions with them, I was introduced to this specialization of filming animals, to feel them and especially to be passionate and wait for their reactions to have the best shots, in a word, I learned for the first time to observe the animals and remain silent and it was so wise & beautiful.
I continue today to live the same passion that I learned for the first time 25 years ago, I filmed animals all over Morocco on behalf of several international television channels such as BBC Earth, Discovery Channel, DW… I organized shoots across Morocco to film monkeys, ants, fennecs foxes, sharks, Scorpions, Gazelle, snakes, Vultures, African leopards, Atlas lions, Eagle Owl Pharaon… the list is long. Wildlife shootings have always been moments of refuge to discover the other side of the planet that ignore the existence of homo sapiens.
11 July 2024 – Rabat (Morocco)
By: Khalid Leo FAKHAR – Producer & Consultant
