Should I Stay or Should I Go?

As the famous song by English rock band The Clash suggests, there is always that lingering question at the back of your mind when waiting at a photographic sighting: Should I stay or should I go?

For me as a wildlife photographer, it often means exactly this, deciding whether to leave a scene to find something "better" or to stay and see what might, or might not, unfold. In wildlife photography, this is not just a passing thought. It is something you carry with you throughout every day, often without even realising it, quietly shaping how you move, where you stop, and how long you are willing to stay.

There is always activity in the wild. Something is always changing, even if it is subtle. An animal shifts position, a herd changes direction, the light moves across the landscape in ways that are easy to overlook if you are not paying attention. It creates a constant urge to react, to adjust, to move on in search of something more promising. The grass always seems greener somewhere else. But that instinct, as natural as it is, can just as easily work against you.

The dilemma is real. If you stay, nothing might happen. You could spend a long time waiting and leave with nothing to show for it, but if you go, you risk missing the one moment that could shape your work for years to come. You might miss the lion picture of the year! That tension never really goes away, no matter how much experience you have.

What has helped me over time is to stop trying to predict what will happen and instead focus on what could happen. Rather than trying to be a fortune teller, which would be a very different career path, and asking whether a scene will deliver, I take a step back and look at it more carefully. Does the setting have the potential to support a strong image? Is there something in the background, in the light, in the way the space is structured, that, if the animal moves, stands, or simply shifts at the right time, could come together and form a strong image?

A scene with movement is not necessarily a good scene, just as a busy environment is not necessarily a productive one. What matters is whether the elements are in place for something meaningful to emerge.

There have been many moments where very little seemed to be happening. Situations where it would have been easy to move on, to look for something more interesting or promising. Sometimes that would have been the right choice. But more often than not, the images that stayed with me came from those quieter scenes, where the decision to remain was not based on certainty, but on the sense that the moment, if it came, would matter and could be turned into an image or one of my fine art prints that stays with people.

Over time, this has made the question easier to live with. Not necessarily easier to answer, but easier to understand. The decision is not really about staying or going. It is about recognising whether what is in front of you has the potential to become something meaningful or not.

And even then, you will not always get it right. You will leave too early or stay too long. That is part of the process. But over time, you begin to trust that judgement a little more.

I have seen this most clearly when working with lions. They can spend hours lying still, barely moving, giving the impression that nothing is happening. Then, within a very short window, everything shifts. A look, a movement, a moment that carries weight. If you are not ready, you miss it entirely. Those moments are rarely announced in advance, and they cannot be recreated.

There is also a more difficult lesson that comes with time in the field. No matter how well you prepare, you do not control the outcome. You can position yourself carefully, understand the light, read the situation as best you can, but the final moment is never yours to dictate. The animal moves when it chooses, the light changes without warning, and sometimes nothing happens at all.

That is the beauty of it.

That lack of control can be frustrating at first, but it eventually leads to a different way of working. You focus more on preparation and presence, and less on forcing a result. You begin to understand that the task is not to create the moment, but to recognise it when it appears.

Spending time in the wild brings a certain kind of clarity. It shows that focus is often about choosing what not to pursue, that good decisions come from reducing noise rather than adding more information, and that patience is not about delay but about readiness.

Strong images often come from long periods where very little seems to be happening, followed by brief moments where everything suddenly does.