Tom Mason

Whether he’s photographing otters in Cork, or ocelots in the Amazon, Tom Mason likes to bring out his inner geek. Keith Wilson hears about his love of camera traps and why he will never part with his 300mm f/2.8…

We’re only in mid-January, at the time of this interview, but Tom Mason is already working abroad. He’s in Cork when we speak, returning to an ongoing project photographing the otters that frequent the river bisecting Ireland’s second city. Then in March he heads back to the UK for The Photography Show, where he will be giving his talk, ‘Making the most of your next wildlife photography trip’ – retracing his recent travels to more far-flung locations from the Amazon to the Falklands. Tom’s voice speeds up in excitement as he begins recalling his quest last year to photograph the most elusive of big cats, the night-prowling jaguar in the jungles of the Peruvian Amazon. It’s a tale with dogged determination, artistry and a bit of luck – It’s enthralling to hear…

Can you give me a preview of what you will be talking about at The Photography Show this year?

This year’s lecture will be about going abroad on big trips and how I plan to make it different. I spent the summer of last year looking for jaguars in the Amazon rainforest and working with camera traps. It represented a big change on how I work compared to anything I’ve done previously.

Can you tell us about some of the highlights from that trip?

Every three days I’d go into the rainforest, set up a camera trap, and for the first three weeks I got absolutely nothing! You just have to think, ‘It will happen, I just have to keep working at it, working with these guides to find the most likely places.’ Two weeks after that I started to have some success, I got some ocelots local to camp and I’ve got five or six pictures that I’m really happy with.

Camera traps can be a bit a lottery.